The trees are fighting each other for growth room. So the habitat will remain, and I don't believe it will be damaged. Hurley, a veteran political activist, perceives the proposed cut as a direct physical threat to his well-being. His drinking water comes from two spring boxes located on Harper's property. Hurley has access to the spring by way of a formal water easement that has legally guaranteed him a right to the water since 1979, when he purchased his 18-acre property.
Harper plans to cut down selected trees on all sides of the spring boxes.
He says the spring boxes were already badly damaged in 1992, when Harper hired a bulldozer to cut a road to the top of the hill. Since then, he says, he has experienced declining water quality and has lost water for two to three weeks at a time in both summer and winter. They used to bottle it to take home. It was clean, life-giving water. Now it's brown, blue-brown sometimes.