Williston

-- A hillside development clearly visible from Interstate 89 has provoked enough complaints to spur the Williston Selectboard to propose an ordinance to protect wooded hilltops.

The 19-lot subdivision, Oak Hill Estates, has been developed by Hector LeClair. The pricey homes - one new four-bedroom home has been advertised at $889,000 have spectacular views of the Champlain Valley and the Adirondacks.

"As soon as that new development went in, people said yes, we want to do a ridgeline ordinance,'' said Mary Peterson, chairwoman of the Selectboard.

Interstate highways have long been recognized - and protected - as prime spots for viewing Vermont's scenic beauty. Projects that might mar the view from the highway are given careful scrutiny. The primary tool to protect Vermont's scenery is Act 250, the state's 32-year-old land-use and development control law. Oak Hill Estates won a land-use permit under the law.

The saga of Oak Hill Estates demonstrates just how hard it can be to require developers to build homes that blend into the landscape.

Act 250 battles

In 1992, when LeClair applied to the District 4 Environmental Commission, the little hill he proposed to transform into Oak Hill Estates didn't command much attention. The hill is south of Taft Corners. Jane Packard Bryant, who has lived in Williston since 1964, thought LeClair's proposal would mar sweeping views of the town from the interstate.

Bryant attended Act 250 hearings to urge the District 4 Environmental Commission to do all it could to limit the visibility of the project. Other residents weighed in on LeClair's plan, echoing Bryant's concerns about the effect on the view and questioning the effects of the increased traffic that such a subdivision would bring. "I was strong in my protest," about the way the project would look, Bryant said. "The scenery is what makes people love Vermont, as a place to live and as a place of value."

The district commission issued LeClair a permit, with the condition that he limit tree cutting.

Ten years after LeClair applied for his Act 250 permit, the first phase of Oak Hill Estates is completed. He recently won approval to build 12 more homes on the hill in the next three years. Unhappy residents complained to the town's Selectboard, the Planning Commission and the regional Act 250 office when six of the houses were built in view of the interstate.

Those complaints motivated the Williston Planning Commission to dust off an old hilltop protection ordinance and rewrite it for approval by the Selectboard. "We did this because of the dramatic impact" of Oak Hill Estates, said Judy Sassorossi, chairwoman of the Planning Commission. "We started hearing from Willistonians that this is not acceptable."

Thin soils, dead trees

LeClair concurs the houses can be seen clearly.

"It is a sensitive issue," the 66-year-old developer said. "You can see these nice homes from the interstate." LeClair says he abided by his Act 250 permit. The homes are visible, he said, because the area where they're built was an old pasture with few trees, shallow soils and ledge.

"Most of those high-elevation houses are built on ledge," he said. "There aren't too many sizable trees up there, and they're not very strong trees." The 1998 ice storm that damaged many trees in Vermont also damaged trees on Oak Hill, LeClair said.

District 4 Environmental Commission Coordinator Peter Keibel sees the situation a little differently. LeClair's Act 250 permit required him to leave trees 14 inches in diameter or greater standing unless they were dead or diseased. That puts Keibel in the difficult situation of having to reconstruct what happened on the lots years ago.

"How do you come after him years after the construction was completed?" Keibel asked rhetorically. "He could just say the trees he cut were diseased. Or we could look at the base of the stumps and estimate the diameter that's if we have a stump to look at." Keibel said the permit conditions for LeClair's plan were too lax and difficult to enforce.

"We know better than that now," he said.

Williston Zoning Administrator and Assistant Town Planner Scott Gustin said he has had complaints about the development, but doesn't have authority to enforce them because the town relied on Act 250 permit conditions and homeowner restrictions to protect the view.

Pressure is strong

Chittenden County suburban towns must balance the need to protect Vermont's scenic hillsides and other land with demands for housing development. The pressures might be strongest in Williston, where exponential population growth, combined with some sewer capacity gives builders incentive to construct homes.

Williston's stock of homes grew 37 percent between 1990 and 1997, compared with Chittenden County's growth of 4.2 percent. At the same time, Williston's population grew 57 percent in the past decade, according to the U.S. Census. Chittenden County's vacancy rate for owner-occupied housing stands at 1.8 percent. The statewide vacancy rate for owner-occupied housing in 2000 was 1.4 percent; a decade earlier, it was 2.1 percent.

Housing demands make it inevitable that some subdivisions will be proposed for hillsides, as happened with Oak Hill. At the same time, developments that do win permits under Act 250 rarely are reviewed after their construction to see whether projects comply with permits.

"We don't have a staff of compliance officers, no question about that," said Lou Borie, chief coordinator for the Environmental Board, which oversees Act 250. Most of the investigations into Act 250 permit violations result from complaints from Vermonters, Borie said. "We do try to follow up on complaints that we get, but we are never going to catch everything."

Enforcement of Act 250 violations has increased in the past few years, as former Assistant Attorney General John Hasen joined the Environmental Board's staff. In 1998, the board took legal action on 11 cases. That number had doubled by 2001, when the board took legal action on 23 cases.

Borie says the state has become more savvy about landscaping plans and protecting views in the decade since Williston's wave of hillside developments.

"We are much more careful when we examine landscaping plans and when we examine applicants to make sure the plan will have its desired effect," he said.

Possible solution?

Some Willistonians don't think the town should worry about views from the interstate, or elsewhere in the town. "I don't have a great concern - buildings do show up," said Stephen Knight, a consulting engineer and Williston resident who served on the Planning Commission for nearly three decades, until 2000. "If we are going to live in houses, it is inevitable that we will see some of them."

Still, complaints from residents like Bryant about LeClair's Oak Hill Estates made it clear that the town ought to act to protect other hillsides, Planning Commission Chairwoman Sassorossi said. The result is the ordinance, called by the town "Ridgeline/Wooded Hillside Protection Overlay District Regulations." She said the ordinance's primary goal is to alert homeowners and developers that they must take care with tree cutting and other aspects of construction that affect visibility.

The proposal recommends homeowners limit the use of large expanses of glass, and requires homes to be painted earth-tone colors. It would also limit cutting around homes in the district to no more than half-an-acre or half of the lot size, whichever is smaller. It also would require at least six mature trees to be left in the yard. Selectboard members expect their final review of the restrictions the revisions later this summer.

"Part of the value of Vermont, if you will, is the scenic aspect," Sassorossi said. "To the extent we can develop and still protect that, that's good."