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Wetlands case is a study in feuds

Compliance or harassment? You decide.

By Cortney Langley

JAMES CITY -- Officials are going after an upper-county scion for violating a federal ruling against widening a road on his wetlands. It reprises a bitter case of years ago.

James City attorneys, along with the Wetlands Board, accuse W. Walker Ware IV of Lanexa of violating a 1995 court order that restricted the width of a road from his home to the waterfront on the Chickahominy.

Ware considers the matter harassment, while the county considers it compliance. Ware says the clock has run out, and the county faces another run-in with a prominent family. Therein lies a tale.

James City County originally filed suit in 1993 after Ware tried to fill in the wetlands on his river property to construct a marina.

Aerial photos from that trial show more than 50 dump-truck loads of fill piled in the wetlands on the property. More than just dirt, the fill contained broken bricks, lumber, cement, sewer pipes and other construction debris.

The county's Environmental Division at the time urged Ware to cease dumping and finally posted stop-work orders, upon which Ware dumped more fill, court photos show.

James City County filed a number of local, state and federal charges against him in 1993, including charges of violating the federal Clean Water Act.

Ware argued at the time that the sector did not qualify as wetlands. Two years later a judge in the U.S. Eastern District Court rejected Ware's argument and ordered him to pay restitution. Part of that was supposed to reimburse James City taxpayers for the expense of the suit.

Ware was ordered to restore the wetlands, but was allowed a limited road to the waterfront, court documents show. The road was to be no wider than 12 feet and no higher than 18 inches off grade.

He was given two years to come into compliance. He did so.

Fast forward to 2006. Ware obtained a land disturbance permit from the county for a project in the non-wetlands area of his property. One day, environmental compliance specialist Pat Menichino stopped at Ware's property for a routine compliance check and found him riding an excavator in the wetlands, dumping more fill and widening the road, he said.

Menichino went back to his office and sent Ware a letter asking him to cease and desist and to bring the road back into compliance within 15 days. Over the next year, environmental specialists and county attorneys met with Ware numerous times as the road grew to 20 feet in some spots.

Ware said in an interview this week that he was merely maintaining the road, not improving it. He also referred to the court order that states the restoration plan to be completed by Nov. 1, 1997, arguing that after then he was no longer bound by the order.

The court order states, "This monitoring plan shall be in effect for a minimum of two full growing seasons but not to exceed November 1, 1997."

"It doesn't say for the rest of anyone's life that road cannot be any wider than 12 feet," Ware insisted. "The court order is not worth the paper it's written on today."

He flatly denied that the road has swelled to 20 feet wide. "It's the same width it's been since 1976, for 31 years," he said. The county filed suit against Ware in Circuit Court in March. The case languished as local judges recused themselves, county attorney Jennifer Lyttle said. Eventually Richmond City Judge Richard D. Taylor Jr. was assigned to the case and the docket was set for Nov. 9.

Lyttle said the case is focused on stopping the work and restoring the wetlands, and the county has not yet decided whether to pursue damages. Ware plans to represent himself in court.

Meanwhile, Ware said he has asked for $7.5 million in his 64-page answer to the county, on the grounds that county officials have been harassing him for more than a decade. Although public record, the case file has been moved to Circuit Judge Samuel T. Powell III's office and is off-limits to the public, according to court clerks.

"Imagine trying to get to work every morning and stumbling over a county employee,"Ware said. "I've had enough. Stay out of my affairs. Mind your own business. It's just harassment. It's just the oppressive, tyrannical, immoral government in James City County."

He challenged the county's legal authority to bring suit on the basis of a federal order, although Lyttle said that the case has been domesticated. "If we wanted to, we could show cause in federal court, in state court," she said.

Ware insists that millions wouldn't compensate him for the years he's been dogged by the county. "I wouldn't sell ten of my summers for $7.5 million," he said.

The federal judge in 1995 wrote, "The relationship between the county and the defendant has been, to say the least, contentious, and the belligerency of the defendant, at times, has threatened to undermine the court's efforts to obtain an agreed upon plan"

Both sides agree on one thing, though: A legal standoff is inevitable.

"I don't foresee this being worked out," Lyttle deadpanned.

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Wetlands case is a study in feuds

Compliance or harassment? You decide.

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