Hypocrisy is the root of the problem.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont illegally had thousands of trees and shrubs cut down behind his sprawling Greenwich home despite publicly defending a state effort to plant more conifers, according to angry neighbors and other sources.
The wealthy 70-year-old Democrat was cited for cutting down more than 180 trees in a protected wetland area to supposedly get a better view of a pond from his $7.6 million abode, CT Insider reported Tuesday.
“[It’s a] chainsaw massacre,” said land use attorney John Tesei, who represents nearby landowners INCT LLC, according to the outlet.
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“I’ve never seen anything like this in general.”
“Our customers are deeply disturbed and devastated,” he said at a March 25 wetlands meeting.
Lamont allegedly hired workers to cut down beloved sugar maples, beech and walnut trees without permits on several acres behind his seven-bedroom mansion in early November, sources at the city’s Inland Waterways and Wetlands Agency told the newspaper.
Some of the trees were 40 feet tall and were a vital part of the delicate ecosystem on the forested banks of a small river, sources said.
Fred Jacobsen, manager of privately owned forest properties in Greenwich’s Midcountry, heard the whirring of a chainsaw near the governor’s house on Nov. 9 and called police, he said.
“It was a coordinated destruction of the entire ecosystem in that area,” Jacobsen said at the meeting.
The saw-wielding workers also crossed a property line, “trespassing” on land owned by INCT LLC, a Delaware-based company, wetlands agency staff said in documents.
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“The Lamonts appear to be the ones who hired the contractor,” Beth Evans, the city’s environmental affairs director who advises the wetlands agency, told CT Insider.
Lamont, his neighbors the Viks and the Ashton Drive Association were cited for wetland violations in Greenwich, according to the newspaper.
“It is no coincidence that the cut opened a very wide view of the lake for the personal aesthetic benefit and visual enjoyment of two households, Governor Lamont and the Viks,” Peter Thorén, an INCT LLC executive, said at the meeting.
He called the felled trees an “illegal encroachment.”
Lamont’s $7.6 million home in Greenwich, Connecticut. ((Google Maps)(Getty Images))
The Greenwich Wetlands Association finally issued a cease and correct order on Nov. 28, which was sent to the Lamonts, the Viks and the Ashton Drive Association. It was not immediately clear whether the politician would be fined.
No criminal charges were filed for the alleged invasion, Greenwich police told the newspaper.
But cutting down conifers runs counter to an ecological plan the governor announced last April to plant thousands of trees in dense urban areas of the state.
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At the time, Lamont sought a share of the $1 billion in federal funding for urban forestry programs allocated by the Inflation Reduction Act, Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes said in April 2023.
Locals now want the vegetation-cutting governor to replace dead trees and bushes.
“The perpetrators should restore the entire area as closely as possible to the way it was,” Jacobsen said.
(Brad Horrigan/Hartford Courant/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Lamont, a former cable television entrepreneur and Harvard University graduate, earned more than $54 million in annual income in 2021, according to CT Mirror.
His 2.5-acre abode at 4 Ashton Drive is valued at $7.57 million, according to redfin.com.
“This is a dispute between the homeowners association and one of the neighbors,” a representative for Lamont told The Post on Wednesday. She claims the subpoena was given to the HOA, not the governor.
“The association and the neighbors are working it out,” Lamont told CT Insider.
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A representative for the Inland Watercourses and Wetlands Agency declined to comment and said the matter would be discussed at a public hearing Monday afternoon.
The conifer clash echoes a similar battle that broke out in June over the cutting down of 32 trees in New Jersey. In that case, the culprit was fined $13,000.
