By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@thecitizennews.com

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.”