22 August 2010

Update about street trees

Back on August 10th, we posted an article about street trees, which included opinions about what we feel needs to be done to ensure that taxpayer money is being spent effectively when planting and maintaining these trees. The article was cross-posted on Greater Greater Washington as well.

On Thursday, DDOT replied. Karyn LeBlanc wrote that the "US Environmental Protection Agency’s MS4 Permit requires the District government to plant at least 4,150 trees every year." (MS4 stands for "Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems.")

The big news was that the Urban Forestry Administration will be rebranded "d.Trees" in the near future.

It's always reassuring to see a government agency paying attention to the concerns of the taxpayers. Hopefully this rebranding will lead to even more focus on outreach with the residents of the city.

2 comments:

  1. I think that I read the the funding for trees in next year's budget was eliminated. Is this true? I hope not, since I lost my street tree last week.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous: To the best of my knowledge, the funding has not been eliminated. The account holding special tree money (fines from when trees are cut down, etc.) was apparently drained, but I don't think the regular budget has been removed.

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You can be curmudgeonly too, but let's try to be civil and constructive here, ok?