Judge orders halt after Park Service cuts 500 trees at East Potomac Park in D.C.
by Stephen Dinan · The Washington TimesA federal judge issued an emergency order on Monday barring the National Park Service from cutting any more trees at East Potomac Park, after hearing that crews had felled more than 500 trees in one day over the weekend.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, issued the temporary restraining order and set a hearing for later Monday.
The trees were part of the golf course on the peninsula in East Potomac Park.
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President Trump has plans to refurbish it into a championship-style course, and opponents, led by the D.C. Preservation League, are fiercely battling to stop him.
They accused the president’s team of a bait-and-switch, waiting until late Friday, just before a three-day holiday weekend, to inform the court of plans to cut hundreds of trees.
The league’s lawyers said they’d been given the impression the removal would be gradual, but they said by 8 a.m. Saturday the park service had cut 529 trees, and had its eye on hundreds more. Only Sunday’s persistent rains blocked those plans.
Kevin Griess, superintendent of the National Mall’s parks, had characterized the tree-cutting as “deferred maintenance,” saying he was carrying out a years-old plan to trim vegetation that expanded onto the golf course over the last century.
He included diagrams showing the course was links-style in 1927, with far fewer trees, compared to the parkland-style course that has developed. He said cutting some of the trees would restore the course to its historical footprint.
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Mr. Griess said he moved quickly because he’d suddenly come into a “temporary workforce” of up to 50 personnel who could do the tree-cutting.
He insisted the tree work wasn’t part of Mr. Trump’s plans for the course.
Judge Reyes put the whole thing on hold.
“The removal of hundreds of trees from East Potomac Golf Course is permanent, while the government will not be prejudiced by a short delay given that weather might continue to prevent it from proceeding in any event,” she wrote in her restraining order.
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Stephen Dinan
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