You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘air pollution’ tag.
Global water on the left – global air on the right. Certainly not what I expected.
This image come through to me on Facebook today & made me sit up straight & take notice. The small spheres on planet Earth depict the global water & air volume. Frankly I found it a scary image in light of the current & ongoing massive air & water pollution affecting the planet. It visually depicts exactly what we need to conserve & take care of to keep us alive. Trees help of course.
It is well worth reading the information from the Science Photo Library, which goes into detail about what the image means. – http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/159214/enlarge
The Smarter Earth Institute has done separate calculations to see if the image is correct & according to them it is. That also makes for interesting reading. http://www.smarterearth.org/MeFTWaterAndAir
New verge gardens along Mansion Street Marrickville South - a massive improvement to the streetscape
Marrickville Council has recently replaced the concrete footpath & created verge gardens along Mansion Street Marrickville South. I think they look terrific & greatly improve the streetscape. The street trees now have an opportunity to collect sufficient water when it rains & the gardens themselves should reduce stormwater runoff. There are no problems for pedestrians as there are wide pathways from the roadside to the footpath placed at regular intervals.
Considering that Marrickville Council spends in excess of $2-million every year just on mowing grass verges, I think verge gardens like this would be a far better use of our rates. Imagine what $2-million could do each year if it were put into planting street trees & landscaping our streets & parks. It wouldn’t take too long to significantly green up our landscape.
Research has shown that the greener the environment is, the happier & healthier people tend to be. Verge gardens are also beneficial for the environment. They help collect stormwater & pollution from passing traffic & if planted with wildlife-friendly plants, could also provide a food source for our urban wildlife.
Red Flowering gums along a series of verge gardens in Dulwich Hill
We know a good-looking street tree increases the property value of those near it, so it’s only logical that verge gardens & a better-looking streetscape would also improve property values. Green really does equal money when it comes to real estate, especially in high-density areas like the Inner West.
Of course there are streets in Marrickville LGA that do not have room for verge gardens or where they would be impractical, but many could have them. If verge gardens are put into the right places, they should not impede pedestrians or people leaving vehicles. The size of the verge gardens I have seen across Marrickville LGA mean that people pushing prams or shopping trolleys can do so without difficulty.
On the newish verge gardens in Livingstone Road Marrickville, Council has put a concrete path from the kerb to footpath opposite the front gate of all the houses facilitating unobstructed movement from car to house. This has been repeated in all the other verge gardens I have seen. Where multiple verge gardens have been created along a street, there is a pedestrian pathway to the footpath every few metres big enough for a wheelchair, pram or trolley. Council also don’t put plants on the kerb-side of the garden so that people don’t have to exit the passenger-side of the car into shrubbery that could cut their legs or cause them to fall.
My experience of Marrickville Council is that they are highly vigilant when it comes to safety so I can’t imagine them putting in a verge garden where it would cause people problems.
If Council were not spending all their time mowing grass verges, they could be managing the verge gardens instead. Apparently, once they are grown, verge gardens look after themselves & only need a bit of occasional weeding. There is always room for other plants so if property owners wanted to add other plants, they could. They just need to be safe plants for passing pedestrians, children & dogs – so no cacti or other plants that could cause injury, nothing that could cause difficulty for passengers leaving cars & no high-growing plants that could reduce visibility for drivers.
I know this is a contentious issue in the community. I’ve heard arguments against verge gardens that residents should not have to look after the verges, therefore grass verges must continue. My personal opinion is that verge gardens have much in the way of benefit & there is no reason why Council cannot continue to look after these areas. Some people say they like grass verges & I appreciate that. I don’t dislike grass, but I much prefer plants & flowers.
The reality is the climate is changing & as a society, we must make changes that will help lower the urban heat island effect or we will be condemning ourselves to be living in an oven. Grass verges are less effective at cooling through evaporation than plants & trees. A dried out grass verge can take on the qualities of hard surfaces, not absorbing rainwater well. Grass requires a lot of water & maintenance to keep looking good & does nothing to help with biodiversity.
These verge gardens at the Arlington Oval intersection in Dulwich Hill are stunning
Street trees along the City of Sydney Council end of King Street Newtown proving it can be done
We know that the particulate matter in air pollution comes from vehicles & coal power stations causes respiratory disease, including asthma in both children & adults as well as heart attack related death. Now 2 new research studies done by entirely different research groups in Germany & the USA have shown that particulate matter also increases the incidence of Type 2 Diabetes.
… the new data provide important & more rigorous evidence that real-world pollution may be tampering with blood sugar control in a large & growing number of people.
The researchers used proximity to roads — where vehicles would be a major pollution source — as a proxy for exposure to fine particulates. Women who developed diabetes were more likely to have lived nearest to heavily trafficked roads.
Compared to the 25% of women living farthest from busy roads, the relative risk of developing diabetes was 15% higher for the 25% of women living closest to major roadways.
There is a growing body of literature suggesting that people with diabetes may be more susceptible to the harmful effects of air pollution.
All the more reason why we need to start planting more street trees, especially on & around main roads. This issue is fast becoming one that will have serious impacts on our health system. It makes sense to use nature to try to lessen the impact of our 21st Century lifestyle as money spent now may help mitigate the financial cost of disease in the future.
It’s well worth reading the full article – http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/63971/title/Air_pollution_appears_to_foster_diabetes
I wrote about this issue here – http://savingourtrees.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/living-close-to-a-main-road-is-bad-for-your-health/ &
http://savingourtrees.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/trees-particulate-matter/
Marrickville Council section of Parramatta Road on right. Leichhardt Council on left
An article was published in Reuters Health this week about research done by Dr Robert A Silverman of the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York. Dr Silverman studied the link between particulate matter (pollution from vehicles & coal-fire power plants) & 8,000 heart attacks in New York City between 2002 & 2006.
“As the levels of particulate matter air pollution increased, more cardiac arrests occurred.”
“When they looked at fine particulate matter (particles 2.5 micrometer or less in size), they found that the risk of having a deadly cardiac arrest rose by between 4 & 10% with every 10-microgram-per-cubic-meter increase in fine particulates.” The current EPA standard of 35 micrograms per cubic meter is grossly inadequate.
“Being indoors may offer only limited protection since small particles can penetrate into buildings and homes.”
As far as I can ascertain, there are only 3 things that stop particulate matter –
- removing all vehicles from the roads,
- closing down coal-fire power stations &
- trees.
In 2003 there were 204 million vehicles on the road in the US. This increased to 246 million vehicles on the road by January 2010. In 2009, there were 50 million more vehicles on US roads than 6 years previously, though in 2010, it dropped to only 46 million more. In comparison, China is estimated to have in excess of 70 million vehicles on the road by the end of 2010 & expected to have over 200 million by 2020. Still they wont have caught up with the Jones’s.
Australian statistics were hard to get though I did find that 13.2 million vehicles, including motorcycles, were registered in Australia at 31 March 2003. I would expect the numbers to be much higher for 2010.
Worldwide it is predicted there will be 1.2 billion vehicles on the road by 2015.
Only the cost of petrol or a severe shortage of oil is going to bring down vehicle use numbers. You can see why most cities are trying to encourage public transport use, walking & cycling.
As for coal-fired power stations, Australia does not look like it is planning to reduce or stop them with up to 12 new coal-fired power stations planned across the country. Unfortunately, in NSW they intend to mine for coal in the small bits of land that is Koala habitat. If you are interested in this – https://www.savethekoala.com/ is a terrific resource & Deborah’s (Tabart) Diary gives regular updates about the Koala situation in Australia https://www.savethekoala.com/deborahtabartsdesk.html
Everyone loves this end of Crystal Street because of the large trees
Lastly, we come to trees. Trees remove up to 60% of street level particulate matter & dramatically improve air quality, which is why their presence is so important in high traffic areas. The more trees in an area, the better the air quality. Trees also absorb other pollutants such as Ozone, Nitrogen Dioxide & Sulfur Dioxide through their leaves.
A street tree removes 9 times the amount of air-born pollution from passing traffic than does a tree on a nearby property. Street trees also improve the air that enters people’s homes, especially important as particulate matter penetrates buildings even when the windows are closed.
Large trees provide the most benefit as they provide greater absorption of particulate matter. Small stature trees that are the perhaps the most common sized tree across Marrickville LGA have far less ability to do this.
The issue of pollution from vehicles is becoming an issue that is too hard to ignore. I am of the opinion that many of our roads in Marrickville LGA are quite dangerous in this regard due to the large volumes of traffic every day. Even small suburban streets that are more like lanes can have in excess of 7,000 vehicles/day.
If the Marrickville Metro expansion goes ahead there will be a potential loss of 142 trees & an extra 4 million shoppers a year. You can just imagine the air pollution around the surrounding residential streets & the planned plaza.
Parramatta Road & the Princes Highway are mostly treeless in the section that is under the governance of Marrickville Council. It’s not just a matter of beautifying areas that are seriously lacking in aesthetic beauty, it is a matter of public health.
Parramatta Road under the governance of City of Sydney Council
This problem is not going to go away. I think the NSW state government should allocate money to Marrickville Council to plant trees on these main roads. This is a major project requiring funds that Marrickville Council cannot afford. For this reason it is imperative that the state government fund it as a special environmental project. It will save the government much greater amounts of money in the long run as people living in Marrickville LGA may just end up in the health-care system.
The population of Marrickville LGA is going to expand. We will all be living & shopping closer together & despite what the authorities say, I believe that the ‘culture of the car’ is not over by a long-shot. If I am correct, then the issue of pollution-related illness from vehicles is going to spike in the Inner West & we are going to need many more trees to try & lessen the particulate matter that the residents & workers are breathing in.
On 29th June 2010 I posted ‘Living close to a main road is bad for your heath’ which discusses this issue further.
http://savingourtrees.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/living-close-to-a-main-road-is-bad-for-your-health/
To read the article with a link to the research paper – http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100916/hl_nm/us_pollution_cardiac
Banana 'trees,' perfect for rooftop gardens. For trivial pursuit fanatics: Bananas are not actually trees. Their trunk is a pseudostem that dies once a bunch of bananas have been produced
Right now in major cities of the world enormously good things are happening in regards to built-up areas & green space. They too have growing populations. However, they have made decisions to make buildings more green, sustainable, people friendly as well as environmentally friendly. They are doing this because these buildings are going to be there for the next few decades & rather than continue to build unimaginative buildings that only house people, they are making the buildings also improve the environment while they are standing there.
Melbourne just announced the winner of a rooftop garden competition, the first of its kind in Australia as part of its Growing Up project. The winning rooftop garden was built on top of an old 10-storey office block & included a lightweight polystyrene hill covered in soil & planted with drought-tolerant plants & permeable glass paving to collect rainwater.
The Growing Up project says 20% of Melbourne city’s available space is wasted on unused rooftops. If we see an increase in the number of green roofs in Melbourne, we could see a reduction in the urban heat island effect of up to 2 degrees Celcius. We can also improve biodiversity, air quality & they really are a fantastic aesthetic addition to Melbourne’s space. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/15/2954450.htm
An experimental rooftop garden at the University of Melbourne’s Burnley campus has shown an energy saving of up to 40% for cooling the building in summer. This is significant at times of high power prices & the serious issue of global warming.
Another benefit is better stormwater management as the rooftop garden catches & utilises as much as 80% of rainwater, meaning less water going down the drain, less stress on our often old & inadequate drains, less flooding of roads & footpaths & less stormwater running wasted into the sea.
Interestingly, the roof membrane lasts 2-3 times longer when there is a rooftop garden because the garden protects the roof from UV rays & temperature swings.
Green roofs combat the heat island effect dramatically without changing land use. I’ve heard people query the relevance of the heat island effect saying they like heat, but when the surface of footpaths, outdoor cemented areas & roofs are 27-50 degrees hotter than the air, it becomes a major problem. In built up urban areas, night time air temperatures can be as much as 12 degrees hotter due to trapped heat radiating out from the surfaces of buildings. This makes for an uncomfortable time for those living close by as well as higher power bills, poor air quality from increased pollution levels because pollution gets trapped in the heat, as well as elevated greenhouse gases & ground level ozone.
If there is a heatwave, all these effects increase & can result in higher rates of respiratory problems such as asthma, heat stroke & heat-related deaths.
Although green roofs are not common in Australia, in other countries they are an established part of the infrastructure. For example, Copenhagen is about to adopt a policy that makes a green roof mandatory for all new buildings with roof slopes of less than 30%. http://inhabitat.com/2010/06/09/copenhagen-adopts-a-mandatory-green-roof-policy/
Chicago has a Green Roof Grant Program for a while & has over 200 green roofs, covering 232,257 sq metres (2.5 million sq ft). They have a very good picture of what a city could look like – http://www.artic.edu/webspaces/greeninitiatives/greenroofs/main.htm
Nice photos of green roofs in Chicago from 2006 -http://www.inhabitat.com/2006/08/01/chicago-green-roof-program/
90 second tour of a green roof -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E278d5d0z0
5 minutes video of research on green roofs & their benefits -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxqdPOUoJ90&feature=related
Finally, from the benefits of Green Roofs IGRA World –
It is very difficult to find positive arguments for bare or gravelled roofs. Lower building costs for “Non-Green Roofs” in comparison to a Green Roof, are weak arguments considering it is only a short-term calculation. Long-term costs of maintenance & repairs of ‘naked roofs’ are much higher than that of Green Roofs. It has to be considered that roofs belong to the most strained parts of a building; if no precautions are taken & product qualities lack, problems arise quickly. http://www.igra-world.com/benefits/index.php
It would be wonderful if Marrickville Council adopted green roofs as a standard in their new Local Environment Plan, a draft of which is soon to be released for public comment. These types of roofs are likely to be commonplace in the future because built up urban areas are becoming very hot & costly in terms of power use. Businesses will want to save costs where ever they can. The initial outlay is going to be ultimately cost effective because of a 40% reduction in power costs & because a green roof is expected to last at least 20-30 years without maintenance.
Marrickville Council could build on their reputation as a Green Council by encouraging green roofs & green walls at all new major developments & set the standard for other councils to follow. More on green walls in a future post.
car park reflection
View of trees in the unused space beside the main entrance at Marrickville Metro
AMP, which owns Marrickville Metro, plans to expand the shopping complex by 35,000 sq mts, more than doubling its size. They intend to bypass planning restrictions from Marrickville Council & apply to the Joint Regional Planning Panel under Part 3A. In my opinion it is highly likely that the plan will get the go ahead from the JRPP, as they seem happy to permit development that local Councils have indicated they are likely to refuse.
The Marrickville Greens are opposed to the proposed expansion of Marrickville Metro & you can read what they think about the issue by clicking on this link – http://marrickvillegreens.wordpress.com/issue/marrickville-metro-expansion/ I am unaware what Marrickville Labor or the Independent Councillors think about the proposed expansion.
On AMP’s Marrickville Metro web-site they say their research showed:
- One in 2 people found the idea of an expanded Metro “very appealing”
- 81% of Marrickville LGA residents thought that an upgraded Metro would serve the community better
- 58% liked both strip shopping locations & shopping centres
This is a seriously big Fig with a girth of many metres. It stands near the front entrance on Victoria Road.
Apart from the obvious impact this development will have on our local shopping strips & issues like increased traffic, pollution & delivery trucks, SoT’s main concern is the probable loss of all the mature trees which surround the Metro site & all the mature Eucalypts which line the surrounding roads.
Around the perimeter of the current Marrickville Metro there are 54 Figs, 13 Brushbox, 3 Camphor laurels, 1 Peppercorn, 1 Palm. There are 11 mature Eucalypts on Smidmore Street. This is a total of 83 mature trees & I did not include the smaller trees.
Looking at the drawing of the new Metro on AMPs web-site I would consider all these trees at risk of removal. The artist’s impression of what the finished development will look like is interesting. The drawing of the new Metro shows 3 London Plane trees & lots of paving.
AMP say they want feedback from the community. They don’t appear to be asking how we feel about the expansion or whether we want it or not, but what kind of shops & amenities we would like. Regardless, you can write to AMP & give feedback. franchesca.garciadarke@ampcapital.com
Personally, I don’t want a bigger Metro. Two supermarkets are enough for me. I definitely do not want all those trees chopped down. I believe that for the Inner West we need the opposite to concentration of large volumes of traffic towards 1 block of land. A sustainable inner Sydney needs shopping strips near where people live as opposed to being forced to use their car & travel for kilometres each time they go shopping.
AMP’s Marrickville Metro web-site is at the following link – http://www.marrickvillemetroshopping.com.au/developmentupdate.amx
Gloriously beautiful trees which are a huge asset to Newcastle
The community tree preservation group Save Our Figs (SoF) based in Newcastle NSW has an acute issue that is about to be decided upon by Newcastle City Council. The Council wants to remove 13 eighty year old Hill’s Figs that line Laman Street & top Civic Park. SoF has been lobbying Newcastle Council to search for other options rather than chop down these phenomenally beautiful Fig trees & replace them with trees that Newcastle Council have not nominated as yet.
From the SoF petition - Laman Street is Newcastle’s most beautiful street. Newcastle City Council believes the 13 figs in the street are likely to fall down in the next 5 – 15 years. They have based this on the advice of a single arborist. The council is considering no other option than felling the trees & we believe alternatives need to be examined such as closing the street to vehicles &/or pedestrians or closing the street in storms. As it is a non-residential & non-commercial street the chance of injury by a falling tree is remote & the trees are an integral part of Newcastle’s identity.
and I complained about hammering nails into trees....
We don’t have a comparable tree site in Marrickville LGA. Newcastle has many Fig trees, but the Laman Street avenue of Fig trees, being in the centre of town, are truly memorable because they are particularly beautiful trees. Naturally, when a Council wants to remove trees like these that have so much history behind them, the community is going to be upset. I doubt there would be many people in Newcastle who don’t know the Laman Street Fig trees & most hold them dear to their heart.
I have been in regular contact with Caitlin Raschke who runs Save Our Figs since the campaign started. Over Easter, we visited & went to look at the Fig trees in Laman Street. I hadn’t seen them in 23 years, which was the last time I went to this street as part of my employment at that time. I remember how stunned I was when the taxi dropped me off & I looked up at these fantastic trees. They haven’t changed & the feeling you get when you stand in Laman Street had just as much impact this time as it did all those years ago. The only thing that had changed was Civic Park, which to my mind, had deteriorated significantly. Apart from the fantastic fountain, much of Civic Park seems uncared for, particularly the memorial grove for fallen soldiers & there seemed to be less trees than I remember.
I also saw Tyrell Street, which lost a few Hill’s Figs during a major storm a few years ago. Newcastle Council removed a number of Figs along this street & replaced them with Tuckaroos. To me, the result looks like a scar.
Is this a practice stump? It's located the beginning of the avenue of spectacular Hills Figs in Laman Street
It is heartbreaking to think that the Laman Street Hill’s Fig trees will be chopped down. I am in total agreement with Caitlin when she says everything possible should be done to save these iconic trees.
In Europe & especially America this would happen as a norm. All sorts of options would be canvassed & money would be spent to save & care for trees like these which give so much back to the community in terms of air quality, carbon sequestration, pollution removal, beauty, history & homes & food for wildlife, including bats. Just last night I was reading how Fig trees can be stabilized & the risk of them falling can be dramatically reduced by using peat-filled pipes. These days some Councils chop off the roots that grow from the branches of Fig trees & descend to the ground. It is these roots the tree uses to stabilize itself, as it grows larger. If you put peat-filled pipes from the root stumps along the branches, the tree will rapidly grow new roots down through the pipe & into the ground. Isn’t nature clever? I guess, in time, you could cut open & remove the pipe if it was made from PVC.
Laman Street is very popular for wedding photographs because the street trees are so beautiful
The Laman Street Fig trees also provide a strong sense of presence to such central & important buildings such as the Art Gallery & others located here. Importantly, the trees provide a popular place to get married & have wedding photos taken. Later, their children can still see, touch & play where Mum & Dad were on their wedding day. I know this is a strong emotion for many people because of the feedback I have received about the St Stephen’s Hill’s Fig in Newtown. Those who had their wedding photo taken under this tree love it in a special & strong way. The tree or trees gets incorporated into the story of the relationship/marriage. This is not surprising because human beings have always associated trees with strength, longevity & wisdom & this is easily transferred over to hopes surrounding a marriage.
I must say that, like only a few people outside the LGA know how beautiful our Cooks River really is, not many people know how beautiful Newcastle is. I wanted to pack up & move to Cooks Hill immediately. The beaches are stunning & wild, the streets are clean, the traffic is not like traffic, droves of people were out in the sunshine, the cafés were full to bursting & the trees, well I could go on about them for hours. Newcastle is a naturally beautiful place because of the hills, the river & the beaches. But without all those large & spectacular trees in parks & on roadsides it wouldn’t be as beautiful. Newcastle could be called the City of Fig Trees because they have so many gorgeous Fig trees scattered about. In my opinion, these trees make this city special.
Please pay a visit to Save Our Figs. There is an online petition open to anyone who cares about these trees. http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/laman-street-figs.html 2,500 Newcastle residents have already signed both a paper petition & the online petition & that is 2% of the Newcastle community.
Like Saving Our Trees, there has been no advertising. It has been all word of mouth, which I think makes it stronger as a community campaign. There are no bells & whistles to draw people in, just a love for trees & a wish that trees be saved from the chain-saw.
I would read http://saveourfigs.wordpress.com/ from the beginning. But if you find this idea too time consuming, the following pages are notable. Caitlin’s reply to a comment gives a run down on the history of the community campaign in the following link – http://saveourfigs.wordpress.com/2010/04/02/barcelona-just-as-barbaric-as-newcastle/
The Save Our Figs home page also gives a timeline of what has been happening during the campaign – http://saveourfigs.wordpress.com/
You can read the follow-up post written on 1st September 2010 about the Independent Arborist Report by clicking here http://savingourtrees.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/independent-arborist-report-for-newcastles-laman-street-figs/
7th October 2011 – As this seems to be the post people are coming for information, the following posts offer more recent posts about the Laman Street Figs starting with the Councillors vote to kill the trees -
10th October 2011 - Newcastle community fights to save the Laman Strett Street Figs – http://savingourtrees.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/newcastle-community-fight-to-save-the-laman-street-fig-trees/
4th October 2011 – The final vote is to kill the trees. http://savingourtrees.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/newcastle-councillors-vote-to-kill-the-laman-street-fig-trees/
13th September 2011- The Figs get some fairness – http://savingourtrees.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/laman-street-figs-get-some-fairness/
29th August 2011 – Not mulch yet - http://savingourtrees.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/not-mulch-yet/
26th August 2011 – Laman Street Figs Next Life will be Mulch - http://savingourtrees.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/the-laman-street-figs-next-life-will-be-mulch/
3rd August 2011 – Mediation for the Figs -http://savingourtrees.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/mediation-for-laman-street-fig-trees/
26th August 2011 – The Newcastle Councillors voted on the fate of the Laman Street Figs last night – http://bit.ly/n1BNrK
Tree-lined shopping strip in Newcastle CBD - This is what I would like our shopping strips in Marrickville LGA to look like - proof it can be done
Cooks Hill Newcastle with Stockton in the distance - note the many large street trees
Yesterday I received an e-mail from Voren, a local resident which included a bunch of photos of mutilated street trees on Riverside Crescent Dulwich Hill. These photos are a perfect example of how the streetscape can be ruined by pruning for electricity cables. I was extremely happy to receive these & welcome any photos or addresses of public trees you think is worth the attention of SoT. My e-mail address can be found on the About me page.
Voren's photos of the street trees in Riverside Crescent Dulwich Hill
On 26th January 2010 the Cumberland Courier ran another street tree article titled Tears for mutilated trees. This time the residents of Lalor Park were distressed at the state Integral Energy left their 50-year-old street trees after pruning for overhead wires. Terms such as “hacked,” “massacred,” “mutilated” & “butchered” were used to describe the aftermath.
Back in October 2009 Blacktown City Council put Integral Energy on notice about their pruning practices after they had pruned the trees in Riverstone & surrounding suburbs.
When they saw what happened to the street trees in Lalor Park, Blacktown Council stepped in & suspended Integral Energy’s powerline clearance pruning work.
Integral Energy apologised & now has to work under the supervision of Blacktown Council, review their tree pruning practices & fulfil a range of other requirements.
Hallelujah! Finally a municipal council stepping in to ensure the street trees are not mutilated to the point where it is questionable whether they will survive, where the streetscape is marred for many years, where once beautiful trees are ruined forever & where people have to lose an essential part of what makes a street a desirable place to live as well as the negative impact on property values. It may be that a council has stepped in before, but apart from Mosman Council doing so many years ago, I am unaware of this.
There is more of this tree on the ground than what is left on the tree
The Lalor Park residents say they no longer have shade on the street or footpath. I can attest to that as my own street lost the shade from the street trees after recent pruning by Energy Australia. When the sun is overhead we now have the long shadow of the electricity & pay TV cables instead of shade from street trees. Frankly it looks weird & of course it is hot.
You can’t stand under a street tree having a chat to your neighbours anymore. You have to look for shade & move to it, either on private property or walk across the road where the street trees were only slightly pruned. This apparently small thing will have an impact on community relations over time.
This is a great article from the Cumberland Courier with much more information than I have reported. You can read it by clicking on the following link – http://cumberland-courier.whereilive.com.au/news/story/tears-for-mutilated-trees/ I thank the Cumberland Courier as they have been reporting on trees frequently of late.
Friends of the Urban Forest in San Francisco USA recently posted a call for help on their web-site asking residents to alert them to public trees which have been illegally pruned.
Friends of the Urban Forest & the Bureau of Urban Forestry (don’t you love these names) have planted 10,928 new street trees in San Francisco since 2003.
About street trees they say, “The small, younger trees currently provide very little environmental benefit…” meaning that if older more mature trees are removed due to heavy pruning which weakens them or makes them way too ugly, then replacing them is not as good as a solution as it seems on the surface. Personally I am worried that in our LGA we will reach the stage where we will have more young trees with thin trunks than we will have older trees.
Older trees sequester greater amounts of CO2, filter more particulate matter & other pollutants (though you need leaves to do this & there are plenty of trees with thick trunks, but with relatively few branches & leaves after pruning in Marrickville LGA), produce larger amounts of oxygen & collects more storm water runoff than does a tree with a thin trunk.
We can already see in some areas of our LGA that the skyline has few tall trees. I think it is a shame that we can count the trees visible along the skyline. This is not the case in many other suburbs of Sydney metropolitan area where the overall look & feel is green because their canopy is substantial.
We need to keep as many of the large stature street trees as we are able & our young trees need to be given a chance to grow up because it is then they provide the most benefit. Severe pruning clearly demonstrated in Voren’s photographs not only makes the tree ugly & negatively impacts the streetscape & our lives, but also weakens the tree making it more susceptible to disease. A weakened & diseased tree will be more likely to fall in a storm or some other event that places pressure upon it.
I do understand that street trees need to be pruned for the passage of overhead wires & I have never advocated that this should be stopped. I do believe however that our electricity companies can do a much better job of pruning & Blacktown Council’s intervention has proved this.
The article by Friends of the Urban Forest is interesting reading & describes the impact of over pruning & topping. They also have some fantastic photographs of trees that have been severely mutilated. You can access this via the following link – http://www.fuf.net/getInvolved/topping.html
Tempe Wetlands - how will the RTA put a major arterial road over this without destroying it?
On a final note, a local community group called Tempe 2010 is holding a rally on Saturday 6th February at 11am meeting in South Street (between Hart & Fanning Streets) Tempe. They are opposing the building of a new arterial road that is to go over the Cooks River, across the newly renovated Tempe Reserve & over the top of the lovely Tempe Wetlands ending at a t-section at Sydney Park.
SoT is interested not only because of the obvious factors of more roads, traffic, noise & pollution, but also because the Tempe Reserve is likely to be grossly affected & the damage to the wetlands is a real concern. There is also the question of how many trees will need to be removed to build this new road.
All the details as well as how to access information from the RTA about this project & to connect with Tempe 2010 can be accessed via the Marrickville Greens web-site http://marrickvillegreens.wordpress.com/
The Greens have been in the Inner West Courier about this issue recently & have stated they are against this project as it stands. I hope the other councillors look into the impact of the new arterial road & decide to publicly oppose it if it is indeed as environmentally destructive as it seems to be. I say ‘seems’ because I haven’t looked into the literature as yet.
We cannot keep building cities for cars instead of people. Four vulnerable assets; the Cooks River, Tempe Reserve, the many old park trees & the Tempe Wetlands need to be fought for & protected by both Marrickville Council & the community if this project negatively impacts on these. One visit to these areas will show you just how much work Marrickville Council & community groups have put into improving all these sites over the years. I think this is a worthwhile event to attend & find out what we need to know to make an informed decision. It is also good to support a community group who is working to save quite significant assets for our benefit & for future generations. J
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