The city council's environment committee took a step today toward sweeping new regulations prohibiting property owners, in most cases, from cutting down trees on their property. Under a resolution that will be adopted in some form later this month, the city will develop new rules "limiting or prohibiting the removal of trees" during construction, requiring a permit for the removal of any tree, and allowing developers to build taller and more densely than land-use law allows if they preserve trees on site. A related ordinance would also create a new, seven-member "Urban Forestry Commission" to oversee tree rules, with one-third of the membership turning over every year (a stipulation that devolved into a discussion about the difficulty of dividing seven by three.)

The tree advocates—as usual, out-hippieing the council's hippiest member, Richard Conlin, who sponsored the legislation—showed up in (OK, relative) force to decry arcane aspects of the proposal. Several complained about an exemption in the legislation for chopping down trees when it would "substantially preclude ... or prohibit" development ("This just continues business as usual in Seattle ... [developers] will say anything," one said); others had issues with the composition of the tree commission itself.

"If we're going to have a developer [on the panel] ... we need to have someone from the neighborhoods" as well, said Richard Ellison, head of the Seattle group Save Seattle's Trees! Ellison also objected to the elimination of the hydrologist, botanist, and urban planner positions from the group.

(Richard McIver, who's retiring this year, had several digressions—which one second-floor staffer called "near-non sequiturs—involving sewer rats, the effect of trees on driveways, and whether the legislation amounted to a "taking.")

The environment committee will meet again in two weeks, at 2:00 pm on July 28, to discuss and most likely vote on the resolution and ordinance.