Words forwarded from Andy Hillman. Tony Ingraham [EMAIL PROTECTED]
----- Original Message ----- From: Linda Byard Sent: 7/10/2007 12:24:22 PM Subject: Trees and Response Hi, Thank you all for listening. Today I am including copy of two letters I received which will explain the whole downtown tree situation. It is too bad that the City of Ithaca doesnt communicate a little more and better with its population, but I now think that this project has had good planning, and I dont advocate anyone do anything. Thank you all for listening, and I wont clutter up your mailboxes any further. Linda To: Friends of the Urban Forest and Fans of Downtown Trees, I appreciate the concern I am hearing from you. Please let me briefly explain why we decided to remove all the trees and start over with a whole new system. I carefully examined each tree in the project area and determined that many would be removed in the near future for other reasons even if the project did not happen. Three are Bradford pears with their well known problems. Most of our Bradfords are gone due to structural defects. They sometimes just fall apart on hot, calm days. Then there are some Zelkovas that have serious defects right at grade because I did not get the tree grates off in time. The trees started to grow over the grates, causing girdling right at the ground level. As pathogens and agents of decay cause rot, these trees become more risky. We do know now how to grow large, healthy trees in the built environment (downtown). The biggest challenge to urban trees is often lack of rooting volume; not enough soil to support a large, mature tree. This project will supply sufficient structural soil to allow for large, healthy, mature trees. Much more extensive urban tree removal projects have taken place in Ithaca recently. I invite you to take a look at West Court Street where I removed all the trees on several blocks for the coal tar mitigation project. We went back in with a diverse pallette of large caliper trees, watered and mulched them to establish faster growth, and concentrated planting around the project to minimize the impact. Downtown trees do the most work for us, providing ecosytem services that help make our city liveable. This project will allow us to make a significant improvement to our downtown urban forest. We are finally planning for and engineering for the trees as an integral part of the urban infrastructure. The structural soil will stay in place and function even after the new trees we plant are removed and replaced in the hopefully, distant future. New trees will be going in soon on Seneca Street for the TCAT project. Again, CU Structural Soil was specified and used in that project. What we are doing is creating the rooting volume needed to get big trees downtown. I hope this helps to explain what was a very considered decision. The Shade Tree Advisory Committee, Board of Public Works, and Common Council all made good recommendations and decisions for the future of our downtown trees. I think it is the best way to go. Respectfully, Andy Hillman, City Forester President - Society of Municipal Arborists Secretary - New York State Urban & Community Forestry Council ISA Certified Municipal Specialist Here is a second one: From: Joseph Wetmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Sustainable Tompkins <[email protected]> > Date: 7/9/2007 4:49:02 PM > Subject: Re: FW: Downtown Ithaca > > Hi > > In the next five years, or so, the trees will become rootbound because > they will have outgrown the space given them. (trees were not designed > to grow out of a hole in the sidewalk.) So, at that point, they will > have to be cut down anyway. At best, we can give the > trees a few more years of life. > > So the city decided that they would move the trees > now, build in a larger vault for the tree roots, that > will allow the trees to grow to a larger size. This > new vault has special "structural soil" that is > designed to allow trees to grow in with a minimal > opening in the sidewalk. It cannot be added around a > tree after the tree is grown to maturity, so we cannot > fix out current trees with this. It will cost the city > a lot less to move the tree now than it will later, > because the sidewalk is already all ripped apart. > > Yes we will have smaller trees now. But we will be > able to have large trees on a long term basis as a > result of this change. > > There was a discussion of whether or not the city > should spend the extra money to buy large trees (7-8" diameter of the > trunk as opposed to the more likely 4-5" diameter)to replace these. > Larger trees do not adjust to their new location as quickly as the > smaller ones. So the smaller one catch up in size to the big > ones in the time the bigger ones are getting adjusted > to the shock of being transplanted. So again, it is > not really worth the extra expense to try to replace > the trees with larger ones.
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