A Homeowner's Nightmare: Deserted Coventry Land Causing Problems for Neighbor

There’s a piece of land in Coventry that has no owner, and it’s causing quite a headache for a neighboring homeowner.

Do you know who owns the parcels of land around your property? You may want to, after hearing Dana Markie’s story.

Markie has dreamed of living in Coventry by Wangumbaug Lake.

“We bought this place a couple of years ago and I love it,” Markie said.

But right when he was ready to settle into his home in 2020, a massive tree fell on it.

“You could not see the house. It had swallowed it up. It had gone right across the entire house,” he said.

Insurance covered some of the cleanup, but not all.

Why the tree fell and where it was located: that’s where Markie’s story gets muddy.

Between Markie’s home and his neighbors there’s an abandoned piece of land.

It’s about a 15 by 150 feet piece of no man’s land running downhill and a path of water runoff from a town roadway.

The town tells NBC CT Responds the property was once owned by a now dissolved lake association.

It hasn’t been kept up with in decades.

Markie elevated his concerns to the town in May at Coventry’s Inland Wetlands Agency meeting.

During the virtual meeting, he specifically asked about another tree on that land he feared would fall.

“What do I do about that large tree, if it, if the roots get undermined by that waterway?” he asked.

The wetlands agency regulates activities that affect any watercourses within town.

At that same meeting, the agency’s chair shared her concerns about the unmaintained land too.

“The right-of-way should be taken care of in full, so it’s not causing anybody any problems. Not one tree, but maybe all of the trees should be maintained, so that the water flow can happen the way it’s supposed to happen,” said chairperson Lori Mathieu.

While at the meeting, Markie was directed to contact Coventry’s Public Works Department to request a fix, but later, the town told him it wasn’t their land, so they couldn’t do anything about it.

Then just a couple of weeks later, Round Two: a second tree fell on Markie’s home, crushing it yet again.

“Never thought in my wildest dreams that I’d be in this situation. Okay one time, but a second time,” said Markie.

He thinks it’s only right for the town to pitch in.

“It doesn’t matter who owns that property. It really doesn’t. They diverted water onto that property which has undermined the root system,” Markie said.

Before Markie moved in, the town installed a catch basin right above the abandoned land when they paved the road perpendicular to the property.

“When you pave a road, you inherently create more runoff,” explained Jim Connors, a principal scientist for Applied Hydrological Education and Consulting.

The PhD holder has testified as a hydrology expert in dozens of court cases.

While the scientist would not comment on this situation specifically, he says over saturation of the ground could be to blame.

“When human beings do things like pave roads, and capture that water, they are altering hydrology and now biology has to deal with it,” said Connors.

The arborist Markie hired says there’s no question water is undermining the roots of the trees there. NBC CT Responds spoke to him over the phone.

NBC CT Responds reached out to Coventry’s Wetlands Agency, which hasn’t responded to our requests for comment, but we did hear from town manager John Elsesser.

While he declined an on-camera interview, in multiple back and forth email conversations, he tells us in part, the town “took over the road, not the drainage ditch” and that the “sewers did not change the drainage in the ditch.”

“Trees are dying across the state,” Elsesser said. While he says he is sympathetic “the town does not own the land the trees are on."

Elsesser said the town does not want to set a tree removal precedent on private property.

“I would be surprised to hear about multiple old trees falling, so that leads me scientifically to think, what changed? What made those trees fall? Because they’re not supposed to fall,” said Connors.

Elsesser says Markie can file a legal claim against the town which will be turned over to their insurance carrier.

So, while this no man’s land remains a point of contention, Markie says he continues to wait for his second homeowners claim to process, as he heads to his basement when a storm comes though Coventry just in case another tree falls.

His house remains covered in tarps for the winter.

He says he won’t rebuild his dream home until he knows this won’t happen a third time.

“I’m not asking much. I’ll pay to take the trees down. You know something, whatever it costs me. Take it out of my taxes. I’ll get them taken down and then I’ll sleep at night without having to worry.”