To the Editor:
I am an East side, District 7 resident calling for the overturn of veto LR31-106 — an ordinance that would establish a Comprehensive Tree Preservation and Urban Forestry Program in Stamford.
I am also an aspiring environmental studies and urban forestry student, native plant landscaper, project leader within the East Side Partnership, and volunteer member of Stamford’s Urban Forestry Working Group. Earlier this year, this group fought to preserve the Government Center’s iconic grove of locust trees — a news story covered by CT Examiner.
The ordinance was grounded in three years of public outreach and expert review—including those in the field of urban forestry from DEEP and Hartford. Essentially, this ordinance creates the structural capacity Stamford currently lacks—dedicated staff who can provide oversight, expertise, as well as obtain funding and resources—by establishing an Urban Forestry Commission and Urban Forester focused exclusively on protecting and expanding the city’s tree canopy.
The ordinance would enable Stamford to act on Mayor Simmons’ Executive Order Addressing Climate Change and Sustainability and provides the action and operation needed to realize and execute the Sustainability and Resilience ambitions of the 2035 Comprehensive Plan.
The Nature Conservancy rated Stamford among the towns with the top 10 greatest disparities in tree coverage between neighborhoods. I feel this ordinance keenly expresses my lived experience in one of Stamford’s more environmentally disadvantaged, neglected neighborhoods. In the over a decade that I have lived here, at least a dozen trees just surrounding my street have been removed. Not one has been planted by the city. The trees on my block — in contrast to the concrete, cars, and asphalt — are conspicuously countable.
Today, the state of the East Side’s canopy is a threat to public health. It is an environmental injustice we have been neglecting for decades. My experience living in a low-canopy coverage neighborhood has instilled a great deal of passion in me. While I attended Rippowam Middle School, Eversource had waged a war on my neighborhood’s trees. I listened to the sharp screech of chainsaws weekly. Their screams were akin to a smoke signal for me; I followed the sound and then determined the danger—was it pruning or full cuts? I questioned and conversed with Eversource, city employees, and my neighbors.
My 14-year-old self made it a stubborn and slightly illegal mission to cut off those dreadful pink tags of death to confuse Eversource workers and prevent more losses. This wasn’t entirely successful… Trees were still being removed by residents at an alarming rate.
Years later, I am 22 and in college. I remember watching hawks soar, occasionally dropping squirrels from tall oak trees. Those oaks are gone. The hawks no longer fly here.
My experience—my daily life has been diminished without trees. Trees to appreciate, marvel at, climb, picnic under, find solace beneath and within. Trees to buffer the ever-busy and ugly sight of I-95 from my parents’ house. Trees whose shade is the mercy I seek in summer heat. Trees whose breaths bestow me mine. With every mature tree removed, I have experienced my quality of life erode; 90 degree days have become a daily gamble as I scramble my streets to be the lucky one, whose car may claim the last scraps of shade. The declining beauty, health, care, and pride in my environment is a reality for residents on the East Side, West Side, and South end.
This is what my car parking Hunger Games escapade typically looks like; desperately shoved under an overgrown shrub someone (thankfully) hasn’t pruned in years.
And this lone tree—this is the last ‘legacy tree’ on my street. This tree makes the view from my window. If the tree is gone, the only beauty worth appreciating, is the sky, unless that too is stolen by high-rises. Representatives, this is the reality of many of your constituents.
Its canopy spans wide enough that this single tree can sometimes shade 9 cars. Subletting and car-dependency has overburdened that tree with a thankless task. Those daily experiences are NOT indicative of quality of life. I have come to dread what summer means for me in my environment; suffocating heat, higher A/C bills, competing with my neighbors for shade. Working at clients’ houses in North Stamford or Norwalk, beneath the shade and cool air of trees, feels like a treat.
Stamford removes more trees than it plants.
Our current budget allots for 70-100 trees to be planted annually. By comparison, the increasingly urbanized city of Norwalk, has aimed to increase its tree canopy to 53%, planting hundreds of trees annually. New Haven and their Urban Resources Initiative planted 1,000 trees last year — a story covered by Yale Daily News here. New Haven’s streets are lined with mature trees—including those of lower income and property value such as pictured here.
Their urban canopy is not just successful because the city plants hundreds every year. They are successful because of legacy/old growth tree preservation. I frequent New Haven weekly for school, and as a public member of Stamford’s Urban Forestry Working Group, have documented several examples of this.
One can clearly see the city’s priority to preserve these specimen trees, even when they grow beyond their street ‘pits’ (prisons) and heave sidewalks; the city has addressed this, not by removing the tree, but by retrofitting the sidewalk to accommodate the tree’s growth and health. They have likely been doing this for decades—as these trees are magnificent today.
In order to achieve what they have, we need preservation, not just planting. This legislation prioritizes preservation. Those trees continue to serve and strengthen the integrity of New Haven’s urban canopy because the city chose to let them live—their preservation prioritized to consider long-time residents and future generations.
The fact is, here in Stamford, our environmental equity and disparity is far more egregious than in a city of comparable size and population like New Haven. And while we can strive to plant trees, this alone will not provide immediate nor timely relief to re-define what it means to live in an environmentally disadvantaged neighborhood.
Nothing we can plant now will change my experience today or anytime soon. I will be middle-aged and have strived to live somewhere with a better quality of life.
This is not to negate the importance of planting. No, my daily life will not be helped and neither will my neighbors, but the next generation’s will be. I have taken it upon myself to plant trees in my neighborhood with the support of the East Side Partnership. All the while, however, I will continue to dread summer and struggle for shade—even with these trees slowly but surely growing.
I am reiterating this perspective with great intention. Again, planting cannot substitute preservation.
The least my project does is gradually provide those unseen benefits to air, water, and soil. Maybe some smiles in reaction to the beautiful Eastern Redbud blossoms. The most it does is plant a slow-growing hope. Hope that in many decades—the next community will not have to compete for shade and dignity. Planting does not ensure this, however. Preservation is the only force that would have changed my reality, and it remains the only way to ensure the trees we plant today survive long enough to meaningfully address this issue.
We cannot treat living infrastructure that takes decades and centuries to develop as expendable, replaceable resources beyond priority and care. In a city, where we lose so much carbon sequestering, stormwater buffering, pollutant filtering—in order words: the literal spaces designed to mitigate every urban-environmental threat to our quality of life—to development and population increase—trees are our allies, our lifelines, and our living infrastructure. They must be considered as such.
The expense of removing a legacy tree is beyond the fees this ordinance proposed. Without those disincentive fees too, for residential and commercial property alike, this ordinance would NOT be so effective at addressing inequity.
For urban residents, most of our trees are in someone else’s backyard. As I just illustrated, at least 9 of us are using that tree solely for shade to park under. We are all using ‘each other’s’ trees. In urban neighborhoods especially, trees are experienced as more of a public good or shared resource, rather than would be in North Stamford, for instance. And because most rent or own very limited space, we are truly at the mercy of our neighbor’s decision to stop the chop.
Much of Stamford’s healthiest canopy comes from residential or commercial property. I am willing to walk the city with anyone to testify to this. Again, as a volunteer in the city’s urban forestry working group, I have observed this extensively.
Why? 60% of land area is just residential property (2035 Comprehensive Plan). As development increases, some of the only urban natural spaces left for trees to thrive are backyards, courtyards—the perimeter landscape of homes and high-rises—which now outnumber parkspace.
Aside from general landscaping requirements, we have little protections in place to counterbalance the loss of trees in new developments. And none, which could even attempt to remediate the loss of legacy trees.
How will we mitigate these losses? How will we balance development with preservation—with fortifying our public health and quality of life?
Every impervious building that goes up is not only sitting on destroyed natural space, but is contributing to long-term, continuous environmental deterioration. Concrete and glass absorb heat and reflect light, increasing local temperatures by contributing to the heat island effect. As impervious surfaces, these buildings indirectly promote flooding as well as soil/water/air pollution via runoff and traffic. Trees and green spaces act as sponges for runoff, f iltering pollutants through matter, root systems, and ground layers. This means the water that is destined for drainage systems is more polluted as it spills into rivers, beaches, and drinking reservoirs.
It is unfair and dangerously imbalanced. This is a one-time fee in exchange for ever-enduring environmental consequences. We must recognize this inevitable chain of consequence and act to mitigate it.
Representatives and neighbors, ask yourselves: Why do we consider quality of life an “obstacle” to development, and development not an “obstacle” to quality of life?
To add to this, I cannot be the only one of the logic that this fee is insufficient deterrence or “obstacle” against development; we are talking about multi-million dollar companies whose return on investment is still significant regardless of some extra expenses for a public good.
Without this ordinance, we are gaining the benefit of housing and economic growth, while negating the many necessities (and economic benefits…) provided by green spaces.
Paying for tree removals is a small compromise to strike this balance. It will either fund future planting and resident tree care via the public tree fund, or it will inspire developers to include existing legacy trees in their plans. This disincentive is exactly why this ordinance is effective. This facet of the ordinance addresses Stamford’s dire need for funding.
I believe this legislature, in addition to protecting trees through disincentives, also addresses environmental injustice. Essentially, it recognizes trees as a mutual, public good, and therefore values them accordingly. We all know what happens when our shared resources are not protected and respected. We all share the consequence.
Representatives, my experience represents many.
It is time to address the neglect of people of color, immigrant, and low-income communities. Sooner or later, if we do not tend to this, this won’t just be an issue of disparity and equity; public health, beauty, and quality of life will become everyone’s business. What will be our legacy?
Diana Kolaj
Stamford, CT