East Potomac Golf Links has undergone plenty of changes since golfers first teed off there more than a century ago. Few, though, have transformed the landscape as quickly as what happened last weekend.
In a matter of hours on Oct. 10, National Park Service crews cut down more than 400 trees across two large swaths of the federally-owned course. By Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes had ordered the cutting to stop through at least Oct. 26, finding that NPS probably violated federal environmental law and warning of damage that could not be undone.
“Destroyed trees cannot be replaced,” she wrote.
In a sharply worded filing on Friday, the government urged Reyes to “end the drama now” and lift her order on the tree cutting, accusing the court of overstepping its authority. NPS also disclosed that the project is larger than previously estimated: About 729 trees are targeted for removal, roughly 300 of which remain standing.
Satellite images of East Potomac Golf Links from October 8 and October 13 show views before and after the Park Service removed hundreds of trees. Source: Satellite imagery via Planet Labs PBC.
Areas where
trees were
removed
Source: Satellite imagery via Planet Labs PBC
Areas where
trees were
removed
Source: Satellite imagery via Planet Labs PBC
According to the filing, crews removed approximately 369 trees from Zone A, which runs from the 17th green to about midway down the 16th fairway on the Blue Course. They took down another 63 trees in Zone B, which stretches from behind the 12th green through the 13th hole and into the first half of the 14th. That puts the government’s current estimate of trees removed at about 432, though NPS cautioned that it plans to verify the number by counting stumps.
Unlike trees NPS removed earlier this year because they were dead, dying, hazardous or invasive, the trees targeted last weekend were healthy and noninvasive, according to NPS officials’ testimony. This week, freshly cut trunks and leafy branches remained piled between the fairways.
NPS said the removals were intended to carry out recommendations in a 2019 cultural landscape report that called for thinning trees to restore the open, links-style character envisioned when the course was designed a century ago. The agency has maintained that the work is separate from President Donald Trump’s planned overhaul of East Potomac.
Reyes was skeptical, concluding that officials raced to undertake the tree work because Trump “demands haste on his redesign,” rather than because of “some newfound zeal” to implement the old report.
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Source: www.washingtonpost.com
