Southern District Highway Commissioner Wayne Brown says he is a tree lover.

“I own 1,500 acres of them” on his place near Lucedale, he said Tuesday.

Citing 800-900 traffic-related deaths in Mississippi last year, and 199 of those killed when they hit a tree, Brown said cutting trees from the median of Interstate 59 from Ellisville south to the Forrest County line is simply a matter of safety. “I consider these projects necessary,” he said.

“Any time you cut trees, there are people who complain about,” Brown said. “We get used to them and they are attractive along the side of the road. We have to take stumps up, and there are limbs and open, bare soil. We take something attractive and make it unattractive.”

Brown said there are national standards concerning trees along the highways.

“They have a recommendation of widths, and it’s rather complicated,” he said. “The narrowest is 30 feet from the edge of the pavement. We have found in Mississippi it is better to have a constant width. So in this district, we are cutting back to 70 feet. North of here, they are cutting back to 65 feet along I-20.”

Brown said that according to a past study, six people a year on average were killed by cars crossing the median — “one every other month.” He said the 199 figure is about one every other day.

He said a future project will clear the trees from I-59’s median beginning at the Hattiesburg city limits and “goes up the Forrest County line.”

“I’m very passionate about these trees,” Brown said. “My wife and I have had three nieces and three nephews killed in six separate traffic accidents in the last 18 years, one of which was killed by hitting a tree.” He said his best friend was killed in college when his vehicle hit a tree, and he said five shipyard employees were killed in Lucedale after their vehicle hit a tree.

He said clearing the trees from the median “makes the highway safer. A tree is a thing of beauty unless it endangers your life or mine.”

Ellisville Mayor Tim Waldrup was quoted earlier by a local media outlet as opposing the cutting. “I’m not totally against the those trees being cut,” he said Tuesday. “However, I do have concerns about it. One is when you take down all the trees, people living closer to the interstate have more noise. And there are aesthetic questions about it. Thirdly, I don’t want the clearing to be open to go across the median and hit traffic in the other lane.”

The mayor questioned how many of the accidents cited in the statistics occurred on interstates and how many occurred on “crooked little roads.” Waldrup also said none of the reasons for cutting the trees concern safety issues when trees are uprooted by a hurricane.