Hacks!

I've been on an odyssey for the past two days to find out who is responsible for the horrendous tree hacking that went on last week at Hancock Center. This shopping center, at 41st St. and Red River, has a huge parking area with City-required medians planted with trees. A few of the trees have been there for decades and are quite sizable; most were planted a few years ago as part of a major mall overhaul.

Now, I do not expect shopping centers to hire the best arborists in town to maintain their trees. I wish they would, but I know they are going to look for a low bid and focus more on clearances and safety than on proper tree care. But this project hits a new low for the worst in tree care.

I do not believe there is a single industry standard that was not violated on this project. Flush cuts were the norm, but in some cases they went beyond to inexplicably bad cuts. The trees were routinely lifted beyond the industry standard of 1/3 trunk and 2/3 canopy--most are closer to 3/4 trunk and 1/4 canopy. Several crape myrtles were topped, which I've already noted is common, but at least one live oak was topped, as well. The range of flaws in the cuts is staggering--everything from flush to stubs to just random angles. The workers frequently overshot their cuts, resulting in nicks and gashes in the stems of the trees. And, even though they were doing this work at the beginning of oak wilt season, none of the wounds on the oak trees was painted (a basic oak wilt control measure that every arborist and even most hacks know about in Austin).

I saw this damage yesterday when I dropped in to the mall for lunch. Thus began my odyssey. A call to HEB, the magnet grocer at the center, gave me the name of the property manager, Regency Centers, and the person responsible for the account, Korinne Clark. I left her a phone message yesterday, and another this morning. I then called the general switchboard for her office and left a message with a secretary. A little more googling found me Ms. Clark's supervisors, who I e-mailed. I also reported what I had seen and e-mailed some photos to the city arborist.

I was feeling likeRegency was avoiding me, but this afternoon, I finally got a call from Ms. Clark. She told me the work was performed by a Houston company (where she is based), Center Services. She told me they had subbed out the work to someone else. I next tried to find Center Services in Austin (if that's you, sorry for the erroneous phone message--that's what you get for choosing such a generic name, I guess). But then, a little while later, I got a call from the company owner at Center Services. He seemed genuinely upset at the results of this project. He used some of his employees, who had previously worked for a tree service in Houston, and who had "trimmed" some trees in Houston without hearing any complaints (no surprise there--see my earlier post "I don't like Ike"). He vowed never to "trim trees" again, and stick to what he knows.

I suppose this is a small victory, but, sadly, the damage to the trees at Hancock can't be undone. The Center Services guy said he sent his boys back to paint the oak wounds. It's too late to make any difference (by now, the tree has sealed off the injured vascular tissue), but at least it won't send the wrong message to the public that painting is unnecessary. I'll be curious to see if they can correctly identify the oaks among all the trees thay damaged. The Center Services guy offered to do any other chemical treatments to correct the damage. But there is no such remediation. Trees do not work like animals. They have no immune system, they cannot heal wounds, and they cannot regenerate lost tissue. They can only limit the spread of decay through various chemical and physical barriers (CODIT). Unfortunately, the numerous flush cuts made on this project removed the branch collars, which form the strongest defense the tree has against spread of decay (wall 4). Some of these trees will probably die due to loss of energy-generating tissue. The ones that survive will probably begin to fall apart in a decade or two, due to the fact that they were not able to quickly seal off the outside exposure represented by these wounds. The mall will lose some property value (trees provideup to ten percent higher property values--some estimates go up to twenty percent), will have to replace the asphalt surface sooner (the shade of trees protects pavement against degradation), and will likely deal with claims from shoppers whose cars are damaged by falling branches or whole trees. The City will lose some money because it has to treat more storm water (trees absorb runoff and clean water), will be more likely to face federal management of vehicle emissions (trees clean pollution from the air [link requires Adobe Acrobat Reader], delaying such mandates), and will be hotter (trees reduce the heat island effect). And, though the effect on this one site is probably pretty small, the increased need for air conditioning may contribute to the City's need for new power production facilities (Austin owns its own electric utility).

I reported all of this to the City Arborist, but I suspect there is nothing he can do. City ordinances require these median trees to be installed during construction and maintained for two years, but I 'm pretty sure two years have passed. Ordinances also protect trees at least 19 inches in diameter at breast height, but I don't think any of the affected trees is that large (maybe one or two are). So all we can do is continue to educate people about the consequences of bad tree work. Tell your friends.