Branch managers

It's up to Worcester's underfunded, understaffed forestry department to save
the city's desperate tree population

by Chris Kanaracus

The 40-foot sugar maple is about 30 years old, and it is dying. There is no canopy of broad, shade-granting leaves. Its bark is pale and scabrous. An inch-wide plastic button nailed to the trunk confirms suspicions: the maple has been condemned.

Urban forester Brian Breveleri, three tree climbers, a towering cherry-picker, and a ferocious-looking wood chipper, all from the forestry division of the Worcester Parks, Recreation & Cemetery Department, have arrived on Drury Lane to finish the job. In the picker's bucket, a climber "pieces" the tree with deafening, chain saw precision. The branches tumble to the ground; another worker feeds them into the endlessly screaming, whining maw of the chipper.

Within minutes, the maple is decimated. But this seeming insult to nature is only a first step. Later, the team will come back, this time with a device called a stump grinder, with which they'll mill the remnants of the maple's trunk to an ankle-high memory.

Breveleri estimates he assesses and condemns 25 to 30 such trees in Worcester each week. Last year alone, he and his crew removed 437 others across Worcester. And over 500 more small, plastic buttons remain on the trunks of Norway maples, white ashes, and littleleaf lindens. It will be a busy year for forestry. But it's been that way recently.

Twenty years of neglect have rendered the city's urban forest (as it's often called) in a state of crisis. A tree stock estimated at 50,000 at the turn of the century has fallen to barely 20,000 publicly owned and tended trees. Two-thirds of the city's remaining trees are in fair to poor condition. And, according to one estimate, Worcester could be treeless within 40 years.

But the rescue party, however late, is convening. Last October, Parks Commissioner Michael O'Brien petitioned for and received a modest increase to his $3.13 million budget to address the short-staffing problems in his department. The move quickly gained support on the council, especially after a citizen-driven task force, called the Urban Tree Task Force, had begun to talk publicly about the dire condition of city trees. Also, O'Brien has drafted a comprehensive street-tree management plan (the first in the city's history).

On paper, a good start. But as Breveleri says, a complete turnaround in the health and number of the city's trees "won't happen tomorrow." If the trees are to be saved, say advocates, the effort would be gargantuan. The city can't do it alone.

Obviously, it's worth trying. Just ask Evelyn Herwitz, task force co-founder and author of Trees at Risk (Chandler House), an historical account of the city's trees due for release next year. "There's no sound bite I can give you. There's just too many things. Trees make a city livable. They beautify the city. They add to our quality of life . . . there's an emotional connection with trees. It's part of our human essence." And, in spite of herself, she finds the sound bite that, perhaps, says it best.

"We'll all be losers if we don't care."

The public groundswell to protect local trees goes back to late 1997, when Herwitz and John Trexler, an arborist at Boylston's Tower Hill Botanical Garden, formed the Urban Tree Task Force, a loose coalition of local environmentalists. After six years of what she terms exhaustive research Herwitz finished an early manuscript of Trees at Risk, which traces the history of Worcester's trees from the rural cemeteries of the early 19th century to present day. But with the research in hand, she found her work wasn't done.

"It was like, what do we do now? I'd done all this research and found such a terrible problem," she says. "We had to do something."

Herwitz relayed her concern to Trexler, who had acted as a consultant on her book. "[Environmental groups] had always cared, but this was the first time we all got together on the issue," Trexler says. The group was and is informal, he adds, but met frequently to discuss what could be done.

Herwitz, Trexler, and other task force members like Deborah Cary of the Worcester chapter of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, if asked, will gladly bend your ear on the benefits of living in a city with lots of trees. There's common sense: properly trimmed branches won't fall onto your car or block your view at intersections. There's the environment: trees clean the air and reduce water runoff. Advocates also place a monetary value on trees. O'Brien's October report concludes a healthy urban forest can raise property values as much as 15 percent.

So when you ask the question what went wrong with Worcester's urban forest, it's tempting to ask instead, what went right?

One longtime green-space advocate wonders herself. Edith Morgan came to Worcester in 1967. "When I moved in here, the street [Shattuck Street, off Lincoln Street] was completely lined with 30- to 40-year-old, fully grown maples." Morgan says at least one-third of them are gone; from a chair near her front window, she can see three stumps where maples once flourished. She won't soon forget them. On what remains of the latest tree to be removed, Morgan and her neighbors have placed a basket of flowers.

Part of the problem with Worcester's urban forest is a condition referred to by foresters as a monoculture. Although 79 different species can be found within city limits, only four different species comprise 90 percent of the population. Overall, 68 percent are Norway maple trees. This is dangerous, say advocates, for diseases often attack one species in particular. The most infamous of the "blights" is Dutch Elm disease, which, via the efforts of infected, bark-loving beetles, has killed 40 million elms across the US since the 1930s. More recently, urban forests in Brooklyn and Chicago have been ravaged by Asian Longhorn beetles that eat trees into extinction from the inside out. The problem in Brooklyn is so bad, Longhorn beetle news bulletins are frequently posted on the New York-based Web site www.treesny.com.

But even a diverse urban-tree population has its enemies, no matter the city. Varying temperate zones can hobble growth. Heat from underground steam pipes can kill the most carefully tended sapling; trees that grow too unwieldy might get in the way of power lines or light poles. Then there's the more odious factors -- vandalism, and branch damage from passing vehicles.

Anyone close to the history of Worcester's trees agrees the crisis is almost entirely due to public apathy. Between 1981 and the present, next to no local tax dollars have been spent on new plantings. Of existing trees, according to O'Brien, 7235 are in immediate need of safety trimming. While officials say the city as a whole is in dire shape, the hardest hit areas are the Green Hill Park and Britton Square neighborhood and the streets around Elm Park. Main South is also in bad shape.

Alas, there is no other department in the city lower on the priority list than the forestry division is. Currently, the division staff stands at six tree climbers, director Larry Blair, and Breveleri, who was hired last July. It's hardly enough, especially when you consider a little-known fact: they're not saving trees full time.

The forestry division is also entrusted with the care of the nearly 200-acre Hope Cemetery. It's not uncommon for tree climbers to be sent out to mow lawns, to manicure landscaping, or even to dig graves. And when a nasty storm hits, who gets called? The same six tree climbers. "If a big storm hits, we can be out there for 24 hours straight," says climber Mike Shanley. But, they both stress, they're not complaining. "[The public] doesn't know what we do here. But it's just the way it is, and we have to deal with it. We know that," Blair says .

Believe it or not, Blair's department is better funded now than in previous years. After massive cuts in state aid in 1990 and 1991, officials cut the forestry division from eight to three tree climbers, who performed only emergency removals.

City councilors past and present acknowledge forestry hasn't been a priority come budget time. "In the past, whenever the cuts have been made, the parks department got hammered," says former At-large Councilor Tim Cooney, who held office when 1981's Proposition 2 1/2 tax cap went into effect forcing severe budget cuts in all city departments. But it's not as if the council wanted to, according to Mayor Ray Mariano. "The council has made numerous requests over the years [for increases in the parks budget]. You'd have to ask [City Manager Tom Hoover]. It's his budget. I can't speak for it."

But why haven't such requests been taken up before now? District 3 Councilor Paul Clancy suggests that "often, you need a program or a plan to get this started," referring to O'Brien's October report. "Now we can move forward."

At-large Councilor Konstantina Lukes, though, is more skeptical. "We as a city have almost depleted our open space." Lukes says only 100 acres of privately held clear land remain in Worcester. "It's all gone. The plan was good, but it was mandatory. We had no choice."

Though O'Brien's proposal won't restore the funding before Proposition 2 1/2, when forestry had a staff of 14, it will add some powerful and innovative tools to the department's arsenal: a satellite map and corresponding computer database of every city-owned tree, a tougher tree ordinance, and a 100,000-sapling nursery to be built on spare land at Hope Cemetery.

His plan was unanimously endorsed by the city council, Hoover, and environmentalists. But if such good will is welcome news, it's also out of character for a city which, as Lukes suggests, has occasionally had poor regard for green space.

Skeptics, for instance, might find a bit of a contradiction between a city-led fight to save street trees and the proposal to build a new vocational school on about seven acres of Green Hill Park land, near the now-closed Belmont Home. Construction is currently delayed until an appeal can be heard. Members of the grassroots Green Hill Park Coalition have attempted to block the school construction, maintaining the land not only contains a mature forest with hundreds of trees, but also is a wetlands area protected under state law. The plan's backers counter the land is fit for building and would save the city millions in land-acquisition costs. A hearing before the Department of Environmental Protection to decide the matter is set for August 1.

It's hard to imagine a proposal to develop park land would be considered in communities like Newton, which passed a stunningly strict tree ordinance in January. Under the city law, even trees removed from private property must be replaced "inch-for-inch" (i.e., a tree with a 24-inch diameter would be traded for four six-inch saplings) or money to do so elsewhere be contributed to a city fund. Breveleri says he and O'Brien plan to present a similar ordinance to the city council for review in the fall.

Already in place, though, is an ordinance, which the council approved in 1998, requiring that new parking lots include ample green space; for larger lots, the rule is one tree for every 20 feet of perimeter space. Lots that hold more than 10 cars must include interior-landscaping plans as well. The benefits can be seen in projects like the Big Y Foods on Mayfield Street and the Stop & Shop Supermarket on West Boylston Street. While neither site could be mistaken for Elm Park, both are a long way from the barren Webster Square Plaza. Prior to the ordinance, zoning laws stated new construction must have landscaping, but without specifying what type or how much.

Strongly worded ordinances, though, are just one component of the nation's most successful urban forestry programs. Milwaukee, Wisconsin's department -- perhaps force is a better word -- is budgeted at a whopping $10 million per year. Certainly, that city's workforce faces a daunting challenge: Milwaukee contains 120 miles of wide boulevards where the bulk of the city's 200,000 trees are planted. Dick Rideout, urban forestry coordinator at Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources, says savvy public-relations measures were key to Milwaukee's success. "They've been great at getting the message out that trees make the community look good, and they've learned to respond to individual concerns rapidly and effectively." Such expediency, he says, has garnered support for the program from city councilors, who don't have to deal with repeated tree-related calls from residents.

It sounds logical. But you have to wonder how it can happen in Worcester, for all the advocacy in the world won't change the situation in the forestry division. The fiscal 2001 budget provides for one additional tree climber and a foreman, but are eight men any more able than six to care for nearly 20,000 trees? Then there's the proposed, 100,000-tree nursery at Hope Cemetery. While impressive on paper, who will tend to it?

Obviously, the efforts of committed folks like the Urban Tree Task force alone won't be enough. Edith Morgan, who along with neighbors in her upper Lincoln Street neighborhood, recently surveyed and assessed the area's trees, says getting people in her neighborhood involved took time and effort. "Trees don't disappear one at a time, you know. It's not the kind of thing that happens all at once. By the time you notice, the tree's ready to fall. If people become more aware, you can avoid that. Replacing a 40-year-old tree with a five-year-old sapling, even though you have to do it, isn't the best thing."

Breveleri says he's encouraged by outreach efforts from community groups like the Urban Tree Task Force and like Elm Park PREP, which, with the city's help, planted 40 new trees in April along several roads, including Hudson, Townsend, Hampton, and Elm streets. PREP paid for the trees with a $8000 grant from the a Wheeler Trust, a local non-profit foundation that awards about $30000 each year for re-greening efforts around the city.

Breveleri, though, says he's glad the group made sure to seek his help. "You can't just put a tree in the ground and expect it to survive. It's a very complicated process." One recent morning, he took a guest to the neighborhood for a hands-on explanation.

In front of a parking garage on Hudson Street, Breveleri points out one of the PREP plantings, a columnar maple tree. "When this tree matures, it'll grow upright, not out. You won't hit the garage, but you'll still provide shade." Careful planning like this, he says, is crucial: maintenance costs go down because less time is needed to prune errant branches and to remove fallen ones.

Down the road, PREP members planted a London Plane tree. The sidewalk is wider here, and the closest home is set back from the street. "This is a great urban tree," Breveleri explains. "Look at the foliage on it! It's fabulous." According to Breveleri, a nearby homeowner waters the tree each day.

"That's the thing, you have to have that cooperation. Down the road, do we want to have to trim this [tree] all up? Hack it all up? No."

Breveleri is certain help will come. "Staff- and personnel-wise, we're not going to be able to do it. We have to call on the community. Is it worthwhile? Will we get help? Without a doubt. I have a very good feeling about it. This isn't going to happen today. It's not going to happen tomorrow. But it is going to happen."

Chris Kanaracus can be reached atckanaracus[a]phx.com