The view on 12th Street East after the city removed 111 trees from 2nd to 6th Avenue. (Alison Sandstrom/paNOW Staff)

By Alison Sandstrom

Pushing for policy change

Arborist criticizes city’s urban tree removal

Mar 5, 2021 | 4:51 PM

Six months after their street was clearcut as part of a $1.9 million city infrastructure project, a pair of Midtown residents are fighting to ensure the experience isn’t repeated elsewhere, and they’ve enlisted the help of an arborist to bolster their case.

“On 12th Street they’ve taken all the trees out. We’ve lost everything there we care about and we can’t get that back now,” Guy Lavigne told paNOW. “But our feeling since last fall is we don’t want this to continue with all these other streets that they have to do infrastructure replacement on in the future.”

Lavigne and his partner, Jean Maksymiuk, were part of a group of residents who brought their grievances with the project to city hall in September. On Monday night, they returned with an arborist they’d contracted to write a report on what happened on their street.

“The information in the report shows if they continue the practices that they’re using now, eventually all the old established areas that require this infrastructure replacement are going to lose all the trees and boulevards,” Lavigne said.

A section of 12th Street before the removal of trees and widening of the roadway. (Alison Sandstrom/paNOW Staff)

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The arborist Michelle Chartier, who has around 30 years experience in Saskatoon’s parks department, told council she’d never seen anything like the deforestation that occurred on Lavigne and Maksymiuk’s street.

“In my years of forestry experience, I’ve never seen tree removal in a residential neighbourhood to the extent of what took place on 12th Street,” Chartier said.

Using a complicated formula that took into account the assessed value of individual trees she estimated the costs associated with the deforestation were $435,445.

“I believe that had adequate consideration been given to the value of these trees at the outset of the project, a reasonable alternative would have been found to retain at least some of them,” she said.

A section of 12th Street with construction completed, including the widening of the roadway and replacement of sidewalk. (Council agenda package/City of P.A.)

Chartier’s report makes a number of recommendations including that the city consider alteratives to open trenching, develop a process to facilitate collaboration between departments during the early stages of capital project planning, and create a ‘tree protection bylaw,’ similar to those in place in other cities, including Saskatoon.

Response from council

Ward 3 Coun. Tony Head said the recommendations looked achievable and together with a report coming from city adminstration at the end of March, he hoped the city could have something worked out heading into the next construction season.

“I would want some more information on producing a bylaw, but I do think we could do better communicating to the residents and looking at other ways of possibly saving some of these trees,” he said.

Meanwhile Coun. Ogrodnick said while some residents have been very vocally opposed to the project—which included the replacement of dozens of lead service connections up to the property line—the city had no data to suggest everyone on the street shared their feelings.

“Several residents have said to me that actually they welcomed this because now the street is lit up. It’s a lot brighter and they feel safer at night,” he said.

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alison.sandstrom@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @alisandstrom