On June 16, Atlanta City Council Members passed a new Tree Protection Ordinance (TPO) which, despite its title, still fails to protect any trees on developing properties in our City.
Over 70 percent of Atlanta’s trees stand on private properties in residential areas. In every Atlanta neighborhood, older homes are torn down, larger properties are sold and subdivided, and previously “unbuildable” forested lots are being cleared — and so Atlanta is losing its trees.
Atlanta is suffering excessive tree loss because builders cut more trees than they need to. Today, it’s quicker and more convenient to clear-cut trees and mass grade lots, even for just one house. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Builders have the know-how to build great homes and still save more trees, but that won’t happen if our tree ordinance allows developers to cut whatever they want and pay very little to do it.
Recent studies show that Atlanta is losing its trees at an unsustainable and accelerating rate, with nearly half an acre of trees lost every day. Despite the City’s goal of 50 percent canopy, we’ve now dropped below that with little hope of catching up. Planting new trees is great, but studies show there is little room left to plant overstory trees, and the street trees we plant today will never replace our mature oaks and hardwoods deeply rooted in old, rich soils. In addition to losing large quantities of our canopy, we are also losing the quality and resilience of our canopy.
Everyone knows Atlanta is losing too many trees, and after eight years of data collection, two sets of consultants, three sets of task force meetings, and dozens of community input sessions, this past January, the City Planning Department finally presented a Tree Protection Ordinance that included modest new preservation standards for single-family residential developments. This TPO focused on preserving higher-value “priority trees” while protecting developers’ rights to build. It was a long process, but it finally achieved a middle ground where builders could still cut the trees they needed to cut, while saving trees they didn’t need to cut.
In late April, it looked like the new tree ordinance would soon be voted forward with the new single-family preservation standard. On May 1, responding to an overwhelming community call for tree protection on all properties, the Planning Department presented tree protections for commercial and multifamily properties as well, including one that had not been carefully vetted.
In early May, developers did an end run around all the years of work and the collaborative process. They went directly to Mayor Dickens, and behind closed doors, without other stakeholders, asked him to remove every word that required tree preservation from the new tree ordinance. And that’s what he did.
As part of their campaign to sway the Mayor and others, development lobbyists misinformed and misled City officials as well as the public with exaggerated claims that tree preservation would cause builders to leave Atlanta, seriously reduce housing stock in Atlanta, and make it impossible to build affordable housing. In one example, they claimed 40 percent of affordable housing units would have been lost when, in fact, the entire project would have been exempt, and all units built.
By May 13, the TPO had been stripped of all its tree preservation standards, even those that had been thoroughly vetted by Planning Department staff and approved by the Law Department. So, developers got everything they wanted — which is to be able to continue to clear-cut trees at a cheap price — to ensure that clear-cutting is still a profitable way to develop.
Since the June 16 vote to approve the “empty” tree ordinance, the Mayor’s Office and some council members have tried to put a positive face on the Tree Protection Ordinance that protects no trees, claiming these improvements:
Claim: The new Tree Ordinance strengthens tree protections from what they are now.
No it doesn’t. It’s just the same as it is now. No trees are required to be protected in any developments, not in single-family residential, not in multifamily or affordable projects, not in commercial developments — not anywhere. “Tree density” sounds good, but it doesn’t require saving trees, because the tree density requirement can be met 100 percent with planted trees.
All the June 16 TPO does is slightly raise the tree recompense fee, but for over 20 years, we’ve seen that simply paying a fee to cut trees down does not keep trees standing. The cost to cut down trees remains cheap enough that there is still no incentive to save trees, especially not our best hardwoods and mature canopy trees.
Claim: Since developers and tree advocates could not reach a compromise, the City Council made the compromise.
No they didn’t. There was no compromise; developers got everything they wanted, as one of the Greater Atlanta Homebuilder Association representatives admitted in public comments at the June 16 Council vote. The website pages for the Greater Atlanta Homebuilders Association (GAHA) and the Council for Quality Growth (CQG) also admit that developers received everything they asked the City for. An actual compromise would protect some trees, especially high-value trees, while still protecting developers’ rights to build. This true compromise was included in the Planning Department’s January 2025 Tree ordinance draft but was cut out after May 13.
Claim: The new tree ordinance greatly increases the recompense fee for cutting trees from $30 per diameter inch to $140
Even at the $140 per inch value, the fee is still barely over 50 percent of the $260 fair market value to plant new trees. So, the City will continue to receive far less payment than it should for trees lost, and taxpayers will continue to subsidize developers who clear-cut.
Now for the fine print: For infill lots and any type of subdivision, there are recompense fee “caps” so that no matter how many trees are cut per acre, the fee won’t ever be more than a fixed amount per acre. The way the fee cap works, the more trees cut, the cheaper it costs per tree, and retaining any trees at all is still optional.
In order to qualify for the fee cap, a small percentage of tree preservation is required. However, because priority trees were eliminated, our best trees, such as healthy 100-year-old oaks and hardwoods, won’t be valued any more than 10-year-old pines and sweetgums. Therefore, developers will be able to save small 6-8 inch trees along property margins, qualify for the fee cap, and continue to cut down the large oaks and canopy hardwoods — often paying about the same as today’s low rate. The fee cap for an R-4 lot is about $3,000. For perspective, that’s about one-half of one percent of a house valued at $600,000. For smaller lots, it’s even less.
Additionally, trees in stream buffers will count as “saved” even though these trees can’t be cut anyway, so on many projects, clear-cutting per usual without effectively saving even one tree will allow developers to pay easily $10-$15 per inch, less than half of the $30 per inch they pay today.
Claim: The tree canopy will increase through an incentive that gives developers a 25 percent discount to plant rather than pay recompense.
This small improvement does incentivize replanting over recompense, and in fact, the equation for this incentive was contributed by our Citizens Group. Still, replanting new trees does not grow additional canopy because it’s not even able to truly replace what’s been lost. New trees planted in graded, poor soils cannot replace mature trees in rich, older soils.
Claim: Increase in fines for illegal tree removal, professional arborists required to register with the City.
This minor improvement may help reduce illegal tree cutting on homeowner properties. However, it will not save any trees in developments because even if illegal cutting is reduced, the trees can still be cut legally because there is no requirement to save any of them.
Claim: Doubles the annual funding amount for the low-income senior assistance program to $400,000.
This is indeed an improvement, but it should be noted that the senior assistance program for hazardous trees originated with the Citizens Group, not from developers, not from the Planning Dept., not from the Mayor’s office, not from City Council. Council Member Michael Bond doubled the amount available for this fund through an amendment to the June 16 ordinance.
Claim: The City Attorney said that the Tree Preservation Standards were unconstitutional.
The City Attorney determined that the single-family residential tree preservation standard was constitutional in January of 2025. The letter to the City Council claiming that the January 2025 TPO was unconstitutional came from a Greater Atlanta Homebuilders Association’s lawyer. This lawyer failed to provide any facts, reasons or case law in support of his opinion, and ignored a 2003 Georgia Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of tree protection ordinances.
It appears that tree protection in Atlanta is not a legal problem, but a development lobbyist problem.
And the question remains: why did a handful of developers, the same people who participated in all the stakeholder meetings, get to bypass the entire process when the process didn’t give them everything they wanted?
And why did the Mayor and City Council let this happen? After all, it was the Mayor’s office that ordered the stakeholder meetings to begin with. From process to result, what happened to the Tree Protection Ordinance is just plain wrong.
A possible silver lining
Despite passing the June 16 TPO without any tree protections, many Council Members expressed misgivings about the Planning Department’s last-minute reversal, being presented with new documents in meetings with no notice, and being asked to vote without a reasonable time to read the legislation. Council Members have also expressed doubt that the new TPO properly represents the work of the task force process or achieves what’s needed to protect Atlanta’s tree canopy. They’ve suggested more work needs to be done to ensure that a new TPO will protect enough of Atlanta’s trees to sustain the quality of life, air and water quality, and economic value to ensure a healthy future for Atlanta.
Development lobbyists tried to convince us that we must choose between trees and development, so they can continue to profit from clear-cutting. But we all know this is a false choice. We used to build homes without clearing the entire lot; that’s one reason why Atlanta has a great canopy today — builders used to preserve shade trees even when they built new homes. It’s false to assume developers must clear-cut and mass grade our landscapes to make a profit. They don’t, it’s just more convenient and easier profit.
Of course, there are some homebuilders who love trees and build great homes while retaining trees. They use common sense building principles like planning for each unique lot, adjusting house footprints, re-locating driveways, using pier construction, and using tree root protection in staging areas. This isn’t rocket science, we can build wonderful homes — from affordable to luxury and everything in between — and still save many of our best trees. We know it can be done, and we know how to do it. A TPO that includes some tree preservation will not end our housing stock. It will make that housing stock even better.
The only reason we don’t have a good, balanced tree ordinance today is because development lobbyists side-stepped the process, using undue influence and misinformation to pressure elected officials to continue to give them free rein to clear-cut and destroy more trees than they need to. And we, the citizens of Atlanta, pay the price with higher temperatures, worsening air quality, stormwater costs and decreasing human health.
Atlanta has a tree loss crisis. Atlanta has an ozone and particulate air pollution public health crisis, which is damaging the health of Atlanta’s children, elderly, and all of Atlanta’s citizens. The American Lung Association dropped Atlanta’s air quality grade from a “C” to an “F” in June of this year. The Mayor and City Council have a public duty to pass legislation to address both crises. The June 16 TPO gives developers the ability to continue clear-cutting, which exacerbates both crises.
Let’s make lemonade from the June 16 tree ordinance lemon. Mayor Dickens and the City Council need to immediately amend the TPO to restore the single-family residential Tree Preservation Standard that was approved by the Law Department and thoroughly tested and approved by the Planning Department. The City in a Forest needs a TPO that preserves Atlanta’s best trees. Atlantans don’t want to see their Mayor and City Council capitulating to developers. We must end widespread clear-cutting and enact a Tree Protection Ordinance that will preserve and enhance the City’s trees and tree canopy as a part of our City’s healthy growth.
You have fought the good fight here, and if the world were a better place, you would have won. We are proud of you. Dad
This is a WILD framing. We need both trees and homes in abundance. Tree activists need to focus on the REAL problem – massive parking lots and highway-style streets. We need to be planting trees in the public space, re-foresting unused asphalt.
I think if we can’t stop developers from clear cutting a site, we need to require that they plant native trees in their developments. No grape myrtles or bradford pear trees.