Remove and replant: Tūrangi's iconic trees make way for street repairs

Some of the larger trees in Hingaia St, Tūrangi, will be removed and replaced in the first stage of a kerbing and channelling upgrade project. Phto / Laurilee McMichael

It's a town known for its iconic trees. Now Tūrangi is about to lose 94 of them.

The trees will eventually be replaced, but by what species is not yet known.

The Taupō District Council was awarded $6.6 million from the Government's shovel-ready projects for kerbing and channelling around Tūrangi, with improvements to the crumbling 1960s concrete in many areas desperately needed.

But the catch is, in some streets the trees have grown so big that the new kerbing can't be installed without irreparably damaging the trees, or can only be done by hand under the supervision of an arborist.

Many of Tūrangi's trees were planted in the 1960s but are now too big for their berms, pushing up the footpaths and roads, cracking the kerbs and getting into infrastructure such as drains and pipework. Repairs to infrastructure made without removing the tree often result in damage that destabilises the tree and causes its eventual death or removal at a later date.

The shovel-ready money is a windfall for the council and local community which has been asking for the past two years to improvements to the infrastructure. Some Tūrangi locals also find the trees block light from their homes and cause a mess, dropping leaves everywhere in autumn.

The shovel-ready project will be completed in five stages with each stage consisting
of roughly 5km to 7km of kerb and channel replacement, at an estimated cost of $1.3m to $1.4m per stage. It will also involve removing trees causing problems and replanting suitable trees that will not create future infrastructure issues.

But some residents are crying foul, saying 94 trees is too many for Tūrangi to lose, and without the trees, it just won't be the same.

Alisdair Keucke and Lorraine Wilson say the trees are a huge feature of Tūrangi and are particularly beautiful in autumn.

"It's upsetting to think that they are going to remove so many trees from the town," Alisdair says.

"They are just such an asset for the town it's going to be a pity to see them eventually disappear. When the people laid out the town centre they had a lot of foresight. It was very well laid out and the streets are very well laid out.

"They [the council] say eventually they're going to replant them with something suitable but they haven't said when or what."

The Tūrangi-Tongariro Community Board was presented with three different options for dealing with the trees and went with option one, which was removal and replacement of 94 trees. In the two other options there was the possibility to save some, but not all of the trees, but that would have cost more, which would have meant less kerbing and channelling could be done.

A liquidamber tree in Hingaia St which has grown too big for the berm and is lifting the kerbing and the road seal. Photo / Laurilee McMichael

But Alisdair disagrees, saying he thinks that while some trees have to be removed because they cause problems with infrastructure, with planning it should not be too hard to work around them.

"Some of the trees are in bad shape and they need to come out, but 94 is too many. We need to preserve as many as we can."

He's also worried that once felled and replaced by saplings, the new trees will be vandalised before they can grow.

Lorraine says Tūrangi's trees serve a useful purpose in not only being pleasant to look at, but also good for the environment.

"They are what makes the town."

She says she realises the trees can be contentious and people get tired of the leaves in autumn and says some of those problems could be solved if the council had a better method of keeping the streets cleared of leaves.

Tree Line Arbor Care arborist Ian Ashmore, who is also a member of the Tūrangi-Tongariro Community Board, says the problem with some, but not all, of Tūrangi's trees is that they are simply too big for the narrow berms they were planted on and unsuitable for residential streets.

"As an arborist, I'm somewhat torn because I love the trees, they're beautiful."

But Ian says the kerbing and channelling project is a chance to address Tūrangi's trees in a programmed way, rather than on an ad hoc basis, as currently happens.

"I've been saying for a long time that the council need to have a long-term view removal or replacement programme and with the money from the shovel-ready project this not only allows us to upgrade kerb and channels but in several streets implement that removal or replacement programme and put in more suitable trees.

"The [community] board were very specific on if we take [trees] out, we're replanting and we now have the budget to do it and do it properly."

Many of the bigger trees causing problems are liquidambers, which have aggressive root systems, and oaks which are "massive, way too big"; and Ian says his ideas for replacement included mainly acer species such as maples, and cornus.

"There are lots of varieties within both of those species of colour and size so if council want, with those they could pick and choose a particular species to suit a particular street.

"This presents the chance to look at the streetscape of each street as a whole. We want to retain the colour of Tūrangi and the treescape but I understand as an arborist there has to come a point where you really have to deal with some of these trees before they become a massive issue, and a lot of them already are."