By Charles Fredricks Santa Monica
(RE: “See the forest for the trees” and “Setting the record straight, ” SMDP Oct. 4, 2007.) While I laud the city manager’s sentiment, “It is the job of the City Council and city staff to ensure that we carefully listen and responsibly act in the broad public interest,” I must say, that if that had been the case already, we would-n’t be where we are at present. I am still hopeful that it may be so. However, Lamont Ewell’s attempts to clarify “the tremendous amount of misleading information about the project,” added its own dust to the storm, and unfortunately Melody Hanatani’s article based in part on an interview with city forester Walt Warriner threw its own log on the fire of blazing confusion. A few points for consideration: Neither Lamont Ewell nor forester Walt Warriner were present at the special session of the city plan-ning commission this Wednesday night, called primarily to consider this issue, where it was revealed that since 2005, in all of the city of Santa Monica, only five ficus trees were removed for structural reasons. Yet the city has identified 23 that require this drastic step in the downtown corridor. On the face of it this fact alone draws the city plan into suspicion.
When the city learned Treesavers were attempting to contact an independent master arborist to verify their assessment, the city sought to do likewise on their own behalf. Lisa Smith, originally contacted by Treesavers, responded instead to the city’s request. Her letter, praising the city’s plan, was published as a sidebar.
At the request of the city planning commission, the same Treesaver member who contacted Lisa Smith originally, contacted her again to question whether she had actually looked at the trees before she wrote the letter. She had — from behind the wheel. She drove by in her car. Further, she was under the impression that all the trees were to be removed. Apparently, that’s just fine with Lisa Smith, master arborist.
Having attempted to contact a few independent arborists myself I’ve found them a pretty clubby group; they all know each other by reputation if not personally. More than one refused to assist us on that basis, or because they — do, have done, or anticipate doing — work for the city. We are still trying.
Let’s concede for a moment the 23 trees designated by city forester Warriner really do need to be removed for structural reasons, and have not been caught up in mission creep as part of a plan that, as originally proposed, would have removed all the ficus trees, or as designed in 2005, fully half of them. We do not argue for retaining trees that an independent master arborist confirms need to be removed, though considering the city’s actions to this point we would like to see that confirmation. Let’s talk about the majority of the 75 trees slated for removal that the city admits are perfectly healthy; 31 ficus and 21 palms. Why should the city spend $600,000 to play musical chairs, trading beautiful full grown trees for scrawny specimens, for “design considerations.” Whose design?
As for the replacements, the ginkgo’s may achieve the height of the ficus trees in 10 or 15 years due to structural soil, but their normal rate of growth is 30cm/year for the first 30 years of their life (roughly 27 feet in 30 years), at which point they grow more slowly as the crown begins to branch out.
According to this, unlike the city’s rendering made available to the public (the ficus is the healthy tree on the left, the ginkgo on the right is twice the size of what it will be when first planted), it could be 60 years or more before they reach the stature of many of the ficus presently slated for removal. But what am I thinking? If we’re lucky and they grow faster they’ll probably be cut down, because they’re “mature,” even though the life-span of the ginkgo is 1,500 years — not 150 like the ficus, 1,500. Maybe the hybrid variety they are planting will not put out the sticky pods that smell like poop, but we won’t know that for 15 years or so, because it takes that long before they do.
Long before that I hope we’ll have a new City Council, in time perhaps to realize that our city ecosystem is part of the whole earth ecosystem, in serious danger of collapse.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 8, 2007. Read the original PDF.