If you made it to yesterday’s meetup at the Hyde Center, you would have had a chance to meet Director of Urban Forestry Marc Welch and have a look at where your neighborhood is compared to other in degree of street tree loss, and how soon you might be getting trees. (We’d heard the outline of the planting plan at Urban Tree Commission meetings, but had not seen the maps.) The map above shows what percent of tree planting spots were empty in a street by street survey done in 2010-2011, by snowplow route. (Snowplow routes are a good way to do this type of survey, to ensure that no stretch is missed.) Since the survey is a couple of years old, and more trees have been lost than planted since, all the percentages could be a little higher, but the worst are probably still the worst.
The second map shows the 15-year planting plan, which will start in the first five years with the routes most lacking trees. In the first couple of years, starting this fall, about 125 trees per year will be planted per year with contractors, because that is more economical for a small volume. (The range could be 100-150 trees, depending on how many stumps they run into that need grinding.) The plan is to ramp up to 800 trees/year by year 4 and continue at that level, which would be more economical to do in-house with a second tree crew. At that rate we would finally be planting more trees than the 650/year we are losing, and also moving away from the monoculture of Norway maples, to a more diverse and healthy urban forest. Something to look forward to!
This is great as the city has operated for too long without a tree budget. With this plan we might actually be able to retain our name of the Garden City.
I’m hoping that in addition to this program for city trees that we’ll also be able to strengthen the tree ordinance to reduce the occurrence of clear cutting lots (mostly, but not always preceding a development project). I’ve seen too many situations where literally thousands of years worth of mature tree growth have landed in a chipper.
Hopefully there won’t be a need to start referencing The Lorax.
Curiously, although the phase 1 planting plan (on the map) calls for trees to be planted in areas of 28%+ vacancy, Newton Upper Falls is listed as 28% vacant and yet is shown in phase 2. There is another 28% vacant area (top right, looks like Newton Corner) that is getting phase 1 treatment.
@Jim Lerner – It sounds like a rounding issue. Is it 28% or 27.92536727% ?
Julia, do you kniw whether National Grid has resolved the gas leaks that caused the loss of a number of street trees in the city?
A 150 tree increase per year over the 650 trees we lose each year sounds like a drop in the bucket. In ten years we will have planted 1,500 trees. During that same period we will have lost 6,500 trees. It all sounds like a little more gruel handed out to yet another special interest group so that we can say ‘ oh look what progress we are making’. We must be truly impoverished ! We can’t maintain our schools, we cant keep our sidewalks clear of snow, we can’t repair our streets, we can’t do timely reconstruction of our sewer systems, and city halls roof is leaking. But we can tear down school buildings and spend $115,000,000 on new ones, and then we can give away precious city assets to build housing for poor folks. Wait a minute,.. who are the poor folks.
The city of Newton says we have 310 miles of public roadways. If we have a net increase of tree replacements of 150 trees per year, thats a, 1 new tree in every 2 miles, increase in greenery. ( and thats on one side of the street only ). Yes we must be impoverished !
Ain’t percentages, numbers and statistics great! Something must be getting done !
Does anyone know what the gray areas (not identified in any phase) are? Do those not have a plan?
One looks like Crystal Lake, the other looks like parklands and golf course near Newton’s farm
Regarding Jim Lerner’s 28% question, Marie, are you psychic, or were you talking to Marc at the Sunday thing? The Newton Corner 28% is actually 28.44; the other is 27.88. And before anyone asks, that 29% area north of Auburndale Ave is actually in Phase 1 not Phase 2; that was a data entry error on the map which has been fixed.
Also, the order in which routes get planted could change, based on what future tree counts show. Removals since the 2010-2011 count, the next wave of removals arising from the recent hazard tree survey, another microburst like that one in Waban a few years ago, trees run over by vehicles … the next count may show different areas the worst off.
FYI, to answer a question Adam Peller asked me this morning as we were planting a little tree, the count of plantable spots only included spots that were obviously plantable at the time of the count. You could have a spot on the berm that’s theoretically plantable because it’s an adequate distance from poles, hydrants, manholes, intersections and other street trees, but you wouldn’t want to plant there now because there’s a nice big private tree in the front yard that would completely shade it, so that would not be in the numerator or denominator.
David K.
The area to the nort west is Riverside / Woodland CC.
The area to the south west is Nahanton Park, MT Ida College Winchester St.
The area to the east is the Hammond Pond and Parkway, Chestnut Hill Mall
Easy questions first: yes, those gray areas are things like golf courses, the Community Farm, Hammond Pond Parkway.
Blueprintbill, I agree, 150/year forever would not do a lot, although even that is better than zero, but the intention is to ramp it up to 800/year which will at least stabilize the number of trees. If you add the numbers in the 15-year planting plan, that’s 9,500, which can be looked at a replacing the trees we’ve lost in recent years, or as counterbalancing the ones we’ll probably lose, if losses continue at 650/year (x 15 years=9,750). But not both.
There will be additional plantings from Tree Preservation Ordinance money, mostly around the Rt 9 area with money the Chestnut Hill Square development paid into the fund for caliper inches they cut down and did not replace on site. I have in my notes from the last Urban Tree Commission meeting, 500-600 trees over the next 5-6 years. To the extent that we can tighten up the loopholes in the Tree Preservation Ordinance (next discussion expected to be at Programs & Services April 9), that would result in some combination of fewer trees cut down for development and more payments into the fund for planting trees.
And Newton Tree Conservancy is looking for neighborhood group applications for planting this fall; you don’t have to wait five or ten years: newtontreeconservancy.org/programs
Ted, I’ll get to gas leaks, but I have to leave for work now!
Julia,
The gas line to my house, killing trees up and down Coyne Road, was found to be leaking and was reported as a ” Grade 2 ” leak, which is supposed to mandate repair in the maximum time period of 15 months, according to the Tree Concervancy report. This has not been attended to since initially reported Nov 16, 2009, 4-1/2 years ago.
I know the city does not do this work, but are we so impoverished that we cannot even get / force the gas company to make repairs ?