DPW States Protection of Registered Live Oaks is Responsibility of Property Owner

From: William Daniel [mailto:WDaniel@brgov.com]
Sent: Friday, March 25, 2011 8:29 AM
To: rallen@theadvocate.com
Cc: John Carpenter; John Snow (jsnow@consultssa.com); Songy, Michael; CPL70600@aol.com; Steve Shurtz
Subject: FW: Please call Friday

Rebekah,

I wanted to elaborate on few items.  As I said, we make every effort to spare valuable trees on every Green Light project. We completely moved the Lobdell  project alignment to spare 12-15 nice live oaks. However, Staring Lane was too tight to provide the programmed road improvements in the limited space available without affecting some trees.

There are no areas in EBR parish with any tree protection.  We have various means of identifying trees, and we do attempt to preserve as many as possible.  However, no property owner is ever required to protect any tree, with the exception of the almost nonexistent case of a tree on the National Register.  No ordinance has ever been passed by the council to protect a tree, and I'm fairly certain it would conflict with private property laws.  Not even historic trees recognized by the City-Parish are protected.  We do have a number of “special” planning overlay districts with some language that stresses the importance of existing trees. Many require developers to inventory or catalog the existing native trees on their sites, but none carry any mandatory tree preservation components.   Tree preservation is entirely voluntary. Even on DOTD projects, tree  protection is based upon inspection and cost/benefit analysis and is not mandatory.

In summary, there is no local ordinance or state law protecting any tree on private property anywhere in EBR Parish. There are policies which strive to protect them, but ultimately protection is up to the owner of the tree.

If you have any additional questions, please let me know.

William Daniel

From: Allen, Rebekah [mailto:rallen@theadvocate.com] 
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2011 05:29 PM
To: William Daniel 
Subject: Please call Friday  

Hi William,

Sorry to keep bugging you on this, I know you referred me to Michael Songy and John Snow, but they have stopped responding to me. I want to know how common it is for oak trees to be removed in the Green Light Project. And I also want to know about how districts get protection. I understand that the Staring Lane area does not have any protections for the Oaks, but there are some districts that do. What are these districts and how did they get these protections? My deadline is  Friday, please respond at your earliest convenience. Thanks.

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Rebekah Allen
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