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URGENT REQUEST FOR TREE PROTECTION! November 18, 2002
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URGENT REQUEST FOR TREE PROTECTION!
City Council has been poised to drastically weaken Atlanta¹s new Tree Ordinance in a vote scheduled for December 2. Council Member Fauver and MLPA are working to moderate the changes. Please contact your council-members and tell them environmental protection matters to you on
this issue.
BACKGROUND
The current tree ordinance passed in December 2001 and made clear-cutting of canopy uneconomic for developers. At developers' behest, Council on December 2 will be asked to vote to place caps on the recompense payable for removing trees. The requirements to qualify for these caps are very low, so clear-cutting will resume. For example, industrial and commercial developments will qualify to have their recompense capped at $10,000 per acre if they save a mere 10% of existing trees. The process for coming up with the cap formulae was driven by developers to ensure that they could get around the Tree Ordinance at negligible cost. There was no consideration of environmental impact or even of the consequences for the City¹s (i.e., taxpayers') storm water costs. The proposed legislation can be seen on the pdf file here beginning on p 166. (this is a very big file) Council Member Fauver has suggested increasing the tree saves that qualify for recompense caps.
ACTION
It would be great if environmentally-aware citizens would express opposition to weakening the ordinance and ask other council members to support Anne Fauve's suggestions. (It would be equally good for Anne¹s office to hear of your support.) We need council members to hear your voice before December 2. Please contact Anne and your 3 at-large council members, Norwood, Wills and Mitchell, to request that they oppose rolling back the ordinance. Contact info at the end of this e-mail. Below is a draft message that you might want to use or put into your own words.
SUGGESTED DRAFT MESSAGE TO COUNCILMEMBERS
Dear Councilmember ----
I am writing to ask you to vote against weakening Atlanta's tree ordinance. The city has already lost two-thirds of its canopy. We need to protect what is left, for its environmental and economic benefits to all Atlantans. The city's air quality and storm water challenges are severe, and allowing careless development to rob us of the remaining mature trees will make matters much worse. As a taxpayer, I do not want to see storm water management costs rise still further. Please ensure that the proposed Ordinance is amended to: 1. Raise the tree save requirement for R2 to 40%, for R3 to 35%, for R4 and R5 to 30%, and for Industrial and Commercial to 20%. 2. Require the City arborist to report quarterly the acreage, number of trees and DBH of tree removal approved under the cap provisions and otherwise.
Sincerely,
Name and street address - so council member knows that you vote in his/her district
CONTACT INFO
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