PINE ISLAND – Onion farmer
Christopher Pawelski maintains that a drainage ditch that runs through
his Town of Warwick property was state-codified some 70 to 80 years ago
and therefore a neighboring farmer has no right to fill it in and build
a road to access his property.
Pawelski points to the culvert in question
Pawelski hired Goshen attorney Michael Sussman to argue the case against the other farmer and the town.
“The town, in fact, has granted this right, if you will; he has been issued a building permit, which allows the gentleman, to at least think he has the right to go on someone else’s property and construct what amounts to a road,” Sussman told MidHudsonNews.com.
Pawelski said that strip of land has not been a road for 100 years.
“This is just insanity that a main ditch like this can be somehow converted into a road that never existed before on someone else’s property,” Pawelski said. “We don’t understand how the Town of Warwick granted both a flood plain permit and a building permit for construction, not the lot construction is taking place on, but the back lot that the right-of-way is connected to. We firmly believe the Town of Warwick was wrong to do that.”
Sussman filed a lawsuit in State Supreme Court in Goshen seeking to have the road construction stopped and the drainage ditch returned to its former state.
