u/never_ever_comments

So a few years ago, my eastern neighbor cleared a bunch of cottonwoods from their easement which shocked the root system and killed all the trees behind mine and the western neighbors. The following year we didn’t have enough money to clear it all out ourselves, and couldn’t contact my northern neighbor who shares the other half of the easement, but we had the trees on our half of the easement downed so they wouldn’t cause damage (these are the downed trees in the picture next to the still standing ones which are my northern neighbors).

Over the next two years I’ve tried to contact the northern neighbor over a dozen times to try and figure out a plan, to no avail. I’ve left notes, contacted other neighbors, no reply. The other neighbors tell me the guy lives there but is often gone, so it’s reasonable he didn’t see my notes for a while but has certainly seen them at some point.

Need advice on how to proceed. Of course I’d like for him to take care of his own trees, but I just want the issue resolved and we have the money now to clear it all out ourselves. But I think I still need his blessing to do so, unless there’s some avenue I’m not aware of.

The trees are clearly hazards, multiple have fallen down in big wind storms and broken our fence (which needs to be replaced anyways so we are not too worried about it, but we don’t want to put in a new one until they’re gone). The electric company cleared out a few themselves but left the rest to us. The fire department recommends strongly that they go but didn’t offer any suggestion on how to force the issue. Both of those groups checked it out a couple years ago though so maybe they’d do more now, the trees are in much worse shape and one very large one is just suspended on other dead trees.

Any advice is appreciated, thanks!