Please Don’t Destroy the Trees

"Lady, this is going to happen whether you like it or not." At least, that is what the City worker with the chainsaw says as I march up to him and demand him to stop. I accept the challenge of authority. "I am the chairperson of our neighborhood tree committee and block rep for this street. I just returned from a meeting with the Alderman's office, City Of Chicago Water Department, and Department of Forestry. Everyone has agreed our trees in this neighborhood will not be removed, today or tomorrow!"

In minutes his boss is on the phone and fifteen minutes later a representative from the Alderman’s office and the Department of Forestry arrive in the middle of the street with me. A few neighbors start to gather around us. The man with the chainsaw is as surprised as I am at how effective I am in delaying him from butchering the limbs from a beautiful 60-year-old tree, at least for a few hours that day. Trimming major limbs from beautiful mature trees in my neighborhood had become common practice over the past years and, I was tired of it. Those limbs provide a great deal of shade, beauty, and environmental benefits for everyone.

On that one day, the limbs of that tree were not the larger issue brewing.

My appreciation for trees began early on. When I was five or six years old, Ricky Riley, several years older, came up with the idea for someone to climb up one of the trees in the woods nearby. He would cut it down for fun. Ricky Riley was never just called Ricky, always Ricky Riley. Fear nor consequences mattered to him. I watch Tim climb up the tree, limb by limb, as Ricky takes the chainsaw and pulls the starter. One, two, and…, Tim floats across the sky with his arms waving in the air. As the tips of the branches touch the ground, the tree becomes a springboard cushioning his fall. The beauty and poetry of that moment were mesmerizing. Yet, that also may be the first time I knew it was wrong to cut down a perfectly healthy tree for our amusement.

As I open my camera backpack in the early morning on Tuesday, August 12, 2021, at 6:12 am, I contemplate which lens to use and realize that taking photographs today does not feel right. Documenting tragedy is not who I am as a photographer. I may be a warrior at times, but not a war photographer. This artistic realization does not help me at that moment and I walk out the door without my camera.

Three days earlier, my neighbors and I had received a report from the City of Chicago Water Department that the pilot project to save our City trees failed. In the next several days, they will cut down a dozen mature trees in my neighborhood, with many more over the next year in the City of Chicago. Six of those trees are on my block, alone. On the same day, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports that human activity is changing the climate in unprecedented and irreversible ways. Apparently they did not get the same code-red alert on humanity.

My neighbors and I began a grass-roots effort to save our neighborhood trees from being cut down two-and-a-half years earlier. The water mains needed to be replaced, which meant the City Water Department wanted to cut down sixteen of our local trees and use traditional methods to do their job. After letters and petitions, thousands of signatures, and media exposure, the situation escalated as thousands of Chicago residents and local Aldermen realized all the City trees were at risk of the same fate and hands of the City of Chicago Water Department. And weeks later, an ordinance is passed by the City Council and Mayor of Chicago to pause not only the removal of our neighborhood trees but to do a pilot project that would consider CIPP (Cured in Place Pipe). An alternative method other cities were successful with without tearing down the trees.

We succeed! At least we thought.

The report claims due to the high failure rate of CIPP, the City of Chicago Water Department will scrap the pilot project and use traditional methods to complete the project, including removing the trees. Though the pilot project brought forth additional tools to save the trees, those will not be used. How is this possible when over 350 cities have used CIPP to reline more than 400 miles of water mains throughout North America? Who or what is the motivation behind this for it to fail?

It is not the first time I have been witness to the loss of essential trees by human activity. The house I grew up in backed up to several acres of towering Douglas fir trees where I played as a young girl. The scent of damp pine needles was aromatherapy for me before it was bottled. Then on January 20, 1993, hurricane winds up to 80 mph arrived in my hometown of Kent, Washington. I remember it vividly because I was sitting in the living room watching Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration. I glanced outside and wondered, will the trees be okay?" Douglas fir trees grow to over 200 feet. You can imagine the looming threat in my backyard. Several years earlier, developers had bought up much of the acreage behind us to build a hundred homes, leaving a vulnerable veil of trees behind us.

The next day I marvel at the sheer size of the wingspan of these ancient trees that lay on the ground. There were now six giant root balls exposed in my backyard, each rising almost 15 feet in diameter. How does something this magnificent fall? Knowing the development of homes behind our backyard contributed to it. When more trees stand together, the stronger a forest makes.

My street in Chicago is (was) one of the prettiest streets with decades-old maples that create a shady arched canopy along the sidewalk, shielding the sun from windows and doors. I have been in this neighborhood for almost twenty years, enjoying my daily walks several times a day with my dog Stanley. The trees have been one reason why I have stayed. As I walk down the middle of the street on this solemn morning, appreciating the last day of life for these trees, I do not take pictures. Sun trickles through the leaves, creating a waterfall of light down their textured, wide trunks. This sacred moment does not ease the heaviness I feel.

An interesting article written by The Guardian about the mafia and its impact on urban planning and climate in Sicily describes that low Mediterranean architecture allowed the sea breeze to rebound off the mountains and return to cool the city of Palermo. In the 60s and 70s, the mafia destroyed these pleasant villas and replaced them with towering cement buildings as part of the urban planning to show their influence and power. Palermo became a hot, muggy, suffocating city.

July 2021 had the hottest temperature recorded on earth by a weather station in Sicily.

I am not suggesting Chicago is the mafia, but as the Chicago Water Department tears down six trees in the front of my home, it certainly feels like it. In a world with changing climate, my home is getting uncomfortable, hotter, and air quality worse. There is something wrong with where priorities lay. I have visited some of our great National Parks, including Acadia and The Great Smoky Mountains. I breathe easily among the trees, my allergies are gone, and my stress level is calm. Photographing nature and wildlife is simply peaceful. Imagine how life would be if people planned cities around nature, rather than the other way around.

My neighbors and I may have lost our fight to save our trees but made progress in other ways. I speculate it is not CIPP that failed but The City of Chicago Water Department's position on it and the powerful influences behind them. That is the Chicago Way. If you want something to fail, do not let it succeed.

Later that afternoon, I walk over to my backdoor and look out the window. The noise of a chainsaw squeals in the background as an 80-year-old maple in the front resists its fate.