Neighbours of a West Vancouver couple alleged to have caused a landslide with illegal landscaping work described in court their growing concern after watching dump trucks deposit massive amounts of fill on to a nearby property between January and March 2013.
Shortly after their neighbours, Mohammadreza Morshedian and Seyedeh Shahrbanoo Janani, bought the property at 2785 Chelsea Close, "There began to be truckloads of dirt coming in," said neighbour Sam Schoenauer. "The pile kept getting higher and higher."
Schoenauer testified that as work continued, with excavators pushing around more material on her neighbours' property, she became increasingly worried.
"Every time it would rain, there would be mud flowing on the side of our property," said Schoenauer. She added the material being dumped included large boulders. "Our house was literally shaking like an earthquake on a daily basis," she said.
Schoenauer said she told Morshedian she was concerned the large volume of material being dumped could cause problems on her property.
"He said, 'I'm an engineer.' He brushed me off," she said.
After that, Schoenauer told her husband, "From now on, you deal with him."
Morshedian and Janani are on trial this week before Judge Bryce Dyer of the North Vancouver provincial court where they face more than 50 bylaw charges, including allegations they violated West Vancouver's water course protection bylaw, creeks bylaw, building bylaw and soil deposit and removal bylaw, among others, when they began landscaping work on their property without permits and without a sediment control plan.
The district has alleged the illegal landscaping at the couple's British Properties home continued after a stopwork order was issued and eventually led to a landslide and sediment dump into a fish-bearing creek.
The couple has pleaded not guilty.
In cross-examination, the couple's lawyer questioned Schoenauer on what happened after the previous
owners logged Morshedian's property in the spring of 2012. "You certainly noticed when the large trees were cut down the amount of water that was coming into your property increased dramatically?" he asked.
Schoenauer's husband Fernando Casses also testified at the trial Monday.
Casses said when Morshedian first bought the property, he came over to introduce himself and described some landscaping he intended to complete.
But soon after, huge 10-wheel trucks started showing up and dumping large amounts of material on Morshedian's property, said Casses.
"We started getting concerned that huge mountain of dirt was going to come and slide through our property," he said. Casses said he became even more concerned when he noticed some buckling of his own driveway. "It was telling me the huge amount of tonnage was dangerous," he said.
Casses said the material being dumped wasn't topsoil, as originally described by Morshedian, but construction fill, that included pieces of concrete and PVC pipe, buckets, boulders and clay.
But Casses said when he tried to talk to his neighbour, Morshedian told him he knew what he was doing.
"In his mind, nothing that was happening was related to what he was doing. That was his attitude."
A while later, Casses said he had a less friendly conversation, in which he confronted Morshedian and asked if he had permits for the work he was doing. At first, Morshedian didn't answer, said Casses.
Then "he basically snapped," said Casses. "He said, 'The officials of this city are just a bunch of bureaucrats. The only thing they want is my money.'" Casses said he responded, "The bylaws and regulations are there to protect you and to protect me, as well as all the other citizens."
But Morshedian said he could do whatever he wanted on his own property, Casses said.
The trial continues.
