Lady’s Island project has Beaufort County leaders considering tougher tree rules

Shock and outrage over the recent clearing of a 40-acre development site on Lady’s Island has Beaufort County leaders considering whether tree protections need to be tougher.

That mixed-use development, the Village at Oyster Bluff on Sams Point Road, includes plans for 114 homes, a gas station, 10,000 feet of office space and 29,000 feet of self-storage.

It was a focal point of conversation between Beaufort County Council members and staff last week during a meeting of the county’s Natural Resources Committee.

While developers followed rules set out in the county’s tree ordinance — conducting a tree survey and paying the required fee for some of the trees removed from the site — committee members wondered whether that ordinance is too loose.

County Councilman Paul Sommerville said the current tree regulations allow developers to essentially “game the system” by following the letter, but not the intent, of the law.

Committee chairman Councilman Brian Flewelling said, “We know we have a glaring problem, specifically with (the Village at) Oyster Bluff.”

The developer, D.R. Horton, paid about $17,000 in fees to clear-cut the area.

The builder faced a temporary stop-work order from the county earlier this year over concerns that trees were being removed in mandated buffers between Sams Point Road and Sunset Boulevard.

Sommerville said the tree ordinance “runs into problems” when it comes to making distinctions between small-scale tree removal and clear-cutting.

He said county regulations should be flexible enough to allow individual property owners to remove a tree from their land without too much cost or interference from the local government.

But those regulations should be stiffer when it comes to “big tract builders,” he said.

“The problem is the guys with the big checkbooks come in and have no respect, no interest or attachment to the land,” Sommerville said. “They have no feeling for the community and they just want to write a check and bulldoze it.”

One way to reduce clear-cutting in the future is to make it more expensive, council members said.

But deputy county administrator Josh Gruber warned of the potential unintended consequences of such a move.

“The more restrictions you add on to the development, the more the cost goes up,” he said. “And the more the cost goes up, the more difficult it becomes to (provide) things like affordable housing.”

“It’s all a huge balancing act.”

Flewelling said changes to tree ordinance should “not necessarily to punish people, but incentivize our goal — which is preservation of forests.”

That could mean enticing developers to leave trees standing rather than making it more expensive to chop them down, he said.

Incentives could include allowing developers to build more homes or businesses on a given plot of land if they leave more trees intact.

Flewelling said the county’s Planning Commission will provide “further discussion and investigation” of the tree ordinance in an attempt to ensure proper protections are in place.

The commission could “recommend wholesale changes or partial changes,” which will then go back to the Natural Resources Committee for consideration.

The Planning Commission next meets April 4.

This story was originally published March 14, 2016 at 10:07 AM with the headline "Lady’s Island project has Beaufort County leaders considering tougher tree rules."