City of Quincy trees dying in droves from the drought

– News about Quincy Massachusetts from Quincy Quarry News

Dead trees along Washington Street
A Quincy Quarry News file photo

Quincy Quarry News’ arborists Paul Bunyan VI and Frederick Law Olmsted V risked mad dogs and Englishmen by going out in the midday sun this past weekend to survey the damage the still ongoing drought has done to many hundreds of trees planted by the City of Quincy in recent years.

In the last few years the City of Quincy has planted over fifteen hundred trees mostly in city easements along the curbs of local streets so as to endeavor to both begin to attempt to restore the sorely downgraded over the years local tree canopy as well as to moderate the effects of climate change.

Tragically, however, Paul and Fred instead found that the climate this summer has wreaked havoc on these trees given that the City of Quincy did not a viable plan in place to water its trees during what was a forecast well in advance hot and dry summer this summer.

Voguing with City Workers with French Cuffs uncuffed
Image via campaign flyer

What they so found was not pretty.

In fact, what Paul and Fred found was horrifying.

In particular, they surveyed Washington Street from the Dairy Queen near the rotary at the base of the Quincy side of the Fore River Bridge to the 7/11 convenience store near Cagney’s restaurant on the edge of Quincy Center.

This run of Washington Street was planted with much ballyhoo three years ago, including the following sound bite out of Quincy’s peerless mayor:

“We plant trees not for our children’s children but for our children’s children’s children,” Mayor Koch said in a statement, borrowing from of an old Native American adage. “It’s really about the future. How are we going to leave society and can we leave it a little bit better.”

0 for four along Washington Street
A Quincy Quarry News exclusive image

Realty: Messrs. Bunyan and Olmsted found twenty-one out of sixty-three trees planted next to the curb in city property along Washington Street in Quincy Point dead or in no better than not likely to make it through the upcoming winter condition, if not die sooner.

In other words, fully a third of these innocent young trees are now only good for kindling.

That and how it would now likely take an estimated half of a million dollars or thereabouts to replace a projected upwards of as perhaps as many as a projected five hundred now-drought dead trees out of roughly fifteen hundreds trees planted citywide by the City of Quincy in recent years.

If, that is, they might be replaced anytime soon.

Up in smoke
Image via cheatsheet.com

If ever, that is …

Further troubling, the planting of many of these trees was funded by special one-time only sorts of external grant funding.

As such, one can only reasonably wonder if the City of Quincy may be facing funding clawbacks by these funding sources given that the City of Quincy dropped the hose by its letting so many saplings needlessly die over the city’s neglecting to provide something so basic and simple as water.

Even more troubling, many of the forty-two trees per Paul and Fred’s sampling survey that were found to still be hanging onto to mostly green leaves; per a review of file photos, many to most of these (still, ed.) surviving trees show little to no significant signs of growth since they were planted three years ago.

Signs of over-watering a dead tree along Washington Street
A Quincy Quarry News exclusive image

Further troubling yet, Paul and Fred found indications that either city workers or favored contractors are now gobsmackingly watering dead trees along Washington Street via what is clearly a way too late failed attempt to head off this summer’s well-forecast in advance drought.

Even more troubling yet is that one would think that Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch should have only properly seen to it that a viable watering plan was put in place in advance of need given his many previous years of dining at the public trough while he was the City of Quincy’s Parks and Recreation Commissioner. 

After all, as Kim Jong Koch Plaza in front of Quincy’s two city halls is maintained to near Disney World standards, one would think it possible to see recently planted trees merely but properly watered.

The well-watered bricks of Kim Jong Koch Plaza
A Quincy Quarry News file photo

Then again, while heading Park & Rec, Koch was known by those in the know for putting several hundred dollar trees into five dollars holes and then pretty much leaving these trees to their likely fatal fates.

That and how now-Mayor Koch is clearly as well as ever-increasingly known to not have done much in the way of endeavoring cost effective plans for his various grandiose Edifice Complexes, much less implementing something as simple as an actually viable plan to but properly water young trees planted at taxpayers’ expense.

“FYI – not my fault!”
Still Image via a YouTube video

Considerable expense.

In short, as well as yet again: Only in Quincy …

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