Up Close: Harris County could make trees a priority

06:29 PM CST on Friday, January 21, 2005

By Dave Fehling / 11 News

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Who doesn't love trees? Why then, are so many being cut down in Harris County?

AP

Trees are being toppled by the thousands, but there's something that may be being done about it.

"They're often what make some of Houston's most desirable neighborhoods, desirable," Ed Taravella Greater Houston Builders Association.

Big, old trees.

But to some, it seemed Houston was doing just the opposite, clearing trees from lots and from along highways.

"Houston has its challenges to begin with, and they take what's there and ruin it, it makes it much more undesirable," says a man about Houston and trees.

So in the 1990s, the City of Houston passed ordinances, protecting trees in public right of ways and forcing developers to landscape new developments.

But outside the city limits?

Trees don't stand a chance against progress, and they continue to be toppled by the thousands.

In many cases, acres of forests are being clear-cut to make way for new houses or strip malls.

In almost any development, some trees must die. But all of them? Out in the county, there are no rules whatsoever when it comes to destroying trees. But that may be about to change.

Harris County is in the process of drafting what could be its first-ever landscape regulation.

Officials say it likely will not prevent developers from cutting down existing trees, but will require them to replant a certain number of new trees.

But why do developers destroy perfectly good trees in the first place?

"Developers would like to save trees if we could," says Ed Taravella.

Taravella is a developer who's working with the county on the new regulation.

"What we've found is while we'd like to save the trees, it's just about impossible to do it when you're doing affordable or entry level housing," he says.

Why?

Developers explain that because Harris County is so flat, most new developments have to be built up a least a little bit, and that new soil, when heaped around old trees, usually kills them. They say saving trees is only affordable in high-dollar developments.

For example, there is a Kroger parking lot where great care was taken to save big, old trees by leaving the soil around them untouched, while building up the rest of the parking lot.

Kathy Lord wishes more developers did that.

"It's very depressing to think about how long it takes a tree to grow," says Lord, of Trees of Houston, a non-profit group that has already planted thousands of trees along streets and freeways.

She's finding that after years of having little regard for their trees, Houston -- and now -- the county are changing.

"I think this is a development community and I think that's how things were ruled and now I think everyone's working together to make it a greener and cleaner place," says Lord.

But it will take time.

Just like new, treeless subdivisions, many of those nice old neighborhoods started out treeless, and it took at least a couple decades before they looked like they do today.

That non-profit group, Trees For Houston, makes trees available to neighborhoods at no cost.