More Than 60 Beacon Hill Trees Will Be Evaluated for Possible Removal

Tree advocates are concerned about the notices for potential removal of 67 street trees along a five-block stretch on the east and west sides of Beacon Avenue South between South Juneau Street and South Monterey Place. Notices were posted on each of these trees, denoting that they're being evaluated for retention due to two Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) projects that will repair damaged sidewalks. The notice indicates that the trees may be removed within 14 days of the posting. Many notices have dates of Feb. 23 and Feb. 25, meaning removal could happen between now and as soon as March 11. Other notices don't include the required date of posting.

"The goal of both projects is to create safer and smoother sidewalks for people with disabilities while doing everything we can to preserve healthy trees," wrote Ethan Bergerson, SDOT press secretary, in an email.

After the Emerald reached out to the City about when the trees would be potentially removed, which, according to the notices, would have been within 14 days after posting, Bergerson wrote in an email that staff will return over the next several days to remove notices from trees they are confident can be preserved.

"Every tree which still has a notice after that will still get its own careful evaluation over the next few months," Bergerson wrote. "Construction will begin within the next week focused on areas where there is no conflict with trees. We may also remove concrete from the sidewalk near some of the trees in order to conduct this careful evaluation."

Beacon Hill resident Sandy Hunt said that at first, there were notices on only a few trees. She emailed the City and spoke with a construction worker, both of whom assured her that the trees were healthy and would likely be safe from removal. Later, she saw that notices had been posted on over 60 trees.

"Mature trees are a critical source of pollution mitigation in Beacon Hill," Hunt said. "We are one of the highly impacted communities with two airports between Boeing Field and Sea-Tac.

Beacon Hill has a comparatively lower tree canopy compared to other parts of Seattle, with only 15% of the area covered. Other South End neighborhoods such as SoDo, Georgetown, and South Park also struggle with low tree canopy. A mapping tool by the University of Washington's Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences found that South End neighborhoods in Seattle experience a disproportionate amount of environmental health risk factors. With Beacon Hill being near two airports, the I-5, the I-90, the neighborhood suffers from increased air pollution. Trees absorb pollutants and remove them from the air, and also help reduce temperatures by providing shade to avoid creating urban heat islands.

Sandy Shettler, an organizer with Tree Action Seattle, would like for SDOT to come up with a creative design approach to ensure that the sidewalk is repaired but that the trees are retained.

"In other parts of the city, specifically North Aurora and South Park, they took the time to redo the plans so that they could incorporate large trees," Shettler said. "It has two benefits: It saves the large trees that are there now that are protecting people, and then it also means that when those large trees … die and they reach the end of their age, there's space to plant another large tree."

Bergerson said the notices were put on all the trees in the project area for transparency, but they do not mean that every tree will be removed. Each tree will be evaluated with "creative solutions" in mind to see if the tree roots can be worked around. "Residents will see construction crews working on the sidewalks as part of this evaluation," Bergerson wrote in an email. "In some places, we may remove old sidewalk pavement so arborists can see the tree roots to evaluate their health and determine whether pruning is necessary and how it can be done without harming or killing the tree. Arborists will also be on-site during the construction of new sidewalks to ensure it is done in a way that lets trees grow and thrive."

Still, Bergerson wrote that tree removal is sometimes the only option to construct ADA-compliant sidewalks. He noted that for any tree removed, three more sidewalk-friendly ones will be planted nearby. These trees though, according to an email from a City arborist to Shettler obtained by the Emerald, would likely be something of "small stature."

"The trees that they'll put in will never ever be the same as the trees that are there now. They'll be very small," said Kersti Muul, a wildlife biologist and former arborist. "They won't grow more than 20, 25 feet tall — they'll have to fit into that 3–4 feet planting strip because it has to provide space for the roots."

The tree advocates are clear that they want the sidewalks to be fixed to ensure that people with disabilities are safely able to use them. Their hope is that SDOT can find a way to work around the trees so that they don't have to be removed. Shettler suggested a design that may take away some of the street parking to make room for the trees.

New Holly resident Adrienne Papermaster is a leukemia survivor with mobility issues caused by neuropathy from undergoing chemotherapy treatment. She said accessible sidewalks are incredibly important — she has already sustained an injury from tripping over roots.

"At the same time, I think it's kind of a false binary that we can't have safe sidewalks and mature trees that have been there for a long time," Papermaster said. She said a large tree was removed from her own neighborhood, and in the summer, where it used to be temperate and pleasant to walk, it's now unbearably hot.

"It could be how many years before [newly planted trees] actually provide what these trees provide," Papermaster said. "If there are ways to build around the roots, which it sounds like from these other projects there are, that would definitely be my preference."