More trouble with the trees

COEUR d'ALENE - A Kootenai County conservation group is concerned with the number of trees being removed along Coeur d'Alene's Rosenberry Drive flood levee.

Adrienne Cronebaugh, executive director of the Kootenai Environmental Alliance, told The Press that in the initial U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' assessment of the levee, the agency recommended removal of all the trees on the levee. But city officials and a committee Cronebaugh served on worked with a third-party engineering firm to identify only 350 trees that needed to be removed for levee certification.

"As a committee we all really celebrated that," Cronebaugh said. "We knew that the work was going to take place, but it was a big win that we would be able to keep 70 percent of the trees."

However, Cronebaugh said, when the work began she saw a significant increase in the number of trees slated for removal.

Coeur d'Alene City Administrator Jim Hammond told The Press Thursday that the 350 trees cited by KEA were the trees deemed diseased. The number of trees slated for removal had to increase from there, he said, since some of the trunks would be buried by improving the slope of the levee, killing the trees.

Others had to be removed because they would be damaged or weakened by the removal of a neighboring diseased tree.

"The number that had to be removed had to be increased," Hammond said. "It wasn't an indiscriminate decision; it was based on one of those three factors."

If the levee is not certified by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Hammond told The Press, property owners in the Fort Grounds area will be required to purchase flood insurance. In the event of a major flood, those affected would not qualify for any federal disaster relief, he said.

"My bottom line is protection of the college and the neighborhood," Hammond said. "I would rather remove more trees and assure the safety of the dike than have less trees be removed and have a dike that isn't safe."

Cronebaugh said she understands the importance of having the levee certified, but the issue is one of transparency.

"Why was it being communicated to the public that only 30 percent of the trees were leaving when that was not true?" Cronebaugh asked.

She said the reason for the removal of the additional trees should also have been relayed to citizens.

In response to the allegation that the process lacked transparency, Hammond compared the situation to rebuilding an old house.

"When you get into the actual work, sometimes you need to remove more or build more than you initially thought you did," Hammond said. "That's the same thing here, you don't know what all of the work will entail until you get started on it."