December 1, 1999

Just whose trees are they, anyway?

In spite of Nancy Hall, who seems to have found an almost religious faith in the power of trees, it's time once again to point out that we (people, human beings, us) planted all the trees in town. Mother nature didn't do it. Little birds didn't carry the seeds in their gullets and deposit them with a bit of fertilizer to help them along.

The wind didn't carry the seeds. Grizzly bears didn't catch seeds in their fur and carry them to new locations.

Most of the plants grown by natural forces in Pacifica are Pampas grass, poison oak, and coyote brush.

I was the one who planted the Monterey Pines in my front yard. If anyone ever comments to you about that brilliant columnist, the Reactor, just say "Oh yeah! He planted Monterey Pines in his front yard in 1964."

That should be enough to bring any estimate of my intelligence down a peg. It's true, I was smart enough 12 or 13 years later, to pay a tree surgeon to cut them down. By then they were 40 or 50 feet high and I was scared to death they'd fall on my house. It was bad enough when I got up there with a saw and dropped a branch across my neighbor's TV cable. Happily he was out of town that weekend, and his line crossed my property, so no harm done.

If Monterey Pines or Monterey Cypresses grow on your property, take a good look. If they're already above heritage tree size, pay the extortionate city fee, poll all your neighbors, and call the tree surgeons. It will be well worth it to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to rid your property of the danger the overgrown Montereys represent. These are the fastest growing pines in the world. Plant them in the wrong places and you endanger your home, or the homes of your neighbors.

Paul Chakkapark, who has the courage and commitment to invest in Pacifica's future, should to be commended. Instead he has been been vilified, even called a vandal, by those who should be thanking him for risking his money and his future to expand Pacifica's anemic commercial base.

Paul can grow a thirty or forty foot high stand of Monterey Cypresses in a decade or two, should this suit his needs and desires. The worst danger to the Monterey Pine these days is not from builders and developers. It's from a canker, which is destroying stands of these trees up and down the coast. This disease spreads from tree to tree, weakens them, makes them more vulnerable to windstorms. A good windstorm and a weakened Monterey Pine in the wrong place is a recipe for a smashed house. That's not theory. Trees have smashed a number of houses around town.

It's ironic Nancy Hall should quote the $33,000 price tag that was extracted from a homeowner in Sharp Park. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it true that that property owner or some previous owner of his property planted that tree, perhaps some time in the twenties, thirties or forties? Does that mean if I'd allowed the trees I planted in 1964 to become heritage trees, then dared to touch them with a pruning saw, or inadvertently damaged their surface-growing roots, I might be liable to the city?

Paul Azevedo's e mail address is Paul@thereactor.net. He does like trees, if they're the right trees in the right place.