NATCHEZ — Trees do not stand a chance against the machine that is being used to clear land along the Natchez bluff.

On Monday, the city started removing vegetation at the bottom of the massive retaining walls along Clifton Avenue. The retaining walls were constructed as part of the bluff stabilization project that was built in 1994.

Since the initial construction, trees and plants have grown on the land at the bottom of the wall. The growth has become so thick recently that the city cannot adequately inspect and maintain the wall, Natchez Public Works Director Justin Dollar said Thursday.

Using an industrial mulcher that can chew up a 30-foot tall tree in a matter of minutes,  Offseason Dirtworks, the operator of the equipment, has cleared several hundred feet of vegetation in four days.

“The mission of this project is to make sure we protect and preserve the work that had been done and the investment that had been made on the bluff stabilization project,” Mayor Darryl Grennell said. “We went for many, many years with no maintenance.”

Dollar said the industrial mulcher was the most appropriate equipment to use to remove the vegetation with minimal impact. Backhoes and other heavy equipment that could have been used to cut down and drag out the trees would have been more damaging to the property, Dollar said.

Vegetation removal will continue for the next few weeks and will extend from the end of Clifton Avenue to the land below the historic house Rosalie, Dollar said.

After the trees and plants have been mulched, Dollar said the land would be seeded. The city will continue to maintain the property to keep trees from growing, Dollar said. The property will be mowed annually, Dollar said. In the future, the land might be used, Dollar said, to extend the Natchez trails along the bluff, but that is not part of the current project.

Earlier this year the Mississippi Legislature did not approve a request from the city to provide funding to help remove the vegetation. Grennell said he had hoped to get the money from the state but that he had already identified money in the city’s budget to pay for the project before the Legislature had even convened.

Grennell said the state had previously given money from the BP oil spill settlement that was used as matching funds for local emergency watershed projects. The matching funds that were already in the city’s budget were used to help pay for the vegetation removal project, Grennell said.

Grennell said he had been notified by residents about the vegetation, including from the late Clifton Avenue property owner Neil Varnell, who Grennell said previously expressed concerns about how the vegetation was adversely impacting the integrity of the bluff stabilization. Varnell died in March.