THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 30, 1995 TAG: 9506280155
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
What in the world is going on around here? Is 1995 going to be The Year Chesapeake Killed All The Trees?
I attended and performed at the Arbor Day Celebration in April this year and was impressed with the care and concern for each little seedling and sapling given out, and the special dedication of select tree plantings around the city on behalf of certain civic and fraternal groups.
Driving around Chesapeake this week, however, makes me wonder where the trees - and Chesapeake's ``quality of life'' - are going. Boom! - the site at Volvo and Greenbrier, where only a few trees around the rim of a huge tract were spared. Everything else was bulldozed. Boom! - driving down Elbow Road on the way to Virginia Beach looks like somebody has taken a giant Weedeater to the forest. Are roads expanding, or is someone trying to develop the swamp/wetland into a residential development? Boom! - the ``tree tunnel'' on Centerville Turnpike between Mount Pleasant and Butts Road has been removed. Once again, somebody is building something in a swamp?
The trees are important. What they do for the environment - including cleaning the atmosphere, creating oxygen, housing animals of all kinds - is a big part of the quality of life Chesapeake boasts of. Without its vast store of trees and undeveloped land, Chesapeake will be just another, smaller, Virginia Beach - with stockade fencing so people can't see each other, no trees except what the developers choose to buy on sale, and wall-to-wall houses jammed into the land as tightly as they will fit.
Are we really headed that way? In the newspaper this week, I read where the old land at Cedar and Battlefield is going to be developed. That parcel is like a definition of Chesapeake, and especially Great Bridge. But, we have dug up all the graves, put up the rezoning signs, and soon those giant trees will be bulldozed and replaced by some sort of building. Which would you prefer? The land should be a park, enjoyed by Chesapeake citizens. A few benches, some plots of wildflowers or an ornamental garden, and nothing much would have to change, except that people could sit and enjoy the land and its shade trees. At this point, the city's plans to flatten the woods next to Great Bridge Primary School to build a parking lot for city employees seems to be just another link in a very deadly chain.
On Volvo Parkway, east of Greenbrier Parkway, someone gave permission for two six-plus-acre plots of woods to be bulldozed almost four years ago, ostensibly so the land would sell faster. Down came the trees, and up went the ``for sale'' signs. They are still there. No one has bought the land. Without the trees, it is lifeless.
So is Chesapeake. Do we need to go to Newport News' system of requiring developers and builders to replace every bulldozed tree? If we can't keep our old trees up and growing, then the answer is yes. Build on little-used farmland or on vacant land, but leave the trees alone. The animals, the air and the people of Chesapeake will be healthier and happier if we do.
James Scott
South Lake Circle by CNB