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You know the cliché about a tree falling silently in a forest. But what sound does a sapling make if the city forgets to water it? This is a recurring question in East Portland, where, for the second consecutive summer, trees planted to increase the canopy in the city’s hottest neighborhoods ended up dead or dying (“Unbeleafable,” WW, Aug. 14). In one case, the blame falls on a city contractor that didn’t water freshly planted trees for three weeks—which happened to be the three hottest weeks of the year. Here’s what our readers had to say:
Deborah, via wweek.com: “I live in Montavilla. As I was watching the trees become stressed, I wrote to the parks department telling them that no one was watering the trees.
“The parks department wrote back to me telling me that the contractors are obligated via the contract with the city to replant the trees that die.
“The parks employee seemed to think that was enough to make the contractor do their job.
“I did notice slightly damp soil a little while later. So maybe my squealing helped.
“I don’t know if those trees are going to make it. It will require several more years of the contractor doing their job.
“The rule in Portland is this...no one in an official capacity will do their job unless you force them to do it. Streets will not be routinely repaired. You have to call in the potholes. Street signs will not be routinely replaced. Stolen vehicles will be littering the streets unless you call them in. If there’s a rapist in your neighborhood, you and your neighbors have to investigate it yourself and serve it up to the police on a silver platter. Graffiti will not be cleaned up... There has to be a massive public relations campaign to force the city or the state to do so. There is no such thing as routine maintenance, routine enforcement of laws, or routine care for newly planted street trees. Everything is complaint driven here.
“Thanks for reporting on this.”
AgGreSsive-East7663, via Reddit: “FYI, the trees mentioned in this article that were planted in the median island on Southeast Cherry Blossom in Mill Park [in 2023] are still not being watered and very few are still alive. [The Portland Bureau of Transportation] who maintains that median island said they would replant the trees this past spring. They didn’t and they didn’t water even after the original article about the trees caused such an uproar. It seems that nothing will get them to water their trees. Nothing.”
Blake PDX, via Twitter: “I thought I was going overboard making check-in visits on trees the city planted at the end of last school year at my son’s school. They did seem to be getting watered but apparently that’s not something we can count on.”
John Carter, via wweek.com: “This is a good example of how the top-down approach fails whereas the bottoms-up approach works. Friends of Trees had this dialed in through decades of knowledge and community organizing—but in the city’s desire to centralize everything, it ended their contract and in turn created a new problem that didn’t previously exist.”
oregoner, in response: “Yeah, this seems like the easiest problem in the world to solve with volunteers. The ‘adopt a block’ model proved that people are very likely to volunteer for organizations where they can improve their own neighborhoods, especially with limited time commitments and limited organizational overhead. I’m sure you could get an army of volunteers in East Portland to water trees.”
Crosby, via Reddit: “It’s so awesome that this was one of our very few solved problems that our local government actively and successfully worked to unsolve.”
Letters to the editor must include the author’s street address and phone number for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words. Submit to: P.O. Box 10770, Portland, OR 97296 Email: mzusman@wweek.com