By Susan Hartley
Instead of spending at least $50 million of taxpayer money over the next decade for much needed projects to capture stormwater runoff, the city of Santa Monica can reduce that amount by lifting its eyes from the gutters to the trees.
Free stormwater runoff devices grow on trees, large ones like our ficus trees on Second and Fourth streets. In his article faulting cities for uprooting their trees, Dan Cray, of Time Magazine states: “The crown of a large tree is a freestanding anti-flood reservoir, in some cases intercepting so much rainfall that more than 1,500 gal. a year evaporates instead of hitting the ground. Chop down the tree, and you increase the volume of storm water a city must manage...” (6/21/07) The city’s determination to continue its path of deforestation — giving at least 55 trees on Second and Fourth streets the ax or slow death by transplanting — will result in at least 82,500 more gallons of stormwater runoff per year in the downtown area. Added to the bill of $600,000 for destroying these trees, appraised at a minimum of $571,105, will be the expense of alternative and expensive stormwater runoff projects. The city needs to realize that free anti-flood reservoirs in the downtown area grow on the ficus trees on Second and Fourth streets. The city needs to not squander more taxpayer money and taxpayer assets. The city needs to decrease, not increase, stormwater runoff and save these trees.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 28, 2007. Read the original PDF.