Twenty “significant” trees were clear cut at the Waterside development in southwest Fort Worth. Environmental advocates say there could be “major ecological consequences” for the Trinity River.
Courtesy of Matthew Clemons
For two days, Matthew Clemons couldn’t bear to drive by the construction site near 4000 Bryant Irvin Road. As a Fort Worth native and certified arborist working in North Texas, seeing social media photos of downed trees at the Waterside development sent him into a “fit of rage.”
Once he visited the property in southwest Fort Worth, Clemons was horrified by what he found. In early March, 20 trees classified as “significant” by the city’s urban forestry department were cleared from an area near the Trinity River. The move could have major consequences for wildlife, flood control and the overall health of the river, Clemons said.
“I’m just beside myself,” Clemons said. “It’s extremely abusive, and an environmental disaster, really, in that little section of the river. It’s unbelievable, the amount of habitat they just ripped away.”
Clemons’ concerns have been echoed by several Fort Worth environmental advocates, who see the removal of older pecan and oak trees as a casualty of rapid development in the city.
They want Fort Worth officials to do more to preserve the “little nature left” through a stronger tree ordinance and regulations for developers, said Don Young, a prominent conservationist known for leading Friends of Tandy Hills Natural Area.
“I can understand that you’re going to make a shopping center, you’ve got to remove trees,” Young said. “But other cities recognize that these trees are 100 years old or older, and they need to be saved and protected. This is Fort Worth, and the developers rule.”
About 194,516 square feet of tree canopy, or 47.9% of the property’s canopy, was proposed for removal in Hines Waterside LLC’s application for an urban forestry permit, according to Rochelle Joseph, Fort Worth’s assistant director of development services.
Hines Waterside LLC, which owns the deed to the property, and Trademark Property met all city requirements and received the applicable permits before moving forward with construction, Joseph said. Permits for the development are not yet publicly available online, making it unclear what is planned for the Bryant Irvin site.
Representatives for Hines Waterside did not respond to an email requesting comment. A representative for Trademark Property, which has been developing the area since 2014, said the company sold the tract of land in March 2020 and the property was “in compliance with all applicable forestry guidelines” at that time.
“The City will monitor construction to ensure continued compliance with approved plans and permit requirements,” Joseph said in a statement.
Environmental consequences at Waterside
In 2016, Visit Fort Worth celebrated Waterside for its “commitment to sustainability, recycling and providing a park-like atmosphere” amid restaurants, shops and housing.
Many of the property’s 100-year oaks were saved during construction, according to the city’s tourism bureau, and the Whole Foods Market that opened in 2016 was built out of reused brick and wood from former Lockheed Martin buildings. The area also features a 6,600-gallon cistern that collects rainwater from the Whole Foods roof.
Young was familiar with the environmentally friendly reputation of Waterside, including the reuse of building materials at Whole Foods, where he often shops. The area holds sentimental value for long-time residents who remember it as the recreational area for employees of General Dynamics, the predecessor of Lockheed Martin, Young said.
“I thought it was fairly well done, and they preserved a whole lot of the stuff that was there originally,” Young said. “The other day, we drove around back to where the river runs behind this beautiful area, and I could not believe my eyes when I saw some of the biggest trees I’ve ever seen laying on the ground. I thought … what the hell have they done?’”
He snapped some photos and shared them on Facebook, a post that eventually reached Clemons and a number of others in the North Texas environmental community.
Clemons, who was called in to evaluate the feasibility of protecting trees at Waterside in 2015, researched the area and found that the trees served several environmental roles when it came to absorbing water runoff.
The patch of forest was virtually untouched from development and served as a “refuge” for blue herons and other wildlife near the Trinity River, Clemons said.
“You can imagine what kind of wildlife was just displaced,” Clemons said. “The other component is that all of the stormwater from Fort Worth Country Day School and Bryant Irvin Road is expected to filter through this biological filter. Now, the consequences of all that being removed means that this section of river is going to go dead.”
With mature 40-inch trees and their foliage gone, Clemons said the chances are high that large amounts of dirt and mud will filter into the Trinity, leading it to be “completely silted in.” This could negatively affect fish populations and cause flood control issues without trees to absorb the stormwater, Clemons said.
“This is private property here, but the trees and all of this is public interest,” Clemons said. “These large trees have an enormous impact on public health right here. Can you imagine the cubic yards of sediment that is filtered by this every year? These were 60-foot tall trees.”
Joseph, the city’s assistant development services director, said that trees do help absorb stormwater and provide benefits during smaller rainfall events. During intense storms, though, the amount of water absorbed by trees is “not enough to have significant flood reduction benefits,” Joseph said.
Waterside developers provided drainage and flood studies as well as erosion and sediment control plans that comply with city stormwater standards, according to Joseph. A review of the drainage and flood studies showed the project would not result in an increase in water surface evaluations, Joseph said.
Waterside developers also obtained a floodplain development permit and followed best practices to minimize erosion and sediment impacts downstream, according to Joseph. The site was awarded an “early grading permit” that allows for tree clearing after developers submitted a stormwater pollution prevention plan.
Pushing for tree preservation
The episode has prompted calls for Fort Worth to reevaluate its tree preservation ordinance, which is not as strong as recently updated ordinances in Arlington, Flower Mound and Dallas, said Don Wheeler, a Fort Worth-based landscape architect who specializes in obtaining permits for developers. Young called for the city to adopt an ordinance akin to Austin, which is well-known for its preservation efforts.
“It’s just a matter of fact: The way the ordinance is set up, you’re only required to retain 25% of the existing canopy, not existing trees, but the existing canopy,” Wheeler said. “So if you had a two-acre site that was completely covered in canopy, you can remove 75% of the trees without any penalty.”
Fines for removing significant trees — classified as any tree with a diameter greater than 27 inches or 18 inches for post oaks or blackjack oaks — are assessed when a developer clears them without authorization, according to Fort Worth’s ordinance.
The fines for removing significant trees without permission are either $600 per diameter inch or $15 per canopy square foot, with smaller fines assessed for non-significant trees.
The city’s urban forestry ordinance requires developers to create preservation or mitigation plans when they remove significant trees, Joseph said.
Mitigation could look like additional preservation above the 25% required by Fort Worth’s ordinance, additional planting of replacements or paying into a “Tree Fund,” Joseph said. The fund provides money for planting trees on public property or acquiring land for preservation.
“The particular plan for this lot approved tree preservation for more than 50% of the existing tree canopy, including 10 ‘significant trees,’” Joseph said.
Several cities in Texas require a more thorough tree survey that requires developers to determine the value of trees and the penalties involved with removing them at the outset, Wheeler said.
This encourages developers to design their properties with tree preservation in mind rather than coming up with preliminary designs that are more difficult to adjust as development moves forward, he said.
Tree ordinances have not historically been a focus in North Texas, especially in Fort Worth where most development has taken place on native prairie land, Wheeler said.
“When all these developments were going in, especially on the north side of Fort Worth along the I-35 corridor, there weren’t that many trees that were being removed,” Wheeler said. “And people don’t really notice it. But when you get into an area like on Bryant Irvin Road or Azle, where there are more trees, it’s more noticeable.”
Young is encouraged by the growing focus on preserving natural spaces in the city, such as Fort Worth’s acquisition of Broadcast Hill as part of its Open Space Conservation program.
However, Young has remained critical of the city’s permitting process in the years since he served on Fort Worth’s first urban forestry board in the late 2000s, which heard requests from developers on removing trees.
“We had only done about two or three cases when apparently the developers let the city know that they did not want this citizens board,” Young said. “They disbanded the board not long after it started, so the developers now don’t have to deal with people like me. They just have to deal with some city staff who rubber stamp their permits.”
Clemons hopes Fort Worth officials will consider posting notices on properties when an urban forestry permit is being processed or removal is about to begin. The city’s tree ordinance is “pretty good,” he said, but citizens should be able to respond to large removals like what took place at Waterside.
“If there’s a way to do this in the city of Fort Worth, under this permit, that’s also a problem,” Clemons said. “If somebody can just pay several hundreds or thousands to remove an ecological legacy like that, we need to think about that … There’s no way to remedy this.”
Haley Samsel is a Report for America corps member reporting on environmental issues caused by economic growth for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Her position is partly supported by a grant from the Anita Berry Martin Memorial Fund at North Texas Community Foundation. Samsel, a Plano native, graduated from American University in Washington, D.C., where she served as the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The Eagle, and interned for news organizations like The Texas Tribune and NPR.