Trees Suffer Unkind Cuts Browne’s Addition Neighbors Furious

In a neighborhood where the streets are named after trees Elm, Oak, Chestnut, Spruce some residents claim the shady blocks of Browne’s Addition are being carved up by Washington Water Power Co.

They’re angry that a contract crew is sawing large sections out of the trees, leaving jagged gaps where leaves once rustled.

“It’s a pretty miserable excuse for a trim,” said Ron Wells of Wells & Company, which owns apartment buildings in the area. “The trees in Browne’s Addition have been visually wrecked. Some have been destroyed.”

WWP says it’s just pruning trees away from power lines to prevent outages - to keep people safe.

“We trim according to proper pruning. We consider the location, the species, the voltage,” said WWP forester Sharon Vore. ” … I love trees. This is what we do.”

Neighbors say a trim is fine. They just don’t want a flattop.

During a walk around the neighborhood, arborist Ron McIntire said that’s just what happened.

Walking the same streets later, Vore said the pruning was OK. Lateral branches were left at each cut, she said.

“The only time we top a tree is if it’s an evergreen.”

“Look at the trees,” argued McIntire, general manager of Tall Tree of Eastern Washington. He said the lateral branches left were too small. “You don’t have to be an arborist. It’s been topped.”

The city Parks Department has found topping to be the biggest single problem affecting Spokane’s trees, said manager Mike Stone. According to horticulturist and extension agent Tonie Fitzgerald, topping trees opens them to decay. In many cases, the wounds don’t heal and the tree rots.

Topped or not, Browne’s Addition residents say what WWP left behind is ugly. Many of the trees sport blunt, white ends. Some writhe weirdly around power lines.

“There are a lot of trees cut into hideous shapes,” Wells said.

He said he got into a “yelling match” with WWP workers who wanted to prune a tree in front of his Avenida Apartments on Pacific. “I said the trees were there longer than the power lines.”

Wells wanted the job done with more finesse, so he called Tall Tree of Eastern Washington. “I wasn’t really happy about spending $2,000 to have the trees trimmed, but it’s better than butchery.”

Wells’ workers pruned a tree in back of his Avenida Apartments, but McIntire said employees of Asplundh Tree Experts - the company hired by WWP - stopped them.

McIntire said someone then called the state Department of Labor and Industries on his crew. The caller reported that his workers were not certified to work around the lines.

But McIntire’s employees do line tree-trimming for Inland Power and Light. And Wells still intends to keep WWP away from the Avenida.

The work in Browne’s started about six weeks ago, Vore said, and there’s still more to do. She isn’t sure how long it will take, but said she hasn’t heard any complaints yet. Typically, WWP spends $2 million each year to clear away branches in Spokane County.

But many can’t remember seeing pruning as severe as the work in Browne’s.

“It was dramatic,” said Steve Newfeld, the city liaison for Browne’s Addition’s neighborhood steering committee. “My wife and I joked that they should build the power lines around the trees.”

“They just absolutely mutilated the trees,” fumed Joe Blumel, who owns the Riverside West apartments at 1907 W. Riverside. “I saw red. I went ballistic.”

Blumel sympathizes with the need to keep trees away from lines. What he wants, though, is for trees that grow too tall to be uprooted and replaced with smaller species. He thinks the city and WWP should pay for it.

“It would be win-win,” Blumel said. “But the real great thing would be underground power.”

WWP spokesman Pat Lynch said that would cost about $1.5 billion to install throughout Spokane. And underground power is less reliable, he said.

In addition to the trees that were ruggedly pruned, some were chopped down. WWP gets property owners’ permission to do that, Vore said.

“They better not do that in Peaceful Valley,” said Elizabeth Bendinelli, who works at a neighborhood cafe. “I’ll tie myself to the trees.”

“They Y’d the top of ours,” said Browne’s resident Kim Veltkamp, referring to a tree with the center pruned out to let power lines pass through.

Some, like Louise Marchand, who lives at Pacific and Elm, want dead branches cleared away, but don’t like to see trees chopped down. “It looks pretty bare.”

Architect Edwin Klapp has lived or owned property in Browne’s Addition for 40 years, and thinks the new pruning doesn’t look bare - “It looks terrible.”

On Wednesday, he awoke to find a crew sawing down a stretch of maples and other trees behind his apartment.

Klapp said he persuaded the workers to leave some lilac and berry bushes alone. But he’s still upset.

“This is one of the worst things,” said Klapp, motioning toward an oak tree on the corner of Pacific and Hemlock. It was cut into a lopsided “L.” Half of its leafy dome was gone, the top of its trunk was fleshy and exposed.

The tree - easily old enough to have been planted in the ‘40s - fronts land that once belonged to Aubrey White.

“They’re history now,” Klapp said.

White was the father of Spokane’s park system. The gardens of his home at First and Hemlock once flowed all the way to Pacific, where the oak now stands.

Vore later said workers had no choice, the oak was too close to the lines.

Spokane’s historic preservation officer, Teresa Brum, said trees aren’t considered historic, even if they’re in historic places.

Still, under a proposed city ordinance, the topping of trees would be banned.

There’s even a city-sponsored “Don’t Top Trees” ad campaign now preached from the hulls of STA buses.

But “WWP can override all of that if (the trees) are interfering with a power line,” said horticulturist Fitzgerald.

Topping trees also causes small, delicate shoots to spring up where cuts were made. They break off easily in windstorms. They also grow faster than normal limbs - meaning it will be time to cut them away from power lines all the sooner.

“In the tree industry,” McIntire smiled, “we call this job security.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos