Wednesday, November 22, 2000

By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@TheCitizenNews.com

Saving trees from developers' bulldozers has proved to be even harder than expected.

Over the next few months, Fayette County's Engineering Department will make an attempt to rewrite the tree retention, protection and replacement ordinance that was approved just ten months ago.

"We would like to revisit this whole ordinance," county engineer Ron Salmons told the Planning Commission during its workshop meeting last week.

One main goal of the new tree ordinance adopted in February was to stop the wholesale stripping of large tracts of land, and that hasn't been accomplished, said Salmons.

One deficiency, he said, is that the ordinance doesn't address clear-cutting in timbering operations. During the last round of discussions, consensus of the Planning Commission was that timbering is regulated by the state and county ordinances wouldn't apply, but Salmons said he wants to research that further.

"I think we can do this so that we allow the timber industry to make a profit and still not have a piece of property that looks like a war zone," said Salmons.

Salmons, who was hired by the county a couple of months ago, said in that short time he has already had several phone calls from residents complaining of land left barren of trees during development or timbering.

Wanting to determine how much of the problem is caused by timbering and how much by development, he did some research. "I found a total of 18 timbering operations in the past year, five of them associated with development," he said.

Developers often sell the timber on a piece of property before beginning construction.

"I think there's an education problem with the surveyors," he said, adding that he plans to send inspectors to check each site until that problem is addressed.

To address the timbering problem, Salmons said he has gathered ordinances from other counties that do regulate clear-cutting. One requires that timber companies leave at least ten large trees, even on a clear-cut site.

Another allows only pine to be harvested.

Another problem with the ordinance, Salmons said, is that surveyors working for developers often are not correctly measuring trees, and therefore some are being destroyed that shouldn't be.

Civil engineer Dave Borkowski also recently attended a forestry conference in which tree protection was discussed at length, and he suggested some other areas where the ordinance might be strengthened.

Protecting trees from damage during construction might need more work, he said, adding that the law might benefit as well by adding height requirements for protected trees, in addition to the diameter requirements currently in place.

Designing developments so that the county doesn't lose canopy cover also should be addressed, he said.

"They also recommend that the tree plan be done by an arborist or a landscape architect," he said.

Planning Commission members told Salmons that if he can find a legal way to regulate timbering, they're all for it.

"I would love to see this," said commissioner Fred Bowen.

"If you can get away with it, I'd love it," said commissioner Jim Graw. "What they've done is horrible."

Salmons said he and Borkowski will work on a rewrite and report on their progress in a few months, possibly February.

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