‘My Property, My Trees’: New Tree-Cutting Law Divides N.Y. Town
When Robert Herbst returned to his hometown about 30 miles north of New York City in 1992, he wanted his children to be immersed in the lush greenery of his childhood. But over the decades, he noticed more trees coming down to make way for bigger houses.
Herbst, a lawyer, and other like-minded residents of Mamaroneck, New York, view the vanishing trees as a serious threat in the era of climate change.
“We should be protecting trees for our own survival,” said Jacob Levitt, a dermatologist who lives in Mamaroneck. “It’s suicidal not to do it.”
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But some residents say they should have the right to remove any and all trees on their properties to make way for more sunlight or a home expansion, or simply because they want them gone.
“People want to landscape the way they want to landscape,” said Eve Neuman, a real estate agent who lives in the area.
Recently, the debate has become more heated because of a new law that expands the town’s oversight of where and when trees can be cut down.
Mamaroneck’s old tree law was drafted in the 1980s and required tree removal permits only on lots 20,000 square feet and larger. The new measure, enacted in February, requires permits on smaller lots that make up about 80% of the town that is covered by the law.
Homeowners no longer need to explain their removal requests, describe the trees or let their neighbors know a permit has been issued. They have to either replace removed trees or get approval to donate $300 per tree to a planting fund instead. No permit is needed to remove dangerous or dead trees, which can become a hazard. Otherwise, small properties can remove up to three trees a year; on larger lots, up to seven.
“It’s just a regulated way of cutting down trees,” said Andrea Hirsch, a local lawyer who is representing a group of tree advocates to challenge the new law in court. She added that the new law no longer requires an environmental review before removals, and that property owners can get approval to exceed the per-year cap if trees interfere with a desired use of the property, like putting a swing set in the backyard.
Some homeowners support the law, but feel it is an overreach. “My property, my trees,” wrote John Phillipson, a longtime resident, in an online comment, adding, “We are overregulated by government as it is.”
The lawsuit is pending, and both parties are due back in court later this month.
With the Long Island Sound to its east and two major rivers that traverse the town, Mamaroneck has a flooding problem. But it’s also a popular place to live: The median price for single-family homes sold this year is around $1.5 million. The town is part of Westchester County, a suburban region in southeastern New York that is seeing ongoing, intense development.
Across Westchester, tree canopy cover — the amount of foliage and branches that shade the ground — is in decline, according to a 2022 study led by Andrew Reinmann, an assistant professor at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center and at Hunter College. He spoke at a public meeting in Mamaroneck during the tree law deliberations.
As of 2021, canopy cover in Mamaroneck had retreated to around 41% of the town’s land area, a concerning loss of about 7% since 2011, Reinmann said.
“As tree canopy cover declines, you can see tangible increases in local temperatures and an increased reliance on electricity for cooling homes and buildings,” he said. Trees provide shade, intercept rainfall and release moisture back into the air.
But some homeowners in Mamaroneck bristle at being told what to do.
Since a residential building went up in an empty field behind Phillipson’s house in the 1990s, flooding has worsened in his backyard, and his vegetable garden was cast in a shadow, he said. To allow for more sunlight, he removed two trees on his property, he said, adding that he was able to do so without seeking permits. And he would like to keep that right.
“I’d like to see the law more relaxed and give the homeowner a chance to do what they need to do,” said Phillipson, a retiree who bought his house in Mamaroneck 40 years ago.
The debate over how to balance environmental concerns and property rights is becoming more common, said Max Besbris, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in housing and climate change. “There’s a very real anxiety” over best practices, he said, especially since a house is the biggest purchase many people will ever make.
The new tree law came about because the town’s environmental advisory group had become concerned about the rising number of felled trees coinciding with rising temperatures and floods.
The town supervisor, Jaine Elkind Eney, who is also a real estate lawyer, got to work with her four board members. “It was a lot of give and take,” she said.
But when the board passed the new law unanimously, there was an outcry from the tree advocates. They argued that the new measure had made it too easy to remove trees and its annual limits were too generous, while older trees, which have a powerful effect on the environment, had lost some protections.
Once tree work is complete, homeowners must wait for one year before applying for additional permits. The new law does include a scale for the number of replacement trees that must be planted for each tree removed. A mature tree with a trunk diameter of more than 1.5 feet, for example, would need to be replaced by four young trees.
“We’ll be increasing the tree canopy, albeit over time,” Elkind Eney said.
Frank Buddingh’, a local arborist, said that replacing an old tree with four new ones isn’t an equal exchange. Producing as much oxygen as a 100-year-old tree that has been cut down — with its carbon storage capacity and extensive crown and root system — would require hundreds of young trees, he said.
In Westchester County, about half of all municipalities have tree laws. New York and most other states put the onus on municipalities to come up with tree regulations for private property and public spaces, while most public forests are regulated by state and federal agencies.
Buddingh’ would like trees to be viewed as valuable resources to be protected and regulated, like air, he said. “They should be on an asset list and not on an expenditure list,” he said.
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