Neighbors protest tree cutting

A group of northwest Huntington Beach residents unsuccessfully banded together this morning to prevent the eleventh-hour removal of a decades-old, city-owned tree in their neighborhood.

When the residents learned the tree on Galway Circle was going to be cut down within hours, they began making calls to the city, seeking answers and trying to stop the removal. They hired an arborist to determine whether the tree in question was a risk to the sewage system.

About a dozen neighbors stood at one end of the street, awaiting 10:30 a.m., when crews standing on the other end of the cul-de-sac were slated to begin the tree removal.

Crews removed the tree while its neighbors pleaded with the city to postpone its removal until more research could be done on whether the tree impacted the home’s sewer line.

“There’s not enough information for people to make an educated decision,” resident Laura DuBow said.

“We’re not getting a forum to have our opinion expressed properly,” resident Connie Randall said. “We bought a home here because of the trees.”

Residents say earlier this month, when one woman saw another neighbor having the ficus tree planted in 1962 in front of their home removed, ostensibly due to sewer issues, she walked up to the city-hired contractors and asked them to do the same in front of her home. That tree was the one eventually cut down today.

Many neighbors said they have paid to have their sewers slip-lined — a process in which a smaller, new pipe is inserted into the old, deteriorating one — in order to save their trees. They claim the city’s Sewer Lateral Program, intended to facilitate the removal of trees that destroy or impact sewage lines, has been perceived by some residents as a “free tree removal service,” and that residents on a nearby street were creating a petition to have their decades-old trees removed.

City Councilman Devin Dwyer, who also serves on the council’s Beautification, Landscape & Tree Sub-Committee, came out to the street this morning to speak to residents about the policy, telling them that it costs the city a lot of money to have a tree removed and that such a measure isn’t their default choice. He granted that the residents didn’t have a long time to get a second opinion sent to the city, and sympathized with those who appreciate the ficuses.

“This tree’s the same age I am,” he said.

After neighbors pleaded with him to have the tree removal halted, Dwyer told them he didn’t possess that kind of power. But he did tell residents the city would give them five business days to provide the city with a second arborist’s report about the trees’ impact and perhaps investigate the situation.

“Why did it take eight trees to get the city’s attention?” asked neighbor Leanne Leonard.

By then, the tree’s branches had already been removed and a bulldozer rumbled in.

The neighbors winced as the tree’s trunk made its last, groaning descent.

“You suck,” a resident cried.

Residents say the trees increase their property value by as much as $30,000, produce oxygen and keep temperatures as much as 20 degrees cooler.

“We try to save the trees whenever possible,” city representative Laurie Payne said. “It’s going to be replaced with a big tree. Of course we understand the tree, and the attachment that the residents have to it.”

Payne said due diligence was performed before the decision to remove the tree was made, and that ficus trees have become notorious in the city for their rampant root growth, which tears up sidewalks and wreaks havoc on sewer lines.

“In this case,” she said, “the tree needs to come down.”

Reporter CANDICE BAKER may be reached at (714) 966-4631 or at candice.baker@latimes.com .