Without notice last Wednesday, and without discussion, the General Assembly’s Agriculture and Forestry Awareness Study Commission approved draft legislation that would eliminate the authority North Carolina cities and towns now have to enact and enforce tree ordinances, protect historic and heritage trees and plant and protect street trees.
The pertinent paragraphs say that counties and cities “shall not adopt or enforce any ordinance, rule, regulation, or resolution that regulates the removal, replacement, and preservation of trees on private property within its jurisdiction.”
The draft legislation has the apparent backing of the N.C. Home Builders Association.
Its title is innocuous: Authority to Adopt Local Ordinances. It was assigned to be studied in the Environmental Review Commission but Sen. Andrew C. Brock, a member of that commission who is also a co-chair of the Agriculture and Forestry Awareness Study Commission, introduced the draft into the latter commission in an apparent – and successful – attempt to get it approved without examination. He represents District 34: Davie, Iredell and Rowan counties.
Mayor Vivian Jones wrote to Sen. Chad Barefoot last week expressing her concerns about the draft bill and its effect on the town’s trees and tree ordinances. In addition, she also said: “As a public power community, it concerns me that we would be limiting our electric linemen’s ability to provide optimum electric service by requiring certain trees or tree pruning and/or removal when there is the possibility of danger. We would also have a potential safety issue for linemen having to work around lines that are obstructed by tree branches.”
Commissioner Zachary Donahue, the board liaison to the Urban Forestry Board, asked Wake Forest’s Urban Forester Evan Keto to list the ways the proposed bill would affect the town.
Keto listed the following effects:
1) The Urban Forestry Board would immediately lose the ability to require removal of dangerous trees from private property. The UFB has used this power multiple times in the last year to protect the lives and property, including a large dead oak that was perched on a cliff over first base at the baseball field at Holding Park. There would be no way to remove stands of trees infested with pine beetles, emerald ash borers, Asian long-horned beetles, or any other deadly insects or diseases, and outbreaks would be devastating to both public and private trees.
2) All provisions in the UDO (Unified Development Ordinance) requiring trees to be saved or planted during new construction would be nullified.
3) There would be no restrictions on clearcutting before development.
4) Only shrubs, grass or flowers could be required landscaping.
5) Trees would no longer be required in buffers between drastically different land uses, and more berms would be needed to totally screen an area.
6) Minimum canopy requirements would disappear, and new homes and businesses would not have any requirements to have trees in their landscaping plans.
7) If they choose to plant trees, developers/builders would no longer be bound by the town’s official planting list, and weak, weedy trees like Bradford pear would be more common.
8) Any business or institution could remove parking lot trees, buffers or screens so major commercial areas would likely be hotter, noisier, uglier and more polluted.
9) Incentives offered to developers for voluntarily preserving trees would also disappear.
10) There would be no more protection for trees that were previously required to be saved, including historic or specimen trees such as those in Majestic Oaks.
11) All the trees in street tree easements on private property could no longer be removed, replaced, or maintained by the Town. This includes the street trees in Thornrose, Heritage South, Crenshaw, Bowling Green, Reynolds Mill, and many other neighborhoods, where they could not fit in the public right-of-way due to utilities or other factors.
12) Likewise, there would be no protection for trees within conservation easements, such as those between greenways and homes.
13) Only the State would be able to regulate tree removal within stream buffers.
Keto’s conclusions: “Overall, this would reduce the ability of the Town to preserve the forested atmosphere of Wake Forest and likely reduce property values and the appeal of the town to new residents.”
The draft legislation is now on its way to either the House or Senate or both for the short session of the General Assembly.
Commissioner Jim Thompson called the draft legislation “very troubling. I think Wake Forest has worked really hard to try and balance growth with conservation, and a great example of that is our UDO. I would hate for the N.C. Legislature to take that authority away from us.”
The only local legislator to respond to a request for opinions or stand was Rep. Chris Malone, who wrote: “I was not aware of the legislation proposal until I saw the Mayors and staff emails in my mail box Sunday night. If the opinions of the staff and Mayors on the legislation are accurate I will not support it. I will review the draft legislation in the coming days. (An update) I gave it a cursory read and my opinion hasn’t changed. Still, I will look at it more fully in the next couple of days.
3 Responses
About the time it seems that things in North Carolina couldn’t get any worse, there is always one more possibility that a few days ago wouldn’t have seemed to be possible even in ones’ worst nightmare. Well, here it is: let’s just mow down all the trees that are helping us clean up the carbon emmissions and just cement it all over with parking lots that can pour more pollution into our streams. Then we can rename our town Forestless Wake.
When I was Mayor in the 1990’s we had a representative from the Home Builders’ Association meet with our Tree Board with the mediation of Town Planner Jamie Cox and they came up with a tree ordinance that the Home Builders sent to other towns as an example of a good ordinance and our Tree Board and Town Commissioners passed unanimously. There is a middle ground here and Sen. Brock’s bill is not where it is at.
We need to so all we can to protect the trees and what we have worked so hard for in WF. The curb appeal in these communities is what everyone LOVES.