“We are not green. We are going brown and browner, and concrete,” Kurt G. Langjahr, New Hyde Park resident and the village director of environmental control, said at last Thursday’s Board of Trustees meeting.
3TC, the consortium contracted for the LIRR third track project, cut down trees along Covert Avenue to accommodate ongoing utility relocation and the upcoming construction of an under-grade crossing, one of three to be installed in the village.
Trustee Richard Palisco said the contractors removed 24 trees.
While the board is aware of the need to remove 33 trees for this phase of the project, there was no warning as to when the trees were to be cut down.
Tom Gannon, the superintendent of New Hyde Park’s Department of Public Works, and his team stopped the work from continuing.
Trustee Rainer Burger, board liaison for the LIRR third track project, said, “tree removal is part of the construction plan … what wasn’t communicated was when this was going to start and also communication to the residents in terms of what the plan is afterward.”
It is unclear whether tree removal has resumed.
3TC could not be reached for comment but is contractually obligated to replace all trees it cuts down while working in the village.
Burger explained that residents’ concerns were heard in regards to mature trees being replaced with saplings.
The trees will not be replaced “one for one” but actually “by the diameter of the tree being measured,” he said.
He gave the example that a tree cut down with a 10-inch diameter could be replaced with two trees, each with a diameter of 5 inches.
Langjahr said he suspects that 3TC will need to plant 300 trees in the village to replace the trees that were chopped down.
He asked if the village could institute an ordinance that would prohibit property-owners from removing 100-year-old trees from their properties without a permit.
New Hyde Park Mayor Lawrence Montreuil said that “if the board decided they wanted to do that, yes.”
The larger trees in the village are about a century old, Langjahr said. “To grow another tree takes 100 years for that size. It is heartbreaking.”
