Opinion: Chevy Chase residents might pay the price for inaction on tree removal
Washington Post, February 13, 2023 at 4:09 p.m. EST
In what rational urban development does it make sense for a builder to irreversibly alter the landscape before it has approval to build? In what city do the officials let it happen?
On a five-acre parcel of land leased from the Episcopal Center for Children in D.C.’s Chevy Chase neighborhood, Maret School has begun chopping down 66 trees and will soon attempt to move four large heritage trees for construction of athletic fields at an unspecified future date. Maret has neither the final authorization from the Board of Zoning Adjustment to proceed nor the necessary construction permits.
Maret is pressing on anyway. And it can because D.C. Urban Forestry granted the school permits to cut and move the trees without making them contingent on the other required approvals.
More than 900 residents signed a petition protesting Maret’s action. Hundreds called on D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and Council member Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) to intervene. Others appealed to the D.C. Office of Planning and the Office of the Attorney General. No city official stepped up.
If the construction is impeded for any reason — zoning restrictions on the development, legal appeals, permitting problems — the neighborhood will stare at a massive blight on the landscape. Worse, it will face the threat of flooding of surrounding properties and watershed with the loss of the tree barrier that now mitigates runoff.
All Maret had to do was wait. All the city had to do was ask Maret to wait. Neighbors now stand to pay the price for this hubris and inaction.
Bruce Sherman, Washington DC The writer is the ANC 3/4G-02 advisory neighborhood commissioner.
