Global Courant 2023-04-21 20:11:32
Cities across the US are packed with large amounts of heat-absorbing infrastructure and impenetrable surfaces devoid of trees, making temperatures feel hotter. President Biden’s $1.5 billion Inflation Reduction Act earmarked federal Forest Service Urban and Community Forestry Program funds for tree-planting projects over the next decade. Some U.S. cities plan to use the money to maintain trees and train tree care staff, especially in places where workers have barriers to employment, such as a criminal record.
While Ameen Taylor feels lucky to have a cooling tree cover in the front and backyard of his Detroit home, he knows it’s a different story for many residents of his hometown, where neighborhoods often have little to no shade.
“To me, 70 degrees is nice weather, but when you’re walking somewhere or in a neighborhood where there are no trees, it feels like it’s 87, 90 degrees. That’s what it feels like,” he said. Taylor. “You’re exposed to more sun than shade.”
Like many cities in the US, parts of Detroit are littered with large amounts of impermeable surfaces and heat-absorbing infrastructure such as roads and bridges. Combined with low levels of cooling tree cover or canopy, it can make them dangerously hotter than the suburbs.
Such disparity of tree cover underlies the historic $1.5 billion in President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act earmarked for the federal Forest Service Urban and Community Forestry Program to fund tree-planting projects over the next decade. With a focus on underserved communities, the initiative marks a huge increase over the approximately $36 million paid annually to the program. Millions more for tree projects are also available through Biden’s infrastructure bill and COVID-19 relief funds.
Urban forestry advocates, who have argued for years about the benefits of trees in cities, see this moment as an opportunity to transform underserved neighborhoods that have struggled with dirtier air, dangerously high temperatures and other challenges from having no canopy overhead. Proponents also predict this is the start of a long-term financial commitment for trees, especially amid dire warnings from scientists about global warming.
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“City trees don’t just have a moment. In many ways, this is more than a moment in the sun. This is, I believe, the new normal,” said Dan Lambe, CEO of the Arbor Day Foundation. Lambe said the huge federal investment recognizes that trees are essential to communities, “not just nice to have, they’re a must-have.”
Trees help suck up heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and reduce erosion and flooding. They are also credited with helping save lives, as heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont has proposed spending $500,000 from the remaining COVID-19 relief funds, money he hopes will be supplemented by the new federal funds, to pay for plantations in underserved city neighborhoods.
“I just drive across the state, I drive around Hartford, I see places where — imagine if we only had 30 trees on this empty lot — what it means for clean air, what it means for beauty, what it means for shade ,” the Democrat said, referring to Connecticut’s capital, where only a quarter of its 11,490 acres have treetops.
Historically, cities like Hartford, where banks declined or avoided loans because of racial makeup, have been up to 13 degrees hotter than neighborhoods that aren’t outlined, said Lauren Marshall, senior manager for program innovation at the Arbor Day Foundation. With less access to nature, she said many residents of these communities did not have the option to escape the heat and social distancing outside to a cooler, shaded area during the pandemic.
On April 14, 2023 in Detroit, a hole is dug for a series of trees at the Coleman Young Community Center. A historic amount of money is being spent planting and maintaining trees in concrete-covered neighborhoods across the United States. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
“I remember spending a lot of time outdoors in the summer of 2020 because it was the only way we could see the people we loved. And I live in a neighborhood with lots of trees,” she said. “And for a lot of people, that wasn’t the case.”
Marshall said the pandemic, coupled with the racial reckoning sparked by the murder of George Floyd, drew a lot of attention to the issue of inequality in the canopy. Many cities and towns are now using a Tree Equity Score Analyzer developed by American Forests to target planting trees in the neighborhoods most in need.
“Across the board, in every state and in our state, we’ve underinvested in the canopy of our urban trees,” said Hilary Franz, Washington’s public lands commissioner. Over five years, Seattle is planting 8,000 trees on public and private land and 40,000 in parks and natural areas, an initiative funded in part by federal funds.
Seattle also plans to require three trees to be planted for every healthy, site-appropriate tree removed from city properties.
Some communities plan to use federal funds to maintain trees and train tree care workers, especially in places where workers have barriers to employment, such as a criminal record. Joel Pannell, vice president of Urban Forest Policy at American Forests, said the country’s current tree care pool is aging and needs more workers. It is also dominated by mostly white males.
“As people retire and leave the workforce, there is a huge need for a new cadre of people to represent the communities where the work needs to be done,” he said.
A native of Detroit, Taylor is one of 300 workers who will plant 75,000 trees in the Motor City over the next five years. On Wednesday, he helped plant a dozen maples, digging the holes carefully by hand to avoid underground lines. Taylor, who used to be in prison, takes pride in the work he does.
“It looks empty with no trees,” he said.
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Planting trees in urban areas is not new. In 2007, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a successful effort to plant 1 million trees. Former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa launched a similar effort to plant 1 million trees by the end of his first term in 2009, but many died because they had to be planted on private land where water and care were largely left to residents. arrived.
The cost of Biden’s tree planting program has received some political backlash from lawmakers who have likened it to pig barrel spending.
Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida last year criticized the Inflation Reduction Act for having “nothing to do with what people in the real world care about,” citing tree planting as an example.
“This is a good one,” he said sarcastically. “A lot of people worry about this: $1.5 billion to plant more trees. Whatever.”
Lora Martens, the urban tree program manager at Phoenix’s Office of Heat Response and Mitigation, acknowledged that the amount of money available is “rather wild.” But she predicted it will have “a significant impact” on Phoenix — considered the most popular major city in the U.S. — and the surrounding metro area. Last summer was the deadliest on record for heat-related fatalities in Arizona’s largest county.
Phoenix hopes to expand its shady, mile-long “cool corridor” trails; initiating more tree planting nearby on private property; maintain the city’s “urban forest” for the long term; and work with other communities and the state’s Nursery Association to address the labor shortage in the tree care sector.
Martens said a key goal is to nearly double the canopy cover in the city’s deprived neighborhoods as well.
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Brittany Peake knows firsthand how trees can transform a neighborhood. The three-bedroom house she bought in Greer, South Carolina, through an affordable housing program, had no trees on the property, a former mobile home community.
The nonprofit TreesUpstate asked Peake last year if she would like to participate in its free tree-planting program. Five trees have now been planted on her property, including a swamp white oak that is already six feet tall. Peake said she looks out for birds nesting in the tree and expects at least one of her four children to eventually climb the branches.
“My husband told me as a child that he had climbed some oaks,” she said. “I’m sure my third son will become a climber, just like his father.”
