Controversy blooms over trees along road

Controversy blooms over trees along road

■ Developers want to save trees that the road commission says should be cut down.

By WILLIAM B. TREML

NEWS STAFF REPORTER

While trees may have been seen by poets like Joyce Kilmer as nature’s works of beauty, they are viewed as potential liabilities by the Washtenaw County Road Commission.

A dispute along those lines has erupted between the commission and builder Don Chisholm, whose company, Ann Arbor Associates, is erecting the first phase of Stonebridge, a major development on Lohr Road in Pittsfield Township. Eventually the development will encompass 700 homes spread over more than 600 acres of land.

The disagreement is over a group of about a dozen mature trees along a 1 1/2-mile stretch of gravel road that form a canopy near the entrance to the development.

“These trees are exceptional, very old and picturesque,” Chisholm says. “They’re worth preserving.”

The Washtenaw County Road Commission says the trees are a liability. Should a motorist hit one, the commission could find itself in court, a defendant in a lawsuit.

Robert Polens, managing director of the Road Commission, said he appreciates the desire to save mature trees. The issue is more complicated than that, he said.

As long as the road is unpaved, the speed limit on the road is lower and the trees are less hazardous, he says. Once Lohr Road is paved, the State Police will likely be raising the speed limit to 45 mph or higher, and trees along any paved road present a hazard to motorists.

Under an agreement with the Road Commission, Chisholm’s company will pave Lohr Road as his housing developments are completed.

Robert J. Skrobola, Pittsfield Township treasurer and one-time chairman of the Township Planning Commission, favors preserving the trees.

“It took many years for those trees to grow, to make that area beautiful,” Skrobola says.

Steve Puuri, the county’s highway engineer, says an improvement of a gravel road like Lohr must conform to national road-building standards, which require a clear edge beside the road. Puuri says cities that have curbs and gutters can have trees closer to a roadway but the requirements for a road like Lohr call for a two-foot deep ditch, shoulder width, plus a slope going down into the ditch. Trees can be kept at the back slope of the ditch, he says.

“These trees on Lohr Road are in the right-of-way,” he says. “It’s not possible to shift the road to avoid the trees.” The trees could be removed as early as next summer.

PITTSFIELD TOWNSHIP