By Staff
August 27th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
Still a lot of blow back from the people who live along the Centennial Trail – that part of the city where numerous trees were cut down by a private contractor under contract to Burlington Hydro.
Residents saw a serious conflict between the city’s desire for a healthy tree canopy and bylaws that have fines at the $1000 level if a tree is cut down without permission.
This doesn’t look like the result of tree trimming. Hydro has yet to comment on why so many trees were cut.
Hydro was thought to just trim tree branches to protect hydro wires – the trimming this time around involved chain saws chewing away at the bottom of the trunks of many of the trees.
Mike took the picture – Fred posed
Fred Crockett and his neighbour Mike Occomore, took it upon themselves clean up the waste limbs that were left in an unsightly debris pile at the corner of the Bike Path and Seneca for a month where it was also a fire hazard.
Related news stories:
Lynn, Sally, and Graham.
You have all made good points. The Bike Path is a magnificent community resource, but also provides an avenue for electricity and pipeline infrastructure.
However, other than paving the path 25-ish years ago, cutting the grass, and plowing the snow, our municipal authorities (including Burlington Hydro) haven’t really done much to support the resource or the infrastructure, until awarding a low bid contract to Davey Tree to tidy up years of neglect.
Davey has correctly trimmed the branches of mature trees affecting the power lines and removed elderly rogue bushes and shrubs, but have gone overboard in cutting down mature trees, and have left debris everywhere.
Local residents prudently spend a lot of money on arborist services for their own properties. Davey hasn’t done itself any future financial benefit by winning this low bid contract.
I have walked this portion of the path almost every day for 19 years. Never have they ever cut down swathes and swathes of trees in this manner. The big trees and the hydro lines have always been there. Considering the tree by-law and the constant bragging by council and the city about our fabulous tree-canopy, this is particularly galling. There are houses I’ve never seen the backs of before – because they used to be covered and shaded by mature trees all along the back – all gone now.
There is a dishonesty displayed here as well in my opinion, by what Hydro/the City told and are still telling people whose homes back onto this path; namely, that they are doing some pruning and routine maintenance, trimming, etc. Nobody ever imagined this. We had weeks and weeks of the path being closed over the summer. They left an area and moved on, then came back and started the same areas again, taking more down. And yes, I include the city/council here – I believe they could have and should have spoken out against this and certainly the two councillors I wrote to should have given me the courtesy of a response.
We cannot eliminate all risk. Are they going to cut down every tree on every residential street where Hydro wires line the streets? Good grief, I probably shouldn’t think I’m being facetious in saying that – they just might. The value of trees is too great, and this overkill too impossible to ever replace with saplings, that this should not have happened. It’s shortsighted and typical of both politicians and bureaucracies today.
That residents are now having to remove the stumps themselves is just beyond the pale.
Truly feeing just sick about this and not even wanting to ride that trail again.
They have needlessly killed many healthy trees and destroyed the habitat for our wildlife …. There were families living in those trees who are now either homeless or dead
I walk this path regularly and I think this is a bit of an exaggeration.Most trees were trimmed away from a major hydro line and a few cut down since trimming would not provide the needed clearance and safety.