Tell your Seattle City Council to pass strong tree protections

Whether or not Seattle’s lush tree cover rebounds or we change into a metropolis of stumps is at stake because the Metropolis Council considers draft tree-protection laws.

After Mayor Bruce Harrell unveiled his proposed laws final month, council members filed greater than 50 amendments in current days. That’s an unusually excessive quantity and a testomony to the contested and highly-detailed nature of tree safety.

The method didn’t get off to a very good begin. In a letter to council members, the City Forestry Fee, which was created to advise the mayor and council on coverage and laws, famous that Harrell’s draft “seems to have been developed behind closed doorways.”

The UFC supported a number of parts of Harrell’s proposal, together with decreasing the dimensions threshold of “distinctive” tree designation, requiring extra avenue timber when growing or transforming new houses, and decreasing tree elimination when no improvement is proposed.

However the fee raised critical considerations, that are mirrored in a number of amendments drafted by Councilmember Alex Pedersen. The council ought to undertake Pedersen’s suggestions to make tree protections significant.

Pedersen proposed eliminating a piece within the proposed ordinance that ensures builders the correct to construct on 85% of the lot. The UFC referred to as the part “ill-advised” and famous it might lead to tons of of acres of cover loss.

One other Pedersen modification would require an inch-for-inch alternative of timber eliminated by builders, reasonably than permitting them to interchange a mature tree with a tiny sapling. For instance, if a developer cuts down a 24-inch diameter regulated tree, it needs to be changed with six 4-inch in diameter timber as an alternative of 1.

In a brand new off-site planting and fee system, property homeowners could be given the power to chop timber and pay right into a fund that crops new ones elsewhere. However the fee must be excessive sufficient to truly nurture timber to maturity. The Timber for Seattle Parks program estimates the price of planting and rising timber over a five-year interval at about $4,000. That’s a very good place to begin for any “fee in lieu” system, and it needs to be within the remaining ordinance.

“Metropolis Council should closely amend this tree laws, as a result of it’s imagined to be a tree safety invoice — not a income safety invoice,” mentioned Pedersen. “It’s lastly time to place up or shut up about eager to advance the town’s public well being and setting by defending Seattle’s dwindling tree infrastructure urgently wanted to outlive local weather change warmth waves — and the amendments we select to undertake will show the place we actually stand.”

A current Tree Cover Evaluation by the Workplace of Sustainability & Surroundings decided that the town misplaced 255 acres of cover between 2016 and 2021, an space roughly the dimensions of Inexperienced Lake.

Given the Legislature’s preemption of native land-use legal guidelines and the top of present residential zoning in Seattle, the decline of the town’s valuable timber might quickly escalate. Threats are mounting.

On Wednesday, the council’s Land Use Committee will start voting on amendments. A remaining ordinance is anticipated to be thought-about subsequent month.

For residents who care concerning the city setting and social justice, control your representatives in Metropolis Corridor. Be sure Seattle finally ends up with tree laws that match the Emerald Metropolis’s ethics and values.