DATE: Thursday, July 24, 1997               TAG: 9707250865

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LIZ SZABO, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   55 lines

CHESAPEAKE CONSIDERS WAYS TO STAY GREEN

City officials are considering ways to protect Chesapeake's ``urban forests.''

City planners are considering updating Chesapeake's landscape ordinance, a section of the city's zoning ordinance that mandates how much green space must be left in new developments.

If approved by the Chesapeake Planning Commission and City Council next month, the new landscape ordinance would strengthen the city's laws protecting trees, said city arborist Miklos Lestyan.

Chesapeake amended its landscape ordinance once before, in 1993. The city's original ordinance was written in 1990, Lestyan said.

The landscape regulations restrict only green space in new developments. They do not affect landscape changes on already-developed private property, he said.

Some of the most important proposed changes, Lestyan said, are incentives for tree preservation.

Builders must plant or preserve a certain number of trees for every square foot of development, depending on whether construction is residential or commercial, Lestyan said. Developers must create one planter island for every nine parking spaces in a lot, for example.

But developers often choose to clear-cut an entire piece of property and then plant saplings, rather than preserve large green spaces.

For builders, preserving trees can be costly - since they often interfere with a developer's plans for a site - as well as risky, Lestyan said.

Individual trees seldom survive in the middle of parking lots, because construction destroys their root systems.

The proposed ordinance amendment aims to save some of these trees by creating a kind of environmental exchange system. By saving existing trees in some areas, builders would face fewer requirements for replacing trees elsewhere, Lestyan said.

Builders would receive ``extra credit'' for preserving a dense grove of trees - which create ``canopy cover'' for the area, and which are more likely to survive than single, isolated trees. Developers also would receive extra credit for preserving ``champion trees'' - large, old trees that have been specially designated by the state as historic or valuable.

Chesapeake officials from the inspections department have consulted with the Tidewater Builders Association on the proposal. Association officials could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

``Before we had a landscape ordinance, the rule was `clear and build,''' Lestyan said. ``Ten years ago, you could go in and put up a building with a huge boiling asphalt parking lot. So this is a big improvement.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

WHAT'S NEXT

The Chesapeake Planning Commission will review the proposed changes

at a meeting Aug. 13.

If approved, it will forward the revisions to City Council.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu