Editor’s note: The following letter was submitted before Tuesday’s City Council meeting in which the council directed city staff to re-evaluate the proposed changes to the city’s oak tree ordinance.
At the March 10 City Council public hearing, the city made a presentation to support its proposed amendment to our oak tree preservation ordinance. The amendment’s permit process will automatically approve requests by homeowners with structures within the fall zone of oaks to remove the oaks — without any review, inspection or arborist report that is currently required by our current ordinance to provide options for resolving homeowners’ concerns, which may or may not include removal of the tree. The consequence of this amendment is that thousands of oak tree communities will be removed for no good reason.
The city’s presentation argued that homeowners with structures within the fall zone of oak trees are at risk for having these trees fall onto their homes. The presentation exaggerated this risk to support their proposed amendment. The facts are:
1. Only a handful of oak trees have fallen onto homes in Santa Clarita over many years.
2. Arborists and urban forestry experts estimate that well under 0.1% of residential oak trees ever fall onto homes during their lifetime.
3. Most oak failures involve: severe Santa Ana winds, root damage from construction, disease or rot and/or soil saturation after storms.
4. Oak trees fall less often as whole trees than many other common urban species, but oak trees shed large branches more often than many other species.
5. Oaks have a lower likelihood of whole-tree falling than other species of trees.
6. Oaks more commonly fail with large limb drops.
7. Most reported tree incidents involve oaks because they are so abundant, not because they fail more often than other trees.
The fact that well under 0.1% of residential oak trees ever fall onto homes during their lifetime shows that the city is far exaggerating this concern. With our current ordinance, the risk of trees falling onto homes, and the risk of limb drops, will be reduced even further because the required inspection and arborist report will recommend what is needed to reduce these risks: remove limbs at risk for dropping, pruning the tree, removing dead branches and rot. If the tree has problems that make it at risk for falling, then tree removal will be recommended.
Our current ordinance specifically evaluates each unique homeowner’s concern regarding their oak trees and offers specific recommendations to reduce risk of harm. Unfortunately, the proposed amendment bypasses all of this investigation and frivolously approves the removal of thousands of oak trees for no reason.
It appears that the city is exaggerating this risk of oak tree damage to homeowners’ property as a futile attempt to justify its amendment to automatically remove the trees so that the city avoids taking the time and money to investigate each homeowner’s concern regarding the oak trees as required in our current ordinance.
Gary Kodel
Canyon Country
