When Gordon Guenter stopped power washing at his Burnaby Heights home Monday afternoon, he was horrified to hear the sound of a nearby wood chipper.
He ran down the block to find a City of Burnaby crew had cut two cherry trees down to the stump and had already cut all the branches off a third, leaving only a bare trunk.
“I was very agitated,” the self-described “tree advocate” said.
The beautiful, decades-old trees were being cut to make way for a water line replacement and sewer separation project. The city plans to cut down three more trees this week before it begins digging up a section of Boundary Road between Oxford Street and Trinity Street.
But Guenter, who about a block east of Boundary for 28 years, said he had no warning.
The trees, which have just started blossoming, are “very important,” Guenter said. “They are oxygen, aesthetics, shade, sound buffer – it goes on and on and on.”
“I hate to be labeled as a tree hugger, but I am,” he said.
Burnaby’s director of engineering, Leon Gous, said the city did not take the decision to remove the trees lightly.
As its name suggests, he said, Boundary runs along the border between Burnaby and Vancouver, making Burnaby’s right-of-way very narrow. A Metro Vancouver water main running under Boundary means Burnaby has no choice but to dig up part of the road and adjacent boulevard and sidewalk, Gous said.
Gous said the city originally identified nine trees to cut down for the project but was able to change plans to save three of them.
“We never remove trees unnecessarily,” he said.
Burnaby modifies projects to minimize the impact on trees, he said, but this time there was no avoiding it.
Gous said residents with homes along the stretch of Boundary where the trees are being cut were notified in advance, but the city doesn’t generally notify an entire neighbourhood about a project of this scale.
He also said the trees are being cut with some urgency this week because a full nesting survey would be necessary starting next week due to laws protecting migratory birds.
The actual infrastructure improvement project will start in two or three months, followed by the replanting of new cherry trees in October, Gous said.
He said the existing trees are approximately 50 years old and only have eight to 10 more years to live, but the replacement trees will be about eight years old and will grow along the boulevard for as long as 50 years into the future.
