SAVING TREES CAN BE REWARDING - OR FRUSTRATING

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 1, 1993                   TAG: 9304010129
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium
SAVING TREES CAN BE REWARDING - OR FRUSTRATING - OR BOTH
David Smith stood over a set of blueprints in a construction trailer on Prices Fork Road on Tuesday morning blowing off steam.
It wasn't readily apparent, but a compromise was in the air.
Standing with Smith, listening patiently, were Larry Schoff, maintenance director for Montgomery County Schools, and William Trailer, an architect for Motley and Associates, designer of the new Blacksburg elementary school.
Smith had just gotten his first look at the working plans for construction of the new school and he wasn't happy.
For weeks, Smith, an assistant dean at Virginia Tech's Forestry School, had been fighting to save a stand of trees on the 28-acre school site. The property is along Prices Fork Road just west of the Food Lion store. Smith lives next to it.
Smith wants to work with the school system to develop the trees into an outdoor laboratory for use by pupils. Such a lab would fit right in with a proposed state curriculum for environmental education, he said.
A look at the plans, however, showed Smith that adjustments he had expected to save many of the trees had not been made.
He told Schoff he was tempted to bring 3,000 Tech students out to camp on the property until the trees were saved. He told him that the very decision to cut many of the trees was ample proof that the kind of outdoor environmental classroom he had proposed was needed in Montgomery County.
The location of the school building was pushed back against the trees because the town of Blacksburg has an agreement with the county to build soccer and softball fields on the remainder of the property. Moving the school away from the trees would threaten those plans.
If the construction involved a housing or commercial development rather than a school, Blacksburg never would have allowed it, Smith said. He mentioned the example of another stand of trees a half-mile east on Prices Fork Road that Blacksburg had gone to court to prevent a developer from cutting.
Then Smith cooled down and told Schoff that he knew the position of the school building wasn't Schoff's responsibility, but the School Board's. Smith said he had invited School Board members to come and look at the trees, but none had taken him up on the offer.
"I'm just aggravated that nobody saw any value in this," Smith said.
But Trailer told him the reason he and Schoff had asked him there was to save as many trees as possible.
Then the three men, along with construction superintendent Jamie Tuck of Kenbridge Construction Co., trudged across the stubble of a corn field to the get a closer look at the trees.
Smith says the little woodlot contains at least 25 species of trees as well as a variety of other plants and wildlife. It provides a unique educational opportunity that school systems in other Virginia counties would love to have, he said.
Winding their way through briars and saplings and over fallen tree trunks, the group compared surveyors' stakes to the building plans. And they found that some trees that appeared doomed could be saved.
Trailer agreed that the tree line could be brought 25 feet closer to the school than the plans showed. The contractor will put up a fence between the trees and the remainder of the school site to protect them during construction.
"We're making the best of a poor situation," said Smith, who would have liked to see the entire 2-acre stand of trees left untouched.
"At least we have more spared than before," Smith said. "We made ground."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB