A months-long fight is underway in Chapel Hill by homeowners who claim the town is not following its own rules for tree protection.
They say it's putting their lives and property at risk.
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“It’s scary all the time,” said Gayle Roberts, a 39-year resident of Littlejohn Road.
Roberts’ property is adjacent to the large residential development site known as Hillmont.
Her complaints, and her neighbors’, are not about the noise or the type of development coming in.
Instead, they center around concerns for their trees and their own safety. They claim the town is not enforcing its own tree protection ordinance, allowing cutting too close to trees’ roots, and they believe it is because of that that several trees in their yards have come crashing down since April.
“A giant 60-foot tree fell on my house,” said Jeffrey Brown. “It came crashing down on my house and damaged the roof and struck the window of my nursery.”
“Anytime there’s a storm now,” said homeowner Jennifer Layton, “we feel we have to get our pets together and hide in the strongest part of the house.” She, too, has incurred property damage from trees falling.
The homeowners reached out to an arborist, Craig Nishimoto, to assess their trees. He says what he saw on their properties were clear violations of the town of Chapel Hill’s tree protection ordinance.
The ordinance says certain trees should be protected, based on their species and size, and it says, “protective fencing shall be installed according to Town standards.”
Those standards subsequently explain that the fencing needs to be a certain distance from trees’ roots. That’s where Nishimoto says he sees a violation.
WRAL Investigates asked Nishimoto if he can objectively assess the situation, since he was contacted by the homeowners themselves.
“My 10 times I’ve been out here, I haven’t charged anybody,” he said. “I don’t plan to charge anybody.”
Nishimoto pointed to the orange temporary fencing installed along the property line and pointed to roots that had been chopped off.
“That solid orange fencing, that’s silt fencing,” he said. “And when they put that in, they trench in and they cut all the roots of these trees on the tension side, which is supporting these trees. And now they are falling over.”
Nishimoto and homeowners say they’ve contacted the Town for months, with no progress.
Nishimoto believes if the town had taken swift action when they first raised their concerns, some of the trees that subsequently fell could have been saved.
“This is just completely overwhelming,” Layton said. “It seems like there’s nowhere to go.”
“We all knew development was going to happen,” Roberts said. “We can’t stop that. What makes it a thousand-fold worse is that they are destroying our property.”
WRAL Investigates wrote to the town asking if it did violate its own ordinance, and if it could explain the why behind the answer.
A spokesman replied: “Staff have reviewed the matter and determined that the developer is meeting the Town’s Land Use Management Ordinance for tree protection."
He added that the ordinance requires tree protection fencing. He did not respond to Nishimoto’s point that the fencing should be kept a certain distance from the trees’ roots.
WRAL Investigates asked Roberts what a good solution would be.
“I think a good solution is already out the window,” she said. “A solution that would help is for them to take responsibility and compensate us for the trees being taken down.”
Neighbors believe the responsibility lies most with the town, rather than the developer, as they believe the Town needs to enforce its ordinance.
WRAL Investigates contacted Northwood Ravin, the developer of the site.
In a statement, a company representative said: “The Hillmont project is in compliance with the Town of Chapel Hill ordinance. The recent wave of severe storms has caused a few trees to come down in designated save areas. In each case, we notified the Town and worked to address it.”
Homeowners hope the town will accept some accountability, and hope that no other homeowners have to go through something similar.