BuckinghamshireBoy

Following on from my rant of last week...

On Sunday afternoon we - amongst many others - received an email from the dentist activist, urging us to ramp up the protests, 'picket' the town hall and city hall, go 'on site' etc etc. Hardly worth pointing out that there was little to gain by protesting at the town hall as they had voted against the whole thing in the first place.

Monday came and went, nada. Tuesday afternoon we heard chainsaws a way off.

There was one protester on site early on Monday and Tuesday morning - the woodpecker!

Wednesday the chainsaws had moved in fairly close, they finished only a few metres from the house.

Thursday they were directly outside, we had all doors and windows closed, and I had to turn up the TV sound abnormally loud in an attempt to block the noise. No-one was in the park apart from the chainsaw operatives.

Then Friday... nothing at all. There were a couple of private cars blocking access to a track previously used by chainsaw people, no idea whose they were. But it seems that our activist has gone into go-mode again, as he's now claiming that the work has been started before the results of a last-ditch appeal have been made public. We shall see.

They've already destroyed loads of hedgerow, but thankfully not yet the strip that borders ours or the neighbours' gardens.

BuckinghamshireBoy

And he got a result!

Following a meeting with the Grand Tribunal earlier in the week where he presented photographic evidence that 'they' had started felling trees before the flyers were even sent out, and accompanied by a statement so strongly worded, the principal judge slapped an injunction on the contractors halting work, which explains why we heard nothing yesterday.

We've been invited to a photo-shoot - tribunal photographer - tomorrow morning. Hoping for a big turn out on that.

BuckinghamshireBoy

Turns out that it wasn't 'that kind of photo-shoot' after all, it was just gathering more material against the contractors, presumably with a view to imposing a fine.

Come on, line those State coffers!

With that out of the way the injunction has now been lifted, and the contractors are playing catch-up. At least three chainsaws operating since 09:00 today, within 30 metres of the house. The park is now closed to the public - yeah, right, I'll be going for a walk there as soon as they pack in for today.

There's no really good news on this, but one slightly better sight is that some of the more majestic pine trees are not - yet - sporting the dreaded 'red spot'.

The dentist wants to try again at the Federal level, but I don't hold out much hope for this; we'll need a petition with minimum 10,000 signatures and a load of funding. Word on the street is that the Commune have gone low-key on this, due to battle fatigue...

Whatever that outcome, the bulk of the environmental rape is well under way now.

BuckinghamshireBoy

I mis-interpreted, in this case we don't need the petition as this is an appeal rather than a 'popular initiative'.

We still need to fund the appeal however, and as at this afternoon we've had just under CHF 10,000 pledged!

This evening I saw the plan/counter-proposal that would be presented to the Federal Tribunal; it is totally reasonable, logical, and minimises (more) impact to the woodlands.

The decision as to whether we have enough funding to take this forwards must be made by February 14th, as that is the deadline for lodging the appeal with the Federal authorities.

BEVS

I do hope you manage to save what is left.

BuckinghamshireBoy

Thank you BEVS for your wishes.

The latest (quickly translated) post from the president of the collective (our dentist) reads as follows:

"Pledges are currently CHF 9,650 as of Friday, January 9, 2018 at 00:51. However, lawyers' fees are expensive and we hope to exceed this amount before proceeding. Thank you all, unfortunately trees have fallen again today and we intend to require the state via the procedure at the Federal Court (TF), the replanting of large trees on surfaces destroyed excessively. Keep your hearts high !!!"

The 'trees have fallen again today' is a bit of an understatement, the devastation is eye-watering. I walked the park on Saturday afternoon and could see just how the contractors have 'concealed' this abomination from the view of the general public: they've left a ring of trees and hedgerow on the outer boundaries to restrict a view of what is happening further in.

Understandably there have been many more birds frequenting our garden this weekend.

Crunch couple of days coming up...

BEVS

Yeah! I can quite see that form of cloaking happening.

Hopefully somehow this can be stopped and these contractors forced to put in replacement trees. Doesn't much help the current wildlife though.

BuckinghamshireBoy

Pledges of funding have now risen to CHF 10,550, but so far no new statement from the President as to what next.

Very little activity on the ground here today, but apart from cleaning up there's not that much left for them to do.

Ours and the neighbours to each sides hedges remain intact, and the contractors have dumped a large amount of cleaned-up felled tree-trunks directly in front of the hedges.

Hopefully this will protect the +/- 50 metre stretch for a few more months, affording the birds continued nesting facilities.

BuckinghamshireBoy

We're in a holding pattern, it's getting even more confused. At a public meeting with the state councillor for Environment, Transport and Agriculture, he turned up with a group of people who are not local residents, ducked one question and - as it turned out the following day - lied in response to another.

He and his entourage left before the end of the Q & A session.

The injunction to halt the felling hadn't been lifted, so the contractors were/are in breach, as well as the department of E,T & A.

The lie was that "my Department has the agreement of the Confederation for these fellings and the passage of the road link on this area."

The following day several members of the collective contacted the Federal authorities and reported: "Several interlocutors informed us that they had to look for the file and that to their knowledge there was no authorization to cut trees in DS1-Thônex area in Geneva."

The important thing here is the use of 'DS1' - this is a federal classification of the limits of allowable noise in an area, and this implies that the zone has not been declassified as we had been led to believe.

There are now once again several legal processes underway at the state level, no decision yet as to go to the Federal court of appeal pending the outcome of these state hearings, and I assume clarification of our DS1 status.

Ho-hum.

BuckinghamshireBoy

Received an email this morning from the collective warning us that we're next on the list.

Indeed it's happening, our neighbours to the left have lost two trees today, we have one which will likely go tomorrow , the neighbours to the right have three, they'll be next.

The collective have contacted the police, not sure how that will affect anything though.

BuckinghamshireBoy

Our tree is still intact, but the neighbours to our right lost two of their three on Friday. Nothing happening today, presumably due to the very high winds.

The collective has diversified and are now going from the bottom up as well as top down. In the light of information published, several local - communal - councillors have stated that they felt that they have been deceived by two state departments and are pushing for a committee of enquiry. If this goes through, it may well overturn a communal budget vote, which allocated CHF 23 million of communal funding for this ridiculous infrastructure.

They can't withdraw the funding completely, as that would be viewed as treason, and so is frowned upon.

What is being proposed is to reduce the funding to a symbolic CHF 1.

The state of Geneva is effectively skint, so that'll be another thorn for them.

BuckinghamshireBoy

There is something rotten in the state of ... err, Geneva.

This morning I received the latest newsletter from the collective and it contains some pretty damning stuff.

Apart from the debacle over the arguably illegal tree-felling, it would seem that corruption abounds in the contractors and a couple of state departments. On top of this, one of the collective members - a lawyer - has been exposed as a mole and has been invited to quit the collective. He wasn't at the executive level, but was respected, and has since been found to have been feeding dis-information to the collective.

Bastard! That's just from me, not a statement from the collective, by the way.

The collective now reckon that there's no point in going to the Federal courts - a waste of time and our limited funds - but they're now going off on this 'corruption' witch-hunt. It would seem that apart from the CHF23 million for the infrastructure project, there's another CHF40 million of communal funds which may have been mis-appropriated.

It's the ground-level local councillors who are providing the most help at the moment.

BEVS

That's disgusting .

Is there any hope for the environment where you are?
Will you lose anything remaining?
Will anyone be able to force a stop and replant?



Makes me sick. So short-sighted.

scrubbedexpat094

This is outrageous, how effing awful. I am so fed up of corruption and greed in society. It seems to be everywhere. Somehow and I have no idea why I assumed the Swiss would be above such things, silly really, as humans are humans.

Ditto to BEVS comments.

BuckinghamshireBoy

The felling has now stopped and the clean-up is continuing. There remain a few more trees with the dreaded red spot which I’m guessing will come down when they’re ready to hook up the new road into the existing system. A few trees have escaped but that's just a tiny percentage of what was here a few weeks ago. Our hedge is still intact, as is the neighbours to one side. As far as I can see the majority of the other hedgerow has gone.

I don’t think they’ll be able to duck the replanting given what’s gone down so far, but that will only come after the infrastructure is in place.

This morning my estate agent brought the latest set of plans and also some updated artist impressions of ‘after’. These were vaguely encouraging; the road itself will be partially sunken, noise-reduction barriers will be built on raised banks in front of the four or five houses worst affected by this, and quite a few trees will be planted, though it will obviously be a few years before these mature.

The collective are still chipping away trying to get the route of this access road altered, but now that various hearings and investigations are on the cards, I doubt there will be any decision in the near future.