266
submitted 1 week ago by girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to c/news@lemmy.world

Wealth and hubris fuel the tale of a politically connected Missouri couple who allegedly poisoned their neighbor’s trees to secure their million-dollar view of Camden Harbor. The incident that was unearthed by the victim herself — the philanthropic wife of L.L. Bean’s late president — has united local residents in outrage.

To make matters worse, the herbicide used to poison the trees leached into a neighboring park and the town’s only public seaside beach. The state attorney general is now investigating.

“Anybody dumb enough to poison trees right next to the ocean should be prosecuted, as far as I’m concerned,” said Paul Hodgson, echoing the view of many exasperated residents in Camden, a community of 5,000 nestled at the foot of mountains that sweep upward from the Atlantic Ocean and overlook a harbor filled with lobster boats, yachts and schooners.

Amelia Bond, former CEO of the St. Louis Foundation, which oversees charitable funds with more than $500 million in assets, brought the herbicide from Missouri in 2021 and applied it near oak trees on the waterfront property of Lisa Gorman, wife of the late Leon Gorman, L.L. Bean’s president and grandson of L.L. himself, according to a pair of consent agreements with the town and the state pesticide board.

Bond’s husband, Arthur Bond III, is an architect and the nephew of former U.S. Sen. Kit Bond. Their summer home, owned by a trust, is situated directly behind Gorman’s home, farther up the hill.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 11 points 1 week ago

What does the penalty look like and how will this return the trees to the community?

[-] Blackbeard@lemmy.world 35 points 1 week ago

$215,200, which includes $30k for environmental testing and monitoring. Tebuthiuron doesn't readily break down and so will continue to kill plants in the area until it's either physically removed or diluted somehow, which will likely take multiple years. Unless they excavate and replace the soil, no trees will grow there for quite some time. And even then it'll take 30-40 years for them to get anywhere close to their original height.

[-] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 24 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

1.7 million at this point actually, and that's only so far.

Much more importantly to these rich shitheads, the entire local community of 5000 hates their guts. Hard to enjoy your summer home when youre reviled by everyone around you.

[-] phdepressed@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago

Need pictures so future neighbors can be aware.

[-] nezbyte@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago

They could be fined a small amount for cutting down the trees and then include a provision that the trees must be replaced with trees of the same size. If they were large trees, then that could get super expensive very quickly. There was a story about tree law on Reddit where someone cut down 32 trees on their neighbor’s property and were charged $1k each plus the cost of replanting, it ended up just shy of $2M.

[-] SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

Yeah. You don’t mess with tree law. Since there’s no guarantee that the trees transported will take and it has to be done again.

The poisoned water way is a new twist on the old I’m an idiot who’s going to pay dearly for my hubris motif.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Not my area of expertise, I'm afraid. I just know it's illegal to damage other people's property. That's just basic property rights.

[-] dogsnest@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The penalty is stiff glares from the locals for a while, and no.

this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
266 points (98.9% liked)

News

21687 readers
3552 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS