The mostly-empty Binnekill stream in Margaretville, photographed in winter 2009 by Flickr user Dougtone.
Yesterday, the Catskill Mountain News reported that a new lawsuit has been filed in a years-long battle between property owner Lauren Davis and the Village of Margaretville over the Binnekill. The stream, which runs through the center of Margaretville, is often as not a dry streambed that stinks of rotted fish. This is because the village and Davis can't agree on how to repair a clogged bulkhead that sits on Davis' property and lets water into the Binnekill.
Davis is locked in litigation with a set of Margaretville officials: former mayor William Stanton, current mayor John Van Benschoten, and Village Trustee Robert Allison. In 2008, the village tried to seize the bulkhead by eminent domain but lost the attempt in state appeals court.
The heart of the dispute, Davis told the Catskill Mountain News in 2008, was that the village wants to dredge the stream, which he thinks is a bad idea:
The village had plans in place to dredge the Binnekill as well as to dig in the East Branch of the Delaware River for the installation of dry hydrants. Davis’ hesitation, he said, was borne of the fact that despite communication to the village board that dredging of the Binnekill would be a dangerous thing to do, those concerns were not addressed and plans to dredge continued to progress.
The plans, he added, were attempts to solve the issue based on the single fact of a lack of water in the Binnekill rather than the culmination of issues that contributed to the waterlessness.
“It would be treating a symptom rather than treating the disease,” Davis said. “The disease is in the main river.”
This July, Davis filed another lawsuit in federal court. In it, he alleges that the village of Margaretville filed the first lawsuit against him as retaliation for his complaints about the dredging. Stanton and Allison have had special reason to retaliate against him, he charges: He has faced both, unsucessfully, in village elections -- against Allison for Village Trustee in 2002 and against Stanton for mayor in 2004.
According to his complaint, Davis is demanding $2 million from the village of Margaretville for violating his right to due process in the eminent domain matter and for violating his right to free speech.
Read the Davis complaint below:
