NeighborWoods provides free street trees

City sees green in storm water runoff, air quality savings

SANDPOINT — When the township of Sandpoint was first located on the east bank of Sand Creek near the railroad depot, it took a while before people moved to the other side of the waterway — a heavily treed area they thought of as “the woods.”

Those trees toppled quickly, however, as the town took root and began to grow. Neighborhoods fanned out from the downtown grid and our forward-thinking forebears who built homes there decided to leave a gift for future generations. They planted new trees along their streets, creating a legacy that stands today as one of Sandpoint’s most endearing qualities.

Most of us can only recite a few of the names from the early years of Sandpoint, but we can easily point to their labor of love as we drive through Oak-lined tunnels like those along Sixth, Pine and Church, or stand under the canopy of leaves at Farmin Park. A recent inventory placed the number of street trees — those growing on city owned right-of-way — at about 2,400.

That’s good news for the older neighborhoods where the old giants tower, but in areas where newer subdivisions have sprung up, homeowners now have an opportunity to leave their own legacy in a program called NeighborWoods.

Free Trees

“Just from driving around town you’d think, ‘Wow! We’ve got a lot of trees,’” said Stephen Drinkard, project coordinator and urban forester for the City of Sandpoint.

“But, if you take the whole area of Sandpoint, we’re actually below the national standard. Surprisingly enough, there are lots of areas in Sandpoint that have wide parkways with nary a tree on them.”

According to Drinkard, trees cover only about 5 percent of the land within city limits. The non-profit conservation group, American Forests, recommends a “canopy” of 25 percent for cities in this part of the U.S.

The urban forester and members of the city’s Tree Committee have borrowed a successful program that Olympia, Wash., started in 1998 to increase its canopy. Since NeighborWoods got underway there, more than 3,000 street trees have been planted in a volunteer program that provides them for free to property owners who attend a workshop on planting and caring for trees and then watch over the new addition for a few years after it goes into the ground.

Sandpoint’s version of NeighborWoods will be an exact replica, requiring only a short application, a site visit from the urban forester to make sure the proposed site is on city right-of-way and workshop attendance before the free tree is delivered. For those who may not physically be able to do the planting, assistance will be available, Drinkard said.

Seeing Green

Beyond the obvious attributes like shade, trees have a monetary value, said Rich Del Carlo, an arborist who owns Peregrine Tree & Landscape and sits on the tree committee. An old willow tree that until recently graced the corner of Larch and Boyer was worth about $150,000 as a standing tree and virtually nothing once property owners of the adjacent vacant commercial land took it down, he estimated.

“It went from being a beautiful, overwhelmingly majestic tree to being a pile of free firewood overnight,” Del Carlo said. “There are a lot of trees like that in town — trees that are at least 100 years old.”

The value of old beauties like the lost willow is arrived at using an appraisal protocol devised by the International Society of Arboriculture. Based on that same method, Sandpoint’s city owned trees are worth about $7 million. Those trees continue to save the city money in other ways, Drinkard pointed out.

“The canopy lessens the cost for storm water runoff,” he said. “If there were no street trees to collect some of that water before it hits the ground, Sandpoint would need to build another $2 million in storm water capacity.”

Some experts take an even closer look at the “ecological services” trees provide to a community. As part of a 2006 study that included the local urban forest, Mike Bowman, past-chair of the Idaho Department of Lands Urban & Community Forestry Advisory Council, and Dr. Jim Fazio, a professor in the Department of Conservation Social Sciences at the University of Idaho, calculated the environmental clean-up capacity of public trees in Sandpoint.

“Large-scale tree planting programs,” they wrote, “are recognized as a legitimate tool in many national carbon-reduction programs,” adding that the 2,400 street trees in Sandpoint already sequester about 48 tons of carbon per year. American Forests’ CityGreen report goes a step further, using satellite imagery of tree canopy to analyze the financial impact for different cities.

“Using health cost savings due to the reduction of air pollutants and storm water management savings, the ecological service value of Sandpoint’s canopy cover is at least $1,143,409 per year,” the report stated.

Tree City

Twelve years ago, Sandpoint was added to a list of more than 70 of the Arbor Day Foundation’s “Tree City USA” locations in Idaho — cities that spend at least $2 per capita on planting and caring for trees. But, until about two years ago, we were only faking it, Drinkard said, padding the number with dollars spent for things like leaf removal.

Last year, the urban forestry program had a budget of about $22,000, some of which was used for planting, with the remainder invested in pruning to allow clearance for snow trucks and street sweepers, as well as removal of selected trees that have become hazardous due to disease or old age.

The most recent budget item for the current year is the fledgling NeighborWoods program, with about $3,000 set aside for buying trees this summer. Drinkard was unsure whether the city council will fund the program next year, but hopes that strong interest in the free street trees this time around will lead to ongoing support. The timing for such plantings is becoming more critical, according to Del Carlo, who said many of the old friends along our streets will begin to die over the next several years.

“That’s one of the main things that prompted us to get this going,” he said. “We have some beautiful trees in town, but it’s an urban forest that has reached maturity. We’re trying to maintain and reinvigorate the tree canopy.”

“Property owners along our coveted, tree-lined streets should start thinking now about what they’re going to do when those classic trees start dying,” added Drinkard. “Unless we start interspersing plantings for the trees we’re going to be losing, people who live here down the line are going to be shocked.”

Emotional Rescue

When the city took over management of its streets from the Sandpoint Independent Highway District in 2000, much attention was given to landing a new shop and acquiring the equipment to fill it, with far less emphasis placed on taking care of the tree inventory. In that gap, a few bad actors in the downtown area either dropped or topped trees in front of their businesses, leading to an ordinance that now gives the city sole authority over its street trees.

In his role as the “tree guy” who helps wield that authority, Drinkard has learned that local residents become protective when they see a pruning operation in progress and they jam the phone lines if a tree is removed.

You can take out a streetlight next to an old tree and no one will notice for days — if they notice at all — the urban forester said.

“But if someone comes in and whacks down that tree, you’ll have anger and passion and people demanding to know why it’s gone,” he added. “There’s practical, utilitarian value to trees, but there’s an emotional connection, too.”

“They not only help the climate, they’re part of the well-being of everyone who lives here,” Del Carlo said. “And along with what we gain, there are benefits for other critters, as well. The big trees in our town provide quite a lot of wildlife habitat.”

“There is a legacy here,” Drinkard said. “It’s our chance to leave something to the public.”

Applications are now being accepted for the NeighborWoods free tree program. Once applicants are approved, trees will be delivered for planting by the first week of September. Hard copy applications are available in the city Planning Office and will also be posted on line within a week at www.cityofsandpoint.com

For more information on the types of trees provided, planting assistance and workshop dates, contact Stephen Drinkard at 263-3370.