Water Restrictions but they sure needed it.
More than a dozen 20-year-old oak trees marked for removal ahead of work on the levee are being dug up with a giant spade and moved to a new home as opposed to being bulldozed. Mark Barnard, of Coastal Realty, developer of Westlake Estates at Alton Gloor Boulevard and West Lake Avenue, said he learned from the management of River Bend Resort that a number of live oak trees lining two fairways near the levee were slated for destruction. The trees had to go by order of the International Boundary & Water Commission, which is in the process of beefing up the levee from Donna to Brownsville by order of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The IBWC requires that all trees and brush within a roughly 200-foot-wide levee easement be removed before work can proceed. It just so happened that Barnard was in the market for trees.
Plans for Westlake Estates call for a tree-lined entrance on West Lake Avenue, a city-owned right-of-way leading into the subdivision. Barnard had originally planned to go the usual route by planting immature, store-bought trees until this opportunity arose. Barnard is moving 14 live oaks from Riverbend to Westlake.
“Two of these 14 are sort of back up trees,” he said. “Twelve is what I really needed to line the road.”
Digging up the oaks, whose trunks are 15 to 17 inches in diameter, and digging new holes for them requires a massive spade truck, this one owned by Gulf Coast contractors.
The work started Wednesday afternoon and was expected to last through today and possibly into Friday.
Coastal is paying the roughly $20,000 cost of transplanting the trees, Barnard said. The oaks were professionally trimmed prior to being transported to make them lighter and more manageable on the road, and to encourage faster root development after replanting, he said.
They’ll require regular maintenance and nursing during a two-year “healing program,” Barnard said.
He remembers first seeing these very same trees two decades ago at River Bend, just after they’d been planted, during a tour led by Lou Falley, one of the resort’s original developers.
In that sense, Barnard admitted the trees have a “special meaning to me on top of it all.”
He said the city had originally considered taking the trees but backed away at least in part due to the logistical difficulty of distributing them to different parts of the city.
“They were going to have more of a navigating problem, whereas my West Lake project is just around the corner (from River Bend) and there’s a minimum of overhead obstacles to be concerned with,” Barnard said.
Although the trees will line a city right-of-way, the cost of maintaining them, and installing landscaping, will be covered by the Westlake homeowners association, he said.
Barnard noted the trees stand a very good chance of survival since they were expertly prepped before transport and were in good health to begin with.
Still, he conceded taking a risk by using the more mature trees.
“If I lose the trees I’ve got to start over,” Barnard said. “The biggest thing we’re praying for right now is rain. The success rate will go way up if can get some actual rain on them.”
