Residents near Eagle Mountain Lake seek tree protection after developer clears forest
The clear cutting of the forest next to her Azle home came as a surprise. From her back patio, Alicia Parr Dale watched as construction crews razed acres of trees and left behind huge piles of lumber on Ash Avenue, where Lennar is planning to build around 300 homes.
Ashes from Lennar’s controlled burns of the stacks filled her pool, and her family decided to build a privacy fence so they no longer had to look at the construction next to her Oak Harbor neighborhood, near Eagle Mountain Lake.
As an Azle native and real estate agent, Dale has had a front row seat to the explosive growth in the suburb northwest of Fort Worth, which mirrors the rapid development across North Texas. But this new development has “changed everything,” Dale said, for her and the deer and wildlife that have dispersed throughout the area.
“It makes me sick to my stomach,” Dale said. “I’m a tree hugger, and … I have worked with some great developers that can go and develop property and keep trees. The reason why this is clear cut is because it’s cheaper on the builder to do it this way. It’s just devastating for me.”
A rising number of residents across Azle are feeling a similar sense of loss, according to Ray Ivey, a retired school district employee who lives down the street from Dale. When Ivey shared before and after photos of the Lennar site in a community Facebook group in February, the post earned hundreds of likes and comments decrying the “devastation” on Ash Avenue.
“This is not the way that most people in this city want to see the city develop in the future,” Ivey said. “We would like it to be how it was when I came here 20 years ago, and others came here 40 years ago. Some people were born and raised among the trees, and we would like to keep it that way.”
Newcomers and long-time residents attracted to a “city built among the trees” were not expecting to see homes built rooftop to rooftop, Ivey said. Trees are credited with producing oxygen, reducing smog, retaining water from storms and providing habitat to numerous animal species, according to the environmental nonprofit Canopy.
As more developers arrive in Azle, Ivey and a group of supporters are pushing city officials to adopt a tree preservation ordinance to protect the large oaks he saw cut down at the 97-acre Lennar property. No one is arguing that Lennar did anything illegal, Ivey said, but there needs to be more regulation so tree clearing is allowed only for utilities and infrastructure purposes.
“Some of these trees are probably close to 75 to 100 years old,” Ivey said. “(Developers) may put a three-inch diameter tree in the front yard ... but that tree is not going to create the same amount of items that are ecologically and environmentally helpful to our society. It’s not going to help with pollution, or help us with providing clean air.”
Danielle Tocco, a spokesperson for Lennar, said the company works hard to protect environmental resources in the communities where it builds. She did not respond to questions about how many trees were removed for the project or how Lennar evaluates environmental impact.
“We collaborate closely with local officials to ensure our construction footprints are kept to a minimum,” Tocco said in an email. “Any trees that must be removed are within the scope of work reviewed and approved by the City of Azle.”
Tom Muir, Azle’s city manager, said that his office did not receive direct complaints from anyone about clearing trees until Ivey called, though they were aware of conversations on Facebook. He has met with Ivey to discuss potential solutions and understands the desire to leave the trees, but said he is concerned that preservation ordinances may drive up development costs or impose too many restrictions on private property.
“I don’t know how people expect (developers) to deal with drainage issues and all these other things that need to happen in a new neighborhood and leave the trees,” Muir said. “We’ve had clear cutting on other properties before. Crickets. Nothing. And for some reason, this one because it’s right next to their precious Oak Harbor neighborhood … If it was anywhere else, they wouldn’t care.”
‘Reality’ of preserving trees in Texas
At least 60 municipalities across Texas have adopted tree preservation ordinances, including 28 cities in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington region, according to a 2019 academic research paper published by TCU environmental science professor Brendan Lavy.
Most ordinances are in rapidly growing metropolitan areas, where residents are becoming more concerned about the loss of urban forest, Lavy said. Azle fits that description, as the city of more than 13,000 in Tarrant and Parker counties has shot up by 22.9% since 2010.
That influx of people and homes has earned complaints from residents in the past, with a group of Snug Harbor homeowners protesting the environmental impact of a D.R. Horton development earlier this year.
“There’s so much growth coming in, and I don’t see it slowing down,” Dale said. “We don’t have the infrastructure in place for the amount of houses that are coming, so we’re going to go ahead and build houses and then worry about the infrastructure later. I just think that’s flip flopped.”
Preservation ordinances typically include measures like which type and size of trees should be considered “protected,” which properties are subject to regulation and what enforcement of protection will look like, according to Lavy’s research. Enforcement can include fines for developers who tear down protected trees or requiring builders to mitigate the amount of trees lost by planting new ones.
“It’s been shown that tree preservation ordinances preserve canopy, they preserve tree height,” Lavy said. “A lot of the effectiveness lies in looking for what’s the best way to have a regulation that’s not so draconian that you just can’t cut down any tree, but preserves the structure and function of the urban forest.”
Tree preservation has also been associated with higher property values and reducing the amount of air conditioning that residents have to use thanks to the shade and cooling effect of trees, Lavy said. Stephani McCluskey, a real estate agent who has lived in Oak Harbor for three years, cited home prices in her support for a tree ordinance.
“They need to be holding these builders to a better standard,” McCluskey said. “If there are 97 acres, make them acre lots and have 97 homes. It’s going to help everybody in the community as far as the sell price and the held value. They need to be concerned and thinking about the residents that are already here.”
A preservation ordinance would certainly lead to increases in development costs for builders, Muir said. The city already has a tree ordinance that “ensures trees are replaced in proportion to what was taken out,” Muir said, but it’s not necessarily geared toward preservation.
The only way a developer could recoup the climbing costs would be to “vastly increase” the size of each home’s lot and sell it at a higher price, he said. Lennar is building 300 homes on quarter-acre lots. In the past, developers may have been more interested in what the community wanted out of a new subdivision, but that era has passed, Muir said.
“The development costs — the streets, the curb and gutter, the stormwater and sewer — all that stuff is much, much harder now than it was 20 or 30 years ago,” Muir said. “Right now, they’re interested in putting up four walls and a roof and moving on to the next one. I’m not saying it’s right, but that’s the reality.”
What comes next in Azle
Since his original Facebook post in early February, Ivey has met with Muir about potential avenues of addressing his concerns, including the possibility of putting a tree protection resolution to a vote in November or next May.
That effort would bypass the typical city council and committee process, but would also require a large number of petition signatures, according to Ivey and Muir. Ivey is considering his options, including working with city council members to draft a preservation ordinance that would pair with the city’s existing development ordinance.
“I want to involve citizens in this,” Ivey said. “I don’t want it to be something the city coughs up in their face, and that’s part of my purpose, too.”
Ivey also suggested notifying residents when construction or tree clearing is set to begin near their homes, but Muir said he was not sure what purpose that notification would serve. While Azle is required by law to notify residents of zoning changes within 200 feet of their property, that notice prompts them to take action or attend a city council meeting.
“With the zoning change, we’re asking: Are you in favor? Are you opposed to it? Do you want to talk about it?” Muir said. “That’s what those notices are intended to do. I don’t know what this would be doing besides letting them know, and it’s not something they have historically taken an interest in. I’m not an advocate for that.”
After the May 1 municipal elections, Muir said he will bring up the issue with city council members as he begins strategic planning for Azle’s budget. Ivey, McCluskey and Dale said that they would like Azle officials to be more transparent with how decisions are made and create more opportunities for residents to get involved in shaping what development looks like in Azle.
“I think there just needs to be more involvement all around, and I think people my age, we don’t get out and vote, which is terrible,” Dale said. “I’ve lived here my whole life. I am all Azle, through and through, and this is my town. I’m just literally heartbroken that this happened.”
This story was originally published March 30, 2021 at 5:15 AM.
