Editorial: Green vs green case: let's avoid it here

| The New Mexican

3/27/2008 - 3/27/08

Near the south end of San Francisco Bay, a homeowning couple are having their redwoods cut down. It's that or go to jail, or at least pay a fine; seems their trees stand between the sun and their neighbors' solar panels. So they were being criminally prosecuted for that theft — which it is, more or less, under the Golden State's Solar Shade Control Act, signed into law 30 years ago by Gov. Moonbeam, now California's attorney general.

The defendants spent $37,000 in legal fees trying to make their case for trees — which they had planted four years before the neighbor installed his rooftop photovoltaic apparatus. Trees being trees, of course they grew — and grew; during the course of a decade, they've reached 20 to 40 feet.

Enough's enough, said a state Superior Court judge; reduce the solar blockage to a mere 10 percent, or fork over $1,000 a day in fines.

B-b-but trees are as important to the environment as solar power is: They shelter birds; they reduce noise; they reduce the need for air conditioning; they take in carbon ...

No more buts, declared the judge; the complaining witness is trying to reduce dependence on foreign oil to power his home — and his electric car! Away with your trees, you silly people; after all, the town where you live is Sunnyvale ...

A state senator, in response, has introduced a bill saying if trees are planted before the solar panels go up, they stay. Sounds like a sensible ounce of prevention.

Already we can hear the gears grinding, even jamming, in Santa Feans' heads, and in cabezas countrywide:
 

• Those trees we've been thinking of putting in, Maude — I'm on my way to the nursery!

•  Good idea, Claude! And pick up some solar panels on the way back; that'll double our options down the road. Can't let the neighbors get the jump on us, can we?

Like scenes from a Bugs Bunny-Elmer Fudd cartoon, soon we might see veritable forests filling the suburban landscape, or solar panels covering entire subdivisions, as folks establish squatters' rights to be green on their own terms. For, sure as night follows day — or is it the other way around? — some New Mexico legislator, and surely a few local politicians, will dash in to head off a local reprise of the Silicon Valley folly. We wish them godspeed where it comes to trees.

New Mexico already has a Solar Rights Act on the books. Albuquerque has a law in favor of accessible sunlight. Santa Fe, where tall and bulky buildings are elbowing their way into older, low-lying neighborhoods, so far has none, leaving solar rights to be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Of course there's a big difference between such trees as norteños can get to grow, and multi-story condominiums created from single-family, single-story homes.

Trees are to be encouraged. Those planted ahead of the solar panels especially need protecting.