OK I will not bore you with what has been going on with the last neighbor on the lottisement next to our land for the last year but the final straw was when we found that he or his father had sprayed 1 1/2 meters on our land in a long strip down the side of their land and for 2 1/2 meters on our land abutting one of our ponds. Now I and you know this is illegal, I and you know that I should have gone to the marie but I have taken date stamped photos, have a friend writing a letter (undated) in French ready for when our land leaches water from this said pond into the stream which eventually feeds the large fishing lake locally.
Your thoughts on a postcard would be appreciated and may I say that we had donated a strip of land to him that abutted the lake so that it would be easier for him to fence, this of course is not on his boundary line and when we sell he will have to take his fence down - revenge is a dish best served cold and I am waiting to serve the dish. I just need to know what the limits for sprying near water are please.
Glad to hear some progress has been made, Patsy, even if it took this long, and with buckets of perseverance on your part. Well done!
Just to let you know that we are still alive and fighting this issue. The Mayor (who had our letter on the 23rd July explaining everything - has done nothing - what a surprise). So due to the fact that the neighbour with poisoning water habits decided to have a dispute with us because we had not cut the grass he had illegally placed on our land, after illegally killing the previous grass there we decided to take the matter further. We contacted the Rivers and Waters Authorities of Brittany they read the email, saw the photos and plan of our land and the lottisement attached.
They sent us back the email in the form of a letter with the appropriate statute addressed to Onema and DDTM together with the photos and plan (within two days of having received our email).
We then took a copy of this letter to the Mayor's office (approximately 6/8 weeks after speaking to him about the issue) and asked his secretary if she had typed a letter to Onema or DDTM on his behalf - she said no, so we said as we did not wish to be impolite we would give him a copy of our letter. We then sent the originals (last Thursday) and lo and behold this Wednesday (when I was working dressed in my old nightie and pyjamas) there was a knock on the door and there were two officials from Onema, I took them over the land, they took photos and said in this instance they would issue said neighbour with a warning either by phone or by letter and that should he attempt to spray on our land again let them know. They thanked me for informing them and said they have so much problems with Roundup that it is quite frankly a nightmare.
They also told me that my land was agricultural and that DDTM might not view the matter of illegal spraying onto agricultural land so lightly as they felt they would in this first instance. So the Mayor who said he was waiting for a response from DDTM about the zonage of my land (a letter I had written in March that the DDTM decided to send to the Mayor) before he could discuss with me about the matter of my bad neighbour obviously does not get the results that an individual with an email system can.
The man from Onema and other friends have said that my bad neighbour needs to know that he cannot take these actions of tresspass and illegal spraying any further without me resorting to informing the appropriate authorities. The water in the affected pond is discolored and seems to have no insect life and I am not allowed to place in any pond weed for oxygenation unless I take it from a local public lake as it will have been approved of - so I will be taking a plastic bag to the nearest public lake to fish some appropriate weed out for my pond.
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Good luck Patsy and let me know how you get on.
Thank you for your response and for the informative link. Our land at the bottom (where the incident occurred is also next to a stream which feeds the local lavoir and lake(eventually). We pay our tax fonciere on this land as agricultural land so it seems to me that this man and his father have made more than one error in coming onto our land and spraying it without 1) even asking permission and 2) spraying near our ponds with fish (carp and tench) and abutting the stream bank. My daughter and I have decided to print out the photos and go to the Mayor and ask for what they believe will be the best way forward, that we do not wish to cause trouble just that they ought to know what he is like. They are also tipping out their lawn cuttings onto common ground which is also wrong and really gross in this wet weather.
I will let you know what happens (my husband was furious when he noticed also that they had bulldozed down an old fence which was not adjoining their land and pushed their builders rubble and the fence onto our land and through another fence into the stream.
(This young man has a reputation for being aggressive and argumentative) and in the local football club they have compartmentalized him because he argues with everyone. I do believe though that we must register our distress about this in case he later denies that this occurred and there is damage to the water in the stream. We have no dead fish but who knows - in fact he said when he finally admitted he had used weed killer "do you see any dead fish". Honestly if I had enough French language ability I would have told him where I would have placed them if I did.