UPDATED: Dan Snyder Never Replanted Trees, Says U.S. Park Service - Montgomery County, MD

UPDATED: Dan Snyder Never Replanted Trees, Says U.S. Park Service - City Desk - Washington City Paper

UPDATED BELOW

Dan Snyder famously went all Paul Bunyan on a big swath of environmentally protected land behind his Potomac residence in 2004.

The National Park Service’s inspector general issued a report in 2006 that said the whole charade started when Snyder decided to add another floor to his already massive abode to house a ballroom. A complaint to the Interior Department says Snyder desired that Mother Nature in no way disrupt his “unobstructed view of the Potomac River.”

When he got permission from the Park Service to add the ballroom, permission which he needed because of an easement on the land, he also got approval to have more than 130 trees out back chopped down. Photos taken above the house that were included in the IG’s report show that Snyder’s handiwork turned the protected lands into an incredible brown eyesore.

All that chopping caused erosion on the hill between the house and the water, and caused a wall on the C&O Canal behind his home to collapse.

In 2005, Snyder settled disputes with Montgomery County and the National Park Service over the cuttings by, according to a report in The Washington Post, agreeing to "replant the deforested land." I read about that settlement recently in the Examiner.