To the editor: I read, with great interest, coverage last year on the Davey Group’s report highlighting the substantial loss of Vienna tree canopy.
The report indicated that removed trees have resulted in the loss of 163 acres of canopy in just the past 10 years, and prompted the Vienna Town Council to adopt a key 2023 priority to find ways to protect its trees and increase its urban tree canopy.
Recently, I attended a Vienna Department of Public Works public meeting where the engineering report and design for the Hillcrest Drive, S.W., Robinson Trust Sidewalk Project was presented. Shockingly, the design calls for the removal of 26 decades-old trees. In addition, the report indicates that additional trees will, in all probability, eventually die from sidewalk-construction root damage.
The canopy loss, coupled with a half-mile of new concrete sidewalk, results in a significant environmental impact: carbon-capture losses, heat-retention increases, watershed and biodiversity degradations.
So, for this specific sidewalk project, does the Town Council honor its 2023 tree-canopy objective and vote to stop it? Or attempt to justify the tree destruction because free sidewalk funding is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity vs. tree-canopy loss that will eventually grow back in a few generations?
A program that pits new sidewalks against mature trees is a false choice. You don’t restore your lost canopy by cutting down more trees. It will take 40-50 years for a 1.5-inch-diameter nursery tree to replace the Hillcrest Drive 9-inch or greater diameter trees that will be cut down. You and I – and my children who grew up in Vienna – will be long dead before that happens.
The Council needs to vote NO on the Hillcrest Drive sidewalk project.
Duane Merrill, Vienna
