SEATTLE, Wash. — Ballard residents arrived for a midday protest Friday against city plans to cut three big cherry trees.
They found only stumps.
"So they must have known about us coming at noon and they got here early and cut them down," said Jim Davis as he arrived for the protest.
"That's really outrageous," said Richard Ellison of Plant Amnesty.
The trees were on the property of an old Seattle City Light substation in Loyal Heights.
The utility tested the soil and found levels of the now-banned pesticide dieldrin 70 times higher than state-mandated cleanup levels.
City Light says in order to replace the soil, the trees had to go.
"Simply too much ground beneath them to remove without taking those trees out," said Scott Thomsen of City Light.
City Light says it will be able to save some cedars on the property with a process called vactoring, where the soil is vacuumed out around roots and replaced.
City Light says vactoring will only work beneath the cedars because the contamination doesn't run as deep.
"We don't think they had no choice," said Peggy Sturdivant of Seattle Greenspaces Coalition.
Sturdivant said the soil could have been capped or even left in place, something City Light says the law doesn't allow.
There's no plan yet for what will happen to the property, but City Light has a process for selling surplus sites.
Neighbors fear the parcel will go to developers, and another piece of open land in Seattle will be lost, just like the trees.