Progress is killing all of our old trees

Gwinnett County loses 8 acres of trees every day.

On his way to work Tuesday morn, Steve Brumer saw two of them being chopped down, a pair of massive oaks alongside the 4500 block of Suwanee Dam Road. He figured they were ancient.

"They have to be at least 200 hundred years old because that's what they say about the oaks by City Hall," Brumer said. "The trunk of the thing was probably 3 feet wide."

The oaks were cut to make room for the development of townhomes, houses, and office space. Brumer's bummed. He e-mailed me and Suwanee city officials to vent.

"I am not writing this to be a pain, but I have lived in Suwanee since 1990 and have loved it," wrote the president of Wireless Rain, a local outfit that sells PDA devices. "But today's actions hurt. Every day when I exit Settles Bridge Road onto Suwanee Dam Road and look to where those magnificent trees once stood, I will be saddened."

Brumer isn't out to belittle builders. And he's not one of those people who moves to Gwinnett and then tries to keep everybody else out. He's just a resident like you and me.

And, like some of us, he can't help but wonder about the seemingly endless chain of houses, nail salons and wing joints that keep popping up, devouring trees and open land.

Property owners have the right to sell their acreage. And developers are within their rights to buy it. It's called capitalism. A government can enact tree protection and preservation ordinances, but it can't — and shouldn't — regulate development so tightly that it binds the hands of property owners.

On the other hand, there seems to be no sense of balance between necessity and superfluity. How many subdivisions and strip malls are too many? The simplistic answer — as many as the public will purchase and patronize.

And as customers, we're fiercely loyal.

While we're busy living, though, we're choking the life out of Mother Earth, making a mess.Our lives suffer, too, and that's Brumer's point. He's not a tree-hugging zealot. He just enjoys nature, and he wants enough trees around to offer shade for a picnic or to affix a yellow ribbon.

"You can't replace 200-year-old trees," the New Jersey native said. "I would rather they die when they get hit by lightning, not from some bulldozer making room for a townhouse. At some point, you have to stop and just be smart."

In a recent study, UGA researchers found that in the past decade, metro Atlanta lost 54 acres of trees a day. Gwinnett lost 8 acres a day while adding 5 acres of concrete, asphalt and rooftops. All this building inevitably means more heat, more air pollution and higher energy bills.

When the Brumers moved to Suwanee 15 years ago, they had to grocery shop at a Kroger on Pleasant Hill Road. Everything was two lanes, and sightings of deer, fox and other creatures were common. No more.

"How far out can you go to escape it?" Brumer asked. "Where can you move?"

Nowhere, it seems, in Gwinnett.