Someon's putting their fingers in Big Riva

[jerichar456]

Hey Row Dilandahs!

Apparently a Representitive from West Greenwich is trying to force the state to sell Big River back to the original owners. I hear he has many of these owners thinking condos and neighborhoods. The Rep's name is Victor Moffit, and he claims the state has violated the peoples' consistitutional rights by not building a resevoir, and therefore revoke the open space status and sell the land back to the original heirs. This little tidbit is in today's Kent County Daily Times, on the front page. Does anyone else know about this? Email me at: Uprighter456@cox.net

-jeff

[bdee]

Yeah, here's the article:

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13977010&BRD=1718&PAG=461&dept_id= 74409&rfi=6

Sounds scary at first read, and those people got screwed royally in the 60s. The last paragraph is weird and I'm not sure what exactly it means (State repaying prop taxes??).

Anyway I hadn't heard much about this and it's probably not that big of a deal. The land is still being explored as a resource for wells (RI is projected to exceed it's water capacity via the res. in Scituate and various smaller res. in short time - 50 years give or take a few). Now that it's been deemed "open space" one would think that selling it off would be tricky to say the least. A politically dangerous move to say the least. The situation with regard to the landowners sucks to say the least, I wish the State would find a way to make them happy.

BR is supposed to fall under DEM at some point in the near future. I'm sure we'll be talking about this at our next meeting on March 1st (Mark's Grill in Coventry 7:00 pm). Tina may have heard something about this, she is on the trail advisory board and is on top of BR. I'll email her a copy of the article as well.

[Scott O]

Long live Big Riva, Moab of the East.

[TrailBate]

personally, I'd rather have a forest in my backyard instead of condos. But greed rules for most people.....