On a clear day in Ogunquit,Maine

Abstract

Winning a court case against a federal agency may seem to be the sweetest success for an environmental group, but losing litigation is not total failure. In the case of Ogunquit Village Corporation et al., vs. R. M. Davis the plaintiff lost the legal skirmish against the Soil Conservation Service, but in doing so significantly aided the struggle within the agency to implement more environmentally sensitive planning and engineering procedures. This paper describes the court case in terms of the Soil Conservation Service's procedural and policy responses including the agency's modus operandi and the internal paths/pitfalls involved with the implementation of visual resource management. The author also speculates as to the visual resource understanding of the evidence presented by the plaintiff and a possible but unstated visual basis for the original complaint.