Save Greensboro's Trees!
- by: Susan V
- recipient: Greensboro, NC City Council
Greensboro, NC has faced a number of environmental challenges, including being part of an area sanctioned by the EPA because of its poor air quality. This is no time to be cutting down trees.
And yet Duke Energy has lately been taking down trees in the city’s historic Westerwood neighborhood and plans to cut even more, despite residents’ outrage. It says it must remove weak trees near power lines, but refuses to install lines underground unless residents help pay costs.
Even though Duke admitted its past tree-trimming had weakened the trees, says the News-Record, they’ve made no promise to discontinue operations.
NC State University explains that most NC communities have tree ordinances, however they rarely include protection of standing trees. No exception, Greensboro’s rules apply mostly to commercial property development.
One resident calls what they are doing “criminal and lazy,” and Sierra Club says the city should have come up with a tree-preservation ordinance years ago. Tell Greensboro to save its trees!
We, the undersigned, are concerned that a city with such serious environmental issues would allow Duke Energy to weaken and cut down trees, especially old-growth trees in historic districts.
Greensboro is part of the state’s Triad area which has not only been under EPA’s watch for air pollution issues but, according to Smart Growth America, “was dubbed the second most sprawling in the nation.” Wastewater from the Greensboro area has also been implicated in the pollution of a downstream reservoir, Jordan Lake, according to a 2007 report in Yes Weekly addressing another tree ordinance issue.
That same report discusses how the current tree ordinance is a compromise that one council member said “relates only to commercial development." And, she added, it still allows clear-cutting in residential development.
Clearly Greensboro can do better than this.
We request the city work with the Sierra Club, NC State University and others to adopt an noncompromised tree ordinance that includes tree preservation.
Thank you for your time.
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