Fayette's

new, tougher tree protection ordinance is now in

place.

Following

more than five months of discussion by the county

Planning Commission and a special committee of

citizens and developers, the County Commission

has adopted he latest version of an ordinance

designed to save more of the county's mature

specimen trees from developers' bulldozers.

Commissioners

asked the Planning Commission to review the old

tree protection ordinance last year after

concerns arose that the law might be too lenient.

County

engineers went over the document first and wrote

a draft new ordinance, which was honed by the

Planning Commission. The a citizens' committee

was appointed to study the law further and make

recommendations for still more changes.

The

result is a law that requires developers to count

all the mature trees on each parcel of land they

plan to develop, and to present tree protection

plans along with their development plans, showing

each tree they plan to remove and why.

There's

also a minimum requirement that developers

preserve at least 100 "tree density

units," defined as inches of tree diameter

at breast height, for each acre of disturbed

land.

Under

the old ordinance, developers could meet the tree

protection requirements in the required buffers.

Under

the new one, at least half of the protected trees

must be on the actual construction site, outside

the buffers.

If

a developer feels it's necessary to strip the

construction site completely bare, the tree

protection requirements can be met with

replacement trees, but twice as many density

units of replacement trees are required.

The

law applies to residential subdivision

development, but not to individual building lots.

Commissioners said that's an important issue.

"I

just want us to be very careful that we don't get

into the business of managing people's trees at

their individual homes," said Commissioner

Linda Wells.

Commissioners

went along with the Planning Commission on one

sticking point, the use of the word

"may" rather than "shall" in

a paragraph referring to enforcement methods.

County civil engineer David Borkowski said using

the word "shall" in the enforcement

clause would prevent engineers from being able to

work with developers for voluntary compliance

before using more drastic measures, like fines,

stop work orders and imprisonment.

"There

has to be discretion," agreed Commissioner

Greg Dunn. But, "We want a tough tree

ordinance and we want tough enforcement on the

tree ordinance," he added. "The purpose

of this whole drill is that we get darned serious

in Fayette County about retaining trees."

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