Georgia DOT: Stop Deforesting our Public Roadsides
- by: Alliance for Conserving Environmental Resources, est. 1990
- recipient: Georgia Department of Transportation
Why? From the "Before" shown above, the "After" is an unsightly, eroded weed patch.
We call on Georgia DOT to severely curtail its unnecessary, misguided and harmful removal of ALL of the public's trees from the rights-of-way of several major interstate highways in Georgia. We futher urge that already deforested publicly owned roadsides either be replanted or be allowed to regrow so as to forestall and reverse the many negative environmental and safety effects that this deforestation is causing.
Just 100 miles (of the thousands of miles of Georgia highways) of such linear clearing can result in removal of 1,200 to 2,400 acres of public forestland, the size of a small to medium State Park.
Some of the many benefits of our public roadside forests that are being obliterated by this action are as follows (please see the thoroughly footnoted letter attached below, citing peer-reviewed studies):
- The stress-relieving and accident-reducing effects of naturally vegetated roadsides (contrary to DOT's outrageous and unsubstantiated claims that the opposite is true!);
- Filtration and neutralization of air and water pollutants emitted from vehicles;
- Absorption and reduction of floodwaters;
- Sedimentation and erosion control;
- Reduction of crosswinds, enhancing safety in storms;
- Natural screening of noise and visual pollution to neighboring communities;
- Shading of pavement, which cools drivers in summer and actually extends pavement life;
- Slowing the advance of climate change, of which deforestation is the 2nd leading cause;
- Production of oxygen;
- Beautification;
- Marking of the seasons (fall color, spring blooms);
- Control of exotic invasive plant growth (weeds grow once shade and tree roots are gone).
- Preservation of a region's natural heritage, giving a "sense of place" to residents and tourists alike.
All of these threatened benefits are provided by trees for free; most cannot be replaced, while a few others can be replaced only at great cost. (Invasive species management and use of harmful pesticides will increase, for example.) GDOT ignores science as much as public opinion when it relies on the myth that "trees kill." In fact, less than 1/10 of 1% of vehicle fatalities involve trees, and even those can be mitigated by such things as guard rails.
A road engineer's goal may be to speed drivers from place A to place B, but, as Ralph Paine wrote in Roads of Adventure, we "are always in haste to reach somewhere else, forgetting that the zest is in the journey and not in the destination." Many of us spend significant parts of our lives on these public travel corridors; it is an avoidable tragedy for our human souls that they are becoming uglier and ever more depressing.
Commissioner Russell McMurry, P.E.
Georgia Department of Transportation
One Georgia Center
600 West Peachtree NW
Atlanta, GA 30308 13 December 2016
Dear Mr. McMurry:
In a time when development is rapidly replacing the living skin of the Earth with pavement and built structures, when dead zones in both fresh and saltwater are growing in size and geographic extent due to increased runoff and nutrient pollution1, when science increasingly tells us that climate change is accelerating beyond earlier predictions, and that deforestation is the second leading cause of that runaway climate change (behind fossil-fuel combustion)2, now is the time for all of us to do everything in our power to limit deforestation and even counteract it by reforesting cleared areas. Doing so is also the best way to control invasive, exotic plant overgrowth.
Lest you think that a thin strip of trees along an Interstate highway is negligible in that regard, consider this: clearing a 50-foot width of trees along both sides of the highway over a 100-mile stretch amounts to the removal of 1,200 acres of forest. Clearing a forested median, in addition, could add another 400 to 1,200 or more acres; transportation researchers are starting to advocate replanting barren roadsides and medians as carbon sequestration banks—you should be, too.3
Peer-reviewed studies have shown that (1) the considerable stress and frustration levels of driving are significantly reduced by natural roadside views4 (and “natural” in Georgia is forest); (2) partly for this reason, forested roadsides actually improved driver safety by 46% in one study5; (3) and only a tenth of 1% of vehicle fatalities involve trees6 (even most those could be eliminated on highways by guard rails).
Besides that, trees along roadsides (including not just their stems and leaves but their extensive root systems) specifically filter out much of the air and water pollutants emitted by vehicles that would otherwise permeate neighboring communities7,8; they keep carbon out of the atmosphere; and they absorb and slow flood waters. Tree roots hold the soil in place on slopes, preventing erosion and sedimentation9. One only has to look at the deep erosion gullies that developed along I-75 in the Upper Coastal Plain in the early 2000s after GaDOT thoughtlessly removed all the trees from the the steep upslopes to see this effect. Amazingly, DOT has not learned what farmers learned from the Providence “Canyon” soil-erosion debacle of the early 20th century.
Roadside trees also reduce crosswinds (again enhancing safety in storms) and in our hot summers even extend the life of pavement by shading it at times10. In otherwise cleared areas (urban development, mining barrens, agriculture, or forestry clear-cuts, our public roadside trees are the only remnants of the native forest in view and for all the above reasons are even more valuable. Unless a tourist exits the highway to visit a State Park, these linear forests are the only glimpse of “Natural Georgia” that Florida-bound drivers may see, and they are fast disappearing.
______________________________________________________________________________
1Zielinski, S. 2014. Ocean dead zones are getting worse globally due to climate change. Smithsonian Magazine, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ocean-dead-zones-are-getting-worse-globally-due-climate-change-180953282/
2Werf, van der, G. R., et al. 2009. CO2 emissions from forest loss. Nature Geoscience 2:737-738.
3Earth Talk. 2016. Why Can't We Plant Trees in Highway Medians? There are stretches of thousands of miles of barren interstate in the U.S. Scientific American:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-can-t-we-plant-trees-in-highway-medians/
4Parsons, R., L.G. Tassinary, R.S. Ulrich, M.R. Hebl, and M. Grossman-Alexander. 1998. The View From the Road: Implications for Stress Recovery and Immunization. Journal of Environmental Psychology 18:113–140.
5Mok, J.-H., H.C. Landphair, and J.R. Naderi. 2006. Landscape Improvement Impacts on Roadside Safety in Texas. Landscape and Urban Planning 78:263-274.
6Bratton, N.J., and K.L. Wolf. 2005. Trees and Roadside Safety in U.S. Urban Settings, Paper 05-0946. Proceedings of the 84th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board. Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Science, Washington DC.
7Maher, B.A. et al. 2013. Impact of roadside tree lines on indoor concentrations of traffic-derived particulate matter. Environmental Science & Technology doi: 10.1021/es404363m
8Nowak, D.J., S. Hirabayashi, A. Bodine, and E. Greenfield. 2014. Tree and forest effects on air quality and human health in the United States. Environmental Pollution 193: 119–129.
9Lewisy, L. 2002. Curbing roadside erosion. Conservation, University of Washington. http://conservationmagazine.org/2002/07/curbing-roadside-erosion/
10McPherson, E.G. and J. Muchnick. 2005. Effects of street tree shade on asphalt and concrete pavement performance. Journal of Arboriculture 31:303-310. http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/mcpherson/psw_2005_mcpherson001_joa_1105.pdf
Sincerely,
[your name]
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