Live oak that was almost removed bears new message as Port Royal residents rally around it

Sometime between Thursday evening and Friday morning, a recently mangled Port Royal live oak was adorned with a sign bearing this message: “Far From Ordinary.”

Scrawled onto cardboard and affixed to the tree’s still-standing trunk, the words are an ironic play on the historic town’s “cool, coastal and far from ordinary” tag line. It’s a quiet message from residents who’ve expressed outrage that the estimated 200-year-old oak lost the majority of its limbs Wednesday.

“When you have a heritage tree on your property, your job is to protect it,” resident Barbara Berry said Friday.

But that’s not what happened.

Despite the Town’s strengthened tree ordinance adopted in 2018, listing five criteria that need to be considered before a permit is granted for tree removal, one of the two live oaks on 12th Street wasn’t spared in the process.

On Tuesday, a permit was granted for the removal of the smaller tree toward the front of the property to make room for development by the builder Coastal Homes and Sunrooms. As part of the project, the Town received a request to remove two “landmark” trees — one 60 inches in diameter, the other 43. Currently, three of the five lots had permits approved.

A spokesman for Coastal Homes and Sunrooms could not immediately be reached for comment.

Chopping of the 43-inch diameter live oak, considered a landmark tree under the town’s recently updated tree ordinance, began Wednesday morning. However, it was abruptly stopped after an appeal was filed with the Port Royal Zoning Board of Appeals, a little before 10:30 a.m. An arborist later surveyed the tree for safety and noted that an additional two cuts were needed.

But looking closely and after talking to many other residents, Berry is concerned about a noticeable notch that’s about 6 feet up the trunk.

“The notch makes it so that tree is not viable,” she said. “It’s gonna fall and the tree is gonna die.”

While Berry is not an arborist, a local tree company, that wished to be unnamed, said “that’s what it sounds like they were ready to do, to fell it.”

Berry worries that the tree’s notch poses a hazard if a storm blows in, bringing heavy winds. Port Royal Town Manager Van Willis said that Michael Murphy, the town-retained arborist, evaluated the oak and noted that “it is no danger to the public or an eminent danger of falling.”

“There will be no more cuts to the tree now this is under appeal,” Willis wrote in a Friday email. Willis said, as of Friday afternoon, there is no confirmed date the Port Royal Zoning Board of Appeals will hear the case.

At the Town’s council meeting, held Wednesday, Berry told councilmembers, “It was a rough day watching a 200-year-old tree come down.” She questioned why all residents weren’t notified of the permit’s approval, especially after the Town had expressed during a July 6 public workshop that it did not want the two landmark oaks removed.

Then they went quiet.

“No information, no notice, no public communication, no statement,” she said. “Nothing.”

According to speakers at the Wednesday meeting, some residents were informed that morning about the tree’s fate at a coffee meet-up where Mayor Joe DeVito was in attendance.

Patricia Fidrych followed Berry, telling councilmembers she advocated for a revision of the current tree ordinance to make it stronger. And “time is of the essence,” she added.

DeVito made a motion to ask staff to revisit the tree ordinance and bring a framework for a possible ordinance to next month’s workshop. The motion passed unanimously.

While DeVito’s move to look again at the ordinance is promising and the appeal pushes off the further severing of the 12th Street oak, residents worry about the larger tree and other oaks rooted in properties where development is planned.

During the July 6 workshop, Karen Sartori said she purchased one of the home lots for her mother, according to previous Island Packet reporting. While Sartori said she has a vested interest in seeing the development proceed, she also has a vested interest in saving the trees. Sartori offered to buy another lot — Lot E — where one of the landmark trees is planted in order to save that tree.

“There is still a viable option to save the [second] tree,” Sartori told the council on Wednesday. “We are, as a family, still interested in the purchase and acquisition of Lot E.”

After all, the landmark live oaks, strong limbs webbed with Spanish Moss, keep out the heat, absorb stormwater runoff and provide air filtration. Without them, Port Royal loses its extraordinary look and feel.

As Berry put it: “We don’t want it to be ordinary as hell.”