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Opinion: New West residents air concerns about trees dying in the heat

Things have cooled off today (Thursday), but it’s been smoking hot for the past week in New Westminster. And that has some local residents worried about the health of some trees in the community.
new west trees
Brown trees with water bags on Sixth Street in New Westminster. Patrick O'Connor photo

Things have cooled off today (Thursday), but it’s been smoking hot for the past week in New Westminster.

And that has some local residents worried about the health of some trees in the community.

One resident, Patrick O’Connor, tweeted out a photo (@oconnor332) of some really brown-looking trees on Sixth Street next to Royal City Centre.

“The street trees in uptown #newwest are in really, really sad and desperate shape. Just noticed this now. I think it may be way too late for the water bags. What’s going on that lead to this? Who’s responsible for maintaining these trees?”

The tweet was tagged to the City of New Westminster. The addition of water bags means that obviously somebody is taking the situation seriously at the city. 

But I think it’s good that residents care about what happens to our trees.

 

“It's the same in the brewery district, both in the new development and across from RCH,” tweeted Kathleen Somerville (@urbngreen). “Half the trees in one block are dead.”

@VancouverTomato also chimed in: “Didn’t I recently read that the City of #newwest was planning on a tree planting binge over the next few years, for the environment? What’s the point if we let existing trees die for lack of water? Yes, the ones dying in the Brewery District make me feel sad every day.”

The City of New Westminster tweeted a response to the @VancouverTomato tweet, saying: “Hi Natasha, we are considering climate adaptability when selecting new trees for our boulevards under our new plan.”

That sounds like a good idea. The city does have an ambitious tree-planting plan for the future, with 11,800 trees planned. You can read about it here.

Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.