How preserving trees became a St. Paul controversy

In February, St. Paul residents lined up during a City Council meeting to speak out about a possible new city law that worried them.

What made the scene unusual was that they didn’t want to stop the tree preservation ordinance proposed by Council President Rebecca Noecker. They wanted it to go further.

Noecker’s proposal called on the city to plant a new tree for every one cut down during a public works project. But residents of the Summit Avenue neighborhood — already on alert to the possibility of losing more of the grand boulevard’s trees — don’t see replacing trees as a substitute for preserving the ones already there.

Marilyn Bach, a resident of nearby Ashland Avenue, said young trees cannot replace the avenue’s century-old behemoths. She opposed the proposed ordinance.

“It claims to be tree preservation ordinance,” said Bach. “But ultimately it is a replacing, with saplings that the city doesn’t even water.”

After the public hearing and meeting with residents in February, Noecker agreed to put the ordinance on ice until late summer. But Bach and other residents like her are still worried new rules won’t do enough to protect tree canopy.

Maybe as much as its mansions, Summit Avenue is defined by its boulevard of imposing old trees. But the canopy has been depleted. First Dutch elm disease, and then the emerald ash borer ravaged trees over the past 50 years.

After an aggressive 15-year campaign to remove all the ash trees on St. Paul streets — the last one fell in late 2024 — some blocks are still noticeably less shady than they were before the borer.

Many neighborhood residents fear for the remaining 150-year-old oaks and lindens that reach across the road and shade the boulevard, after watching how the street changed without its elms and ash.

A group of Summit Avenue-area residents organized a few years ago into the Save Our Street coalition and mobilized to block the street reconstruction. The group feared the project could disturb the root systems of the old trees and further deplete the tree canopy.

Metropolitan Council data show the area around Summit Avenue is one of the places in the Twin Cities with the densest canopy, even after the elms and ash trees were lost. But residents remain wary of more damage.

“[T]he ordinance fails to establish adequately the importance of preserving the city’s mature trees,” Summit Avenue resident Rosalie O’Brien wrote in a letter to the council, opposing the ordinance.

“[I]t lacks any meaningful protection for our city’s canopy, and it also fails to identify a trusted entity to oversee enforcement.”

Other environmental and neighborhood groups supported the tree replacement proposal as a meaningful step forward for St. Paul’s trees.

Kateri Routh, executive director Great River Greening, said in a letter of support that the ordinance complemented her organization’s work to plant more trees across the city.

“This ordinance is a critical step forward in protecting and enhancing Saint Paul’s urban tree canopy,” Routh wrote.

The Ramsey Hill Association also wrote in guarded support. The group said it hoped the ordinance would make sure tree preservation figured into the city’s construction plans.

Noecker said during a City Council meeting that she heard residents' worries.

“I was able to have a really productive conversation with a number of community members,” she said.

Those residents wanted the ordinance to take more time. They also wanted the specific rules to be approved along with the general sense of how trees will be preserved, and not just replaced, under the ordinance.

Other Twin Cities communities show the breadth of approaches to tree replacement.

Minneapolis does not have a law covering tree replacement. But its Park and Recreation Board, which is responsible for trees on boulevards and in city parks, generally requires replacing every tree with a new one. If a tree is removed, that location is added to a “replanting list” for parks workers to replace.

In some suburban cities, including Maplewood and Edina, tree preservation and protection ordinances apply to residential lots. In those cities, laws require builders who cut down trees to replace them — not with a number of trees, but by the felled tree’s diameter. For example, if a tree with a 30-inch trunk is cut down, it must be replaced by a collection of trees with trunk diameters that together add up to 30 inches, such as six trees each with 5-inch trunks.

Noecker said the St. Paul residents she met with wanted specific rules to pass along with the ordinance, so she agreed to put the measure on hold. City staff will write proposed rules, Noecker said, and the tree ordinance will come back before the City Council in late August.