A plan to harvest trees near Fredonia’s reservoir brought plenty of negative comments from the public at village Board of Trustees meetings in November.

Despite an effort from the village’s forest management consultant to explain the plan, a dozen people spoke out against it at the Nov. 15 meeting.

After nearly 45 minutes of comments, Trustee Scott Johnston said he would support rescinding a board resolution to go out to bid for the tree harvest. His statement was met with cheers from the audience.

That resolution — to allow Forecon, the forest consultant, to seek the bids — was tabled at the Nov. 1 meeting, after complaints from many of the same people who showed up two weeks later. The trustees have not taken any formal action on it since.

Rick Constantino of Forecon gave a presentation about the plan at the Nov. 15 meeting. He said, “We are by no means removing all of the trees in the watershed. This is a selective harvest. We’re taking the approach of management for the long term, sustainably, with the utmost importance being the protection of the water resource and the sponge like effect that the trees help provide within that watershed.”

Constantino said there was an erosion sediment control plan for the site. He said the biggest concern in that area was not necessarily removal of trees, but the equipment brought to the area.

“We’ve developed a plan in order to conduct this timber sale so that very little to no activity occurs around drainage areas,” he said. A key part of that plan is utilizing an old railroad bed on the west side of the property, with workers set to drag logs uphill and onto it to remove them from the site.

Johnston asked Constantino the likely consequences of holding off on the logging for a year or two. “Little to nothing,” he replied. “Those trees have been there a long time … but eventually, you know, something has to happen, there’s a lot of trees that are maturing and going in the other direction. They’re starting to reach the end of life. There’s a lot of tip outs that are happening, that are going to uproot a root ball and cause erosion and other problems like that.” He said, like any facility, the forest around the reservoir needs maintenance.

The audience members who spoke during the public comments section of the meeting appeared unimpressed by Constantino’s arguments.

Jonathan Townsend, whose property abuts the reservoir, said, “There is a disconnect between how the timber is marked at the property and what we told this evening, and I encourage everybody on the Board of Trustees and the mayor and anyone else who’s interested, to walk the property for yourself and see trees marked in steep drainages, and see healthy trees marked for removal and unhealthy trees left that will just leave poor forest regeneration circumstances in the future.”

Trustee-elect Michelle Twichell expressed concerns that logging would disturb the boggy ground in the area, with water that filters under it picking up sediment kicked up by the effort and getting into the reservoir. “We really need to clean the reservoir out. That’s something that I think is more important than logging at this time,” she said.