Let’s clear-cut trees to make billboards more visible.
- “I’m for trees, too, but not when they impede on businesses.” –Jeff Garner, senior vice president of real estate for Clear Channel Outdoor
Billboard owners would be able to clear-cut trees on Georgia’s roadsides to make it easier to see their signs if legislators approve new rules.
For each new billboard, owners would be allowed to cut trees and other vegetation growing for 500 feet alongside an interstate. In the most extreme example — a two-sided billboard overlooking a wide right of way — billboard owners would be allowed to clear potentially thousands of trees from an area the size of 11 acres.
The billboard industry says the legislative changes are needed because the current law, which forbids clear-cutting in the public right of way, has resulted in increasingly taller signs built to soar above treetops. The tallest signs in the state reach 220 feet along I-75 in northwest Georgia.
Joe Garner, senior vice president of real estate for Clear Channel Outdoor, the top-selling outdoor advertiser in the country, said Georgia’s billboards are becoming unsightly and unsafe for workers and travelers.
“We have a right for visibility,” said Garner, who is also member of the governor’s Roadside Enhancement and Beautification Council that helps regulate cutting and trimming trees for billboards.
Go to original by STACY SHELTON in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
