Paul Bass Photo
URI's Micael Freiburger and EMERGE's Michael Byrd set tree into its new home Monday afternoon.
Gov. Ned Lamont watched a linden tree take root on Asylum Street, and promised to help New Haven plant more shade in its heat-hampered “environmental injustice neighborhoods.”
That happened Monday afternoon at the end of a tree-themed tour the governor and his top environmental aide took of the Hill.
They came to town to tout Lamont’s proposal now before the legislature to boost the “tree canopy” in cities like New Haven by 5 percent by 2040, and to note money that the administration has already been sending the city to work toward that goal. Thanks to our extensive parkland, New Haven’s 30,000 trees cover 38 percent of the city, compared to 26 percent in Hartford and 19 percent in Bridgeport, according to Lamont’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP). But poor neighborhoods have far fewer trees — the figure for the Hill is 16 percent — and therefore as much as 10 extra degrees on some summer days, which harms the physical and mental health of people who live there.
Before the walking tour, at a presentation in the Career High School library, State Rep. Pat Dillon questioned Lamont and DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes about how these goals dovetail with the administration’s insistence that New Haven remove all the trees in congested, working-class Dayton Street over the city’s objections in order to have permission to repair dangerous sidewalks. (Watch her remarks above; read about the pending Dayton Tree Massacre here.)
“What’s going on today, governor, is fabulous, is very positive,” Dillon stated. “It would be great if we could stop doing bad things while we’re planning good new things.”
Commissioner Dykes declined to comment on the decision, which was made by the Department of Transportation (DOT). She reaffirmed her commitment to increasing the number of street trees in cities like New Haven. She expressed support for a bill Dillon successfully sponsored last year to set up a more rigorous process for when DEEP decides to take down a tree; Dillon and New Haven State Sen. Gary Winfield have submitted a bill this year to establish a similar process for the DOT.
Then the Lamontourage embarked on the tour of four blocks near the school.
URI Executive Director Colleen Murphy-Dunning led the tour. URI has teamed up with an ex-offender training organization called EMERGE to plant hundreds of trees throughout the city since 2007. Murphy-Dunning used each block to make a different point. She showed how the last block of Asylum past Sylvan Avenue (above) suffers from having no street trees (but one prominent maple in a resident’s yard). Three residents formally requested new trees when URI canvassed the block prior to the tour, she reported.
On block two — around the corner on Sylvan — Murphy-Dunning showed how smart planning can help shade a block for decades, in this case thanks to a row of eight hearty London plane trees. (Don’t be fooled by the camouflage-style exfoliating bark, she said: the trees are healthy.)
On Ward Street between Davenport and Sylvan, Murphy-Dunning showed how poor planting planning can backfire: Norway maples like the one pictured grow too tall for blocks with utility wires, and die off prematurely.
Over the past year, with some of the state help, URI has planted Japanese lilacs like the one above on the block. They peak at 25 feet, below the wires.
The tour ended outside 88 Asylum St., where a URI-EMERGE crew waited for the governor to roll a burlap-covered Linden tree root flare intoo a freshly dug four-by-eight-foot hole at the request of resident James Lewis. Click on the video to watch the explanation the governor received.
Gov. Lamont and Mayor Justin Elicker helped shovel the dirt to fill the hole around the new tree.
Then the politicians and the planters gathered for the requisite group photo. “We do not say, ‘Cheese’ ” before the shutter clicks, instructed URI crew leader WIll Tisdale. “We say, ‘Trees!’ ” And everyone did.