Coun. Michael Janz wants to bill developers for felled trees in new Edmonton neighbourhoods

A city councillor is calling for a new fee to charge developers for each tree cut down while constructing new neighbourhoods in the city’s outskirts.

Ward papastew Coun. Michael Janz will have a motion up for debate at an upcoming council meeting, he said. The motion calls for a fee per tree removed in new developments. It does not cover trees lost to infill, which a separate proposed bylaw may address.

Janz said there’s several benefits to putting a price on trees. Aside from absorbing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, providing a no-cost means to reduce the city’s carbon footprint, trees also help reduce the urban heat island-effect by providing shade.

Janz added the city already has dollar assessments for trees removed from established lots, but when that same value is applied to flora in new development areas, the result is millions of dollars worth of habitat. By ignoring that value, Janz said the city is effectively subsidizing developers to continue urban sprawl.

“When you put up new neighbourhoods you’re destroying wetlands and intact ecosystems. One new development can be cutting down hundreds of trees,” he said.

“Some of these trees are very old and worth thousands of dollars. These costs are not being reflected.”

This isn’t the only tree bylaw being considered by council. Mayor Andrew Knack put forward a motion to require permits to remove trees from established lots within the city limits as a response to concerns brought up over some infill developments.

A report by the energy transition and climate resilience committee to council in 2023 noted redeveloping existing properties can save between 30 to 50 per cent of emissions compared to building out new lots.

It notes a single mature tree can pull roughly 21 kilograms of CO2 from the atmosphere annually, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the 20.7 metric tonnes of CO2 generated by an average Edmonton family, meaning you need nearly 1,000 trees to offset the emissions of a single household. In other words, the report noted it’s more environmentally friendly to cut down a few trees in an infill development, which avoids a greenfield development, than to clear out a wetland or forest for a new neighbourhood.