Joseph Evans III, an arborist who lives on St. Roch Avenue in Gentilly said he’s been watching road work crews destroy the roots of oak trees lining the street. Some of these trees are hundreds of years old.
“I like to think that New Orleans is a live oak museum. It has some of the most fantastic specimens you could find anywhere in the world,” he said.
Evans is part of a coalition called Save Trees With Ordinance Protection (STOP), which called on the city Tuesday to enforce tree protections and work with stakeholders on a new ordinance.
“There is a dire need to save this tree canopy that we currently have and make sure that new canopy has a chance for survival,” he said.
More trees could help manage stormwater, cool down the city and improve people’s health. Before Hurricane Katrina, the city’s canopy coverage was around 30%, now it’s closer to 18.5%. In its Climate Action Plan, the city set a goal of 10% coverage in every neighborhood and aimed to plant 40,000 new trees in support of that goal. Sustaining Our Urban Landscape (SOUL), one of the organizations in the coalition, put out a New Orleans Reforestation Plan, which the city endorsed, saying it would bolster its own plans.
“The mayor's office and all the relevant public agencies publicly endorsed this plan, but now they're ignoring the process that is included in the plan,” said Susannah Burley, SOUL’s executive director.
David Marcello, a professor at Tulane Law School and the volunteer convener of a group called Tree Canopy NOLA, wrote a draft ordinance.
“The provisions governing trees in our city code have not been amended since they were adopted in 1956, so almost 70 years ago,” he said. “We think that the urgent situation among trees is really crying out for an update to the city code.”
Marcello said that with the help of the council members Leslie Harris and Oliver Thomas, the ordinance was supposed to be presented by the Department of Parks and Parkways at a city council meeting this summer. He said that kept getting pushed back.
“We haven't had the benefit of any feedback from Parks and Parkways. There's been no effort to improve the legal landscape, which is exacting a hell of a toll on the trees in New Orleans,” he said.
That was until one day when Marcello was told the department would write its own ordinance. Burley said that goes against the guidance in the reforestation plan to create an ordinance using a transparent process.
“The guidance is laid out in the plan that they publicly supported, so the writing of tree policy cannot be done behind the closed doors of one department,” she said.
In a statement, the Department of Parks and Parkways said it received Marcello’s draft and incorporated some of its concepts into its own tree protection ordinance it was in the process of developing.
“The department’s arborists, landscape architects, and industry experts are excited to present the updated draft ordinance to the New Orleans City Council and the public in October,” it said.
