Bloomfield "Dan" tells us that beautiful mature trees in his neighborhood are under attack to make way for new curbs. Today, many of the trees were cut down, drastically changing the street's leafy look. Dan wonders if there isn't a better way.
For the past few weeks, Bloomfield town workers (DPW) and the utility companies have been marking up the streets and sidewalks in the Brookdale section to indicate the location of gas lines, water lines, etc. Today I learned that they are cutting down the massive trees that give our neighborhood character and beauty because the trees were breaking the sidewalks. Nine trees are coming down on Parkview. The street looks naked.
First of all, this seems like an enormous waste of money. Second, there has to be a better way of dealing with this situation. Certainly other towns with pretty tree-lined streets are not cutting down all of their trees to prevent the sidewalks from cracking!
We hear that other residents are feeling the tree trauma, and that they got little warning, if any, about the change of scenery. One woman tells us it seemed like a bomb had hit the neighborhood.
We went to see the massacred trees on Brookdale Road, and Parkside; it wasn't a pretty sight. Paul Lasek, Township Engineer, explained that the town's tree forester, Stephen Schuckman, found that many of the old trees along Brookdale are ailing, with bad root systems. After a nasty tree-falling-on-house incident there, Schuckman inspected the area. He recommended getting rid of the old sick trees to avoid more accidents....It's a preventative measure, in the interest of public safety, Lasek said.
On Parkview, the road resurfacing and new curb installation apparently revealed more unhealthy trees, which have been marked with a red dot for the mulch machine. Lasek did say that most of the trees that were taken down will be replaced with nursery stock trees as part of the fall and spring planting program... And then we can wait another 80 years...
- top photo, Brookdale Road.
Or, you can wait like they do in Montclair.
One of those "nice" massive trees came down on an elderly couple's car early in the summer.
The people who ran out of their house to help said they "hesitated to even go near the car "because they were sure the couple was dead, i.e. the car was flattened.
None of the trees on Montclair's Park Street were ever marked, and even after the accident they still weren't revisited.
Be thankful you've got someone who cares about both the trees and your lives!