At the Community Development/Human Services Committee meeting on January 30, council members expressed concern about Atlanta’s declining tree canopy, the loss of which has already had an environmental impact on the city. Council members said they hope the Department of City Planning will do more to support preservation efforts.
J.P. Irie, who documented this meeting, had this follow-up question:
“Drafting an ordinance is one step, but is the administration committed to enforcing it to protect the tree canopy?“
If you ask the City of Atlanta Department of City Planning if the administration is committed to enforcing the ordinance, they’ll say (as they did to Canopy Atlanta): “Yes. All ordinances should be followed.”
However, according to Judy Yi, director of marketing and outreach for Trees Atlanta, it has been over a year since the last stakeholder meetings, and they regularly request the city to resume progress—which may happen soon.
The city launched the current tree protection ordinance rewrite effort in 2018 and by late 2022, Atlanta City Council passed the first set of simple updates (phase 1). Phase 2 discussions haven’t started yet, but Marci McKenna, director of marketing and communications for the Department of City Planning, says two points to be discussed are increasing recompense and metrics for saving trees. Applicants who want to remove a healthy tree are required to “recompense” the public for the value of the destroyed tree. They can do this by planting replacement trees or by paying a fee.
Hear more from Trees Atlanta on how they think the ordinance should be enforced:
We strongly believe the recompense fee must be increased and paired with incentives for preserving existing trees. The current fee has not changed in over two decades. The current recompense fee is so low compared to the high value of real estate in Atlanta, it is not slowing down tree removal or providing a reason to design around existing trees.
The value of tree recompense should be adjusted to represent inflation, at minimum. In 2019, the city completed a fee assessment that determined the (then) actual cost of planting new trees. Based on that study, it was suggested that the recompense fee should equal $240 per inch (DBH). The fee per inch has been $30 since 2001. Payment of recompense fees goes into the Tree Trust Fund which pays for public tree planting and for purchasing forested areas for conservation. Each year that the recompense fee is not adjusted to market rates, we are underfunding the Tree Trust Fund. It has not kept up with the real costs of tree replacement or conservation. Meanwhile, Atlanta’s urban tree coverage (UTC) continues to decline, [based on the latest data, from 47.9% in 2008 to 46.5% in 2018].
Read more about Atlanta’s tree-protection ordinance here.
Editors: Heather Buckner and Mariann Martin
