Keeping Chapel Hill Green

Priorities on Green Space

I.    Conserve tree canopy in Chapel hill

II.  Identify and preserve sensitive biodiverse areas

III. Protect streams and the plants and animals that live along them

IV. Maintain hiking and biking trails and create new ones

V.  Provide green recreational spaces for all communities

 

CHALT Action Items:

1.  Conserve tree canopy in Chapel Hill

  • Chapel Hill’s mature canopy trees are among its greatest assets, offering not only natural beauty and inherent ecological value, but also economic value.  Trees clean our air and water, reduce floods, improve building energy use,  and help our planet slow rising temperatures, among other benefits.
  • Cities are failing to consider health above economics in planning development.  There is a clear link between trees, heat and health cited in the article.  Any candidate for local office talking about affordable housing as their top priority should be asked why the economic tenets behind development that are provably false should be a higher priority than health and climate relationships that are provably true. Here is an excellent article on the topic. Trees are key to fighting urban heat.  Read Rudy Juliano’s editorial about trees here.
  • Local residents have been shocked at the recent clear-cutting of sites across our community, including the Chapel Hill Retirement Residence on Estes Drive, the Merin Road Community on Homestead Road, Carraway Village on Eubanks Road, and the development sites in Ephesus – Fordham, or Blue Hill. Clearly, the Town’s existing Tree Ordinance does not go far enough in protecting our canopy trees, allowing developers to replace them with immature saplings, and charging violators only meager fines which fail to deter clear-cutting of mature and rare/specimen trees. More must be done to protect Chapel Hill’s tree canopy when development occurs.
  • CHALT is advocating a rewrite of our Chapel Hill Tree Ordinance because it is not working.  We want the staff to enforce our existing ordinance to analyze why the ordinance is not working.

 

2. Identify and preserve sensitive biodiverse areas

3. Protect streams and the plants and animals that live along them

  • Our town is blessed with a network of streams that flow on to Jordan Lake, a drinking water supply for our growing triangle area. Streams and their riparian areas nurture our resident wildlife and provide passive recreation for humans. Piedmont North Carolina is one of the richest area for plant and animal diversity in our country.  Protecting our stream corridors is a moral and ecological responsibility we must do for our mental health and the public health of our downstream neighbors who drink the water in Jordan Lake.
  • A well thought out role for local government to promote a healthy ecology for our wildlife and diverse plant families.
  • More aggressive stormwater management to control flooding is neede

4. Maintain hiking and biking trails and creating new ones

5. Provide green recreational spaces for all communities