Construction continues, trees fall
Posted by Stephanie Takach on 15 Aug 2008 at 04:39 pm | in: The Drexel Beat
Walking by the DAC you may have noticed trees being torn down, but according to Drexel “for each tree removed during construction, a replacement tree will be planted on campus.”
In all, thirty new trees will be planted around the new Recreational Center once construction has ended. According to a mass email send to students, 45 trees are being planted at the new Drexel Park located at 32nd and Powelton that will open in September. The university is also adding “North Campus Mall” in the middle of the freshman dorms on Race Street between 33rd and 34th streets and plans to increase the number of trees and open green space.
After Drexel received a Green Rating of 98 on a 60-99 scale, can Drexel maintain its green commitment during all of this construction?
“Trees fall” is a sweet way to describe the large-scale massacre of 42 mature, 30 to 60 foot trees on the block of Market between 33rd and 34th Streets that occurred on August 13-15, 2008. The sickening image of the methodical destruction of this gorgeous block of greenery in our city will haunt me for a long time. The sad part is that institutions can get away with insisting that the planting of 45 new trees in any way makes up for this slaughter. We all think, “oh, good, at least they will plant new trees.” The awful truth is that an 8-foot tree, which is what they will plant, will not become anything like what was cut down for at least 40 years. I will more than likely be dead by then, and most of the current Drexel students will be nicely past middle age. Further, it is very unlikely that those will new trees stand a chance in hell of lasting that long at Drexel. The common procedure is to remove as many trees - young, middle-aged, and old - as possible, for almost any reason imaginable, or no reason at all, even to get a piece of machinery into an area to do work for a few days! The new trees are planted and cared for ineptly – planted shallowly, rarely watered in the first crucial year, and never mulched. As a result, about 40% of the young trees at Drexel are stunted, half-dead or fully dead. A young city street tree has many environmental challenges to survive currently, and many don’t live. This is why destruction of old, mature trees in a city is something to be avoided at all costs.
It would be interesting to know what questions were part of the Princeton Review Survey that resulted in the green rating of 98. At the very least we know there were no questions about number of trees demolished, or those people asked simply have not been at Drexel long enough to have seen the consistent pattern that those of us around the area longer have seen. Drexel has certainly managed to secure its very deserved ranking of #3 in Least Beautiful Campus with this latest ghoulish act, and in the process helped bring Philadelphia down with it.