1-3-24 PB Agenda Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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The intent of zoning restrictions on wood processing operations is to ensure that tree workers haul away woody waste to distant, zoning-compliant locations for the noisy work of sawing, chipping, and grinding, but what actually happens is the opposite. With zoning-compliant locations for processing trees so far away, tree services find it more expedient to haul large tree processing machinery into the residential neighborhoods processing the wood and debris onsite. Today’s standard practice is for tree crews to bring in high-capacity chippers (typically a 10,000 pound machine capable of chipping entire trees and logs over a foot and a half in diameter) and parking them on residential streets or in the homeowner’s driveway. Whole trees are processed within steps of the living rooms and home offices of unprepared neighbors. While electric versions of vehicles, leaf blowers, lawn mowers, trimmers and chainsaws are making all other forms of yard work quieter, there will never be a quiet way to turn trees into wood chips. Wood chippers have in fact become significantly louder in the last decade as emissions standards favor higher-pitched gas-powered chippers over their diesel counterparts. In short, rigid zoning ordinances bring the noise and disruption of tree processing into the communities the same ordinances seek to protect, and the standard practices of residential tree work are thereby increasingly at odds with the reasonable expectations of the neighborhoods serviced. 2. Natural Resource Waste Processing trees within residential neighborhoods is not just loud, it is also highly wasteful of natural resources. With log yards and sawmills so far away from the communities in which the tree work is done, it is rarely feasible for tree services to haul the logs to these destinations. The logs are instead run through high capacity wood chippers or cut into short lengths worthless to a mill and are, as a result, discarded. Without a local site where logs and woody material can be collected and staged for their highest use (as lumber, veneer, biofuel, and pulpwood, e.g.) nearly everything ends up as waste material or, at best, as firewood or coarse wood-chip mulch. The negative environmental impact of such practices deserves attention. An average chip truck holds 10,000 pounds of wood chips. One tree crew will fill that truck daily. Our company currently sends out four crews every weekday, and we will likely need to double or triple that number to keep up with the local demand for tree maintenance needs. Whether spread out in the landscape or left in a pile, wood-chip mulch decomposes rapidly, with most of their stored carbon released back into the atmosphere. Since wood chips are by weight approximately 40% water, and what remains is 50% by weight carbon, 2 a truckload of wood chips contains 3,000 2 https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/Forest-Carbon-FAQs.pdf 2 19