Then in between those extremes there are bemused observers who just see it as an overkill.

Council workmen this week were cutting down a number of trees along the Great Western Highway frontage of Endeavour Park, prompting calls to the Mercury from concerned residents wanting to know what was going on.

According to council the trees and associated undergrowth are being removed because of complaints from people using the nearby public toilet at night.

It was claimed that the after dark toilet patrons had encountered people ‘lurking among the trees’.

It was not immediately clear how many such complaints had been received but as a result there was a decision that the trees had to go.

Many of them were old and scrubby and past their useful life anyway, the Mercury has been told.

They will be replaced by something more suitable and no doubt more ‘lurk proof’.

The reasoning is not sitting well with Littleton residents who said the trees had helped reduce highway noise, had created a windbreak and allowed a degree of privacy.

“Now we can not only hear the highway traffic but we can see it,” an Amiens Street resident said.

“Wouldn’t it have been more practical just to improve the lighting?”

One caller said residents had regularly had issues with trail bikes and vandals in the park but not with ‘toilet block lurkers’.

MEANWHILE Council has been told that the removal of large trees in the Hermitage Flat area had been necessary because of the latest stage of the Farmers Creek floodplain project.

Work began recently on the widening of the canal from the Albert Street bridge westward to link up with previously completed flood mitigation work.

During the public forum session at this week’s meeting of council a concerned Lithgow resident, Clive Laing, questioned the tree removal near Albert Street.

Operations Manager Iain Stewart said the tree removals could not have been avoided as they were in the flood channel and were also impending relocation of other services.