On any summer day, no matter how hot, Tom Tomschin can sit comfortably on his porch and enjoy the pleasant shade of his front yard.
“My neighbors always want to park under my tree,” says the longtime Cicero resident and executive director of the city’s Department of Housing.
Tomschin and other city officials expect more local residents will have coveted and much-needed access to shade in the coming year as a new project aims to plant 500 trees and develop an urban forest management plan for Chicago’s western suburbs.
Cicero is one of 22 communities in Illinois that will collectively receive nearly $6.9 million in federal funding to plant and care for more than 1,800 trees in underserved communities across the state, the Morton Arboretum announced Monday. A tree canopy is critical to public and environmental health by cooling high urban temperatures, supporting diverse ecosystems, reducing flooding, and cleaning dirty air.
The arboretum, which received 61 applications for more than $14 million, will administer the nearly $7 million through their Chicago Region Trees Initiative, or CRTI, using funds from the US Forest Service Inflation Reduction Act and under the direction of the Illinois Department or Natural Resources.
Award-winning communities, including the City of Chicago and the Chicago Park District, will also use these funds over the next four years to complete tree inventories, collectively prune more than 500 trees, remove hundreds of dead or at-risk trees and clear several acres of forest. woody invasive species, and provide educational and multilingual resident activities.
“Taking an inventory of the entire community,” says Zach Wirtz, director of CRTI, “can really help us understand priorities and then better provide resources to those areas considered underserved. … I’m very pleased that these grant opportunities focus so heavily on community involvement, because what we’re really hoping for are positive impacts for both trees and people.”
Clean air, cool temperatures and less flooding
According to the most recent census data, nearly 88% of Cicero residents are Hispanic or Latino. The city’s census tracts all score medium to high on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index — which refers to demographic and socioeconomic factors such as poverty, lack of transportation access and overcrowded housing that negatively impact communities when they create deal with man-made stressors such as pollution.
Part of the $511,200 awarded to the city, Tomschin said, will be used to share with vulnerable residents how the benefits they can gain from a larger canopy “far outweigh” concerns about perceived disadvantages, such as roots growing find their way to the sewer. system or gutters that become clogged by leaves in the fall.
“Cicero has historically been a lower-middle-class, working-class community. We once had a huge industrial base here,” Tomschin said. “So we’re surrounded by these industrial sites, surrounded by land in a very urban community. And we are now starting to feel the effects of heat islands and tree differences. … We look at our neighbor to the north, Oak Park. They have an ancestral tree canopy. Why not us?”
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Using the White House’s Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Opportunity Zones Map, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool, the arboretum created a map which indicates which census tracts in Illinois are considered overburdened or overburdened. underserved and thus disadvantaged by one or more of these standards, making them a priority for funding.
“There are some blocks in the city where there are no trees,” Tomschin said of Cicero. “And it’s going to take a lot of work — not just gathering the data from that inventory and maintenance plan, but also getting buy-in from the community to plant the tree in front of their house once.”
In addition to helping purify dirty air, which has become a concern for many city dwellers and suburban residents since the Canadian wildfires blew smoke into the Midwest and other parts of the United States last summer, tree canopies can alleviate extremely high temperatures that are exacerbated by concrete and gray infrastructure that absorbs the air. and heat retention.
Trees also absorb rainwater into their roots, allowing it to more easily infiltrate into the soil, which can prevent flooding — a glaring problem for Cicero residents, whose streets and basements flooded several times last summer during heavy rains . During a July 2 storm that swept through the area, the city recorded 9.5 inches of precipitation.
“The more trees you have, the more roots draw water from the ground. If we can make room for more water, the better,” Tomschin said. ‘I’ve lived here all my life and we’ve had at least four terrible floods. …Climate change is real. This used to happen every twenty years. Now they happen, it seems, every three or four (years).”
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After the early July floods, a Cicero resident told the Tribune she lost furniture, appliances and family memories when water in her basement reached her waist within an hour.
“The devastation in the area – it was just unbelievable,” Shapearl Wells said at the time. “Until we invest in (green) infrastructure, this will continue to happen and we will continue to be overrun.”
Green infrastructure in urban planning involves making room for parks, rain gardens, and trees that can withstand heavy precipitation and more frequent storms.
Next steps
By taking stock of what’s out there, officials from different communities — from the suburbs to downtown Chicago and other parts of Illinois — can understand where strategic tree placement or maintenance of existing trees can yield the best results .
Tomschin said the next step for Cicero will be to conduct a tree inventory or count and a management plan, for which the city will seek a certified arborist.
“We hope to have a contractor consultant selected and the inventory completed in the fall,” Tomschin said. “So that way, in the spring, when it’s the perfect time to start planting, we can go out with the community to get trees in the ground.”
“There are good things on our horizon,” he added.
In the city, the Chicago Park District will receive nearly $1.5 million to support a parks inventory that will inform future plantings in identified priority areas.
“As you can imagine, the Park District’s canopy consists of 250,000 trees,” said General Superintendent and CEO Rosa Escareño. “The interesting thing about this is that we’ve been using this number for a long time, and I think it’s so important for us to understand what our canopy is really made of. We want more data on how we can continue to nurture and maintain not only the canopy we have, but also data on the condition of our trees, the type of trees and the lifespan of our trees.”
Escareño said this updated knowledge will be of great importance for policy and decision-making in the future. Nearly 3,000 acres of parks make the Chicago Park District one of the largest municipal park districts in the country, she said, a fact that requires investments in urgent climate issues.
“We have a responsibility to do this,” she said.
The city of Chicago was the biggest winner of the current round of grants, receiving $3 million.
“We know that in big cities like Chicago, we often overlook the benefits of green space, even though these natural resources are the best ally we have in the fight to tackle climate change,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said Monday. a press release.
The other communities selected for awards by the Morton Arboretum include the City of Belvidere and the Belvidere Park District, Blue Island, Bolingbrook Park District, Burbank, Effingham, Elgin, Franklin Park, Hazel Crest, Hillside, Normal, Peoria, Roselle Park District, Round Lake Area Park District, Skokie Park District, the Village of Streamwood and the Winnebago County Forest Preserves.
“Every community is going to be a little different, with their schedule,” Wirtz said. “And some communities will evolve faster than others, depending on what their current capacity looks like. Each community submitted a proposed timeline with their application. … Our employees are going to meet with all these winners every quarter.”
The Arboretum will continue to award funds to nonprofit organizations and government agencies, from municipalities, townships and county governments to conservation districts, park districts, schools and other community organizations. Applications for a total of $7.9 million in Tree Equity Grants for Disadvantaged Communities through additional IRA funding are now open through September 13. These prizes will be available for a minimum of $25,000 and a maximum of $500,000.
Urban forestry grants for community organizations within Chicago — including the tree ambassador program partnership with Our Roots Chicago arboretum — will also be announced in the coming weeks, Wirtz said.
“The Arboretum has been providing these types of grants for urban and community forestry for a number of years, so we are familiar with the process and we are certainly ready to take this on,” he said. “But this is a big project. The IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) has brought this major influx of funding to urban forestry in the US, and we are very happy to be part of it. … And we are ready to embark on this adventure with these communities.”
adperez@chicagotribune.com
