Tree Planting RiverSmart Homes: a needed friend of local watersheds By Marty Frye, Arborist, Casey Trees | It’s snowing outside right now and salt covers the roads. A creaky truck rolls down the street, leaking a slow drip of oil. Soon the steady melt of the snow and coming rains will flush all of this down the street and, with nowhere else to go, into our storm-water drains. Through that system, the polluted water will either go directly to our rivers and streams, or take a trip to the Blue Plains water treatment plant where it will undergo an energy-intensive process to make it clean. In the heaviest of storms, the storm-water will overflow our sewage system and lead to further impacts on our rivers and streams, including exposure to toxins, raised salinity, and excess nutrient load. Meanwhile, up in Ft. Bunker Hill Park — just a few blocks from Casey Trees’ headquarters — the trees and developed forest soils are steadily absorbing the water and keeping it and any pollutants carried with it out of our rivers. Water works at a huge scale and to replace nature’s systems of water management is an epic task, often doomed to failure. The natural, self-regenerating capacity of forests to absorb storm-water and filter it cannot be matched, and only the most expensive conventional storm-water management efforts (try billions of dollars, with a B) come close. The forest that existed in D.C. was once free — all it needed was a little respect and it would continue to do its work for us. Today, the urban forest has dwindled from its previous
glory and the Anacostia, Potomac, Rock Creek, and tributary streams of this great city are suffering as a result. Yet all is not lost. The emergence of well-informed urban forestry efforts seeks to turn this tide and restore our city’s forest. Casey Trees’ partnership with the District Department of Environment through the River Smart Homes program seeks to tackle this problem head on and with a motivating goal in mind: healthy rivers and streams. Residential yards are some of the most abundant plant-able spaces in the city. Parks like Ft. Bunker Hill are limited in the city and can’t handle all of the water flowing through our urban watershed, but by reforesting house by house we can drastically increase the tree canopy in the city. Vital to this effort are homeowners who are willing and excited to care for trees. Even in the city, we live in a complex watershed with natural processes at play. By cooperating with these processes, we can make life easier for ourselves and for our rivers and streams.
Submit a request online to get started with the RiverSmart Homes program today.
theleaflet
| April 2014
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