We got this in our inbox over the weekend:

I was on my way to work Sunday morning, when I noticed a house was being moved along NE MLK Jr. Blvd and Tillamook. To my surprise, 3 blocks of trees that line the center of NE MLK Jr. Blvd were being cut down to move this home.

I am writing this email because I feel that the city should not have permitted this move. We are a city that values “green” themed agendas and cutting those trees down goes against our cities value system and so much we have worked towards.

-Michael Russell

Here’s the house:

big_house.jpg

And here are the trees, before they were chopped down:

scaled.streettrees.jpg

Hmm. Maybe it’s because I haven’t had coffee yet this morning, but I’m having difficultly mustering up any outrage over this. The way I see it, that’s an old house that’s being reused, which is a helluva recycling project. Sure, a few trees were removed to facilitate that recycling, and I can see why that’s upsetting. But trees can be replanted, and will grow back (and as you can see, they weren’t exactly majestic trees to begin with). Old houses, however, can’t be as easily replaced–at least not without using up a ton of resources. Even if you factor in the death of a few trees, this is still fulfills our city’s “‘green’ themed agenda.” Doesn’t it?

5 replies on “What’s Greener: Saving a Tree, or Saving a House?”

  1. I did a report a few years ago on the trees on MLK as part of my geography degree. I generally muster up MORE anger at the fact that they that they have been taking out the nice big trees in wide medians and putting in little trees in the 30″ median, on a state highway that is regularly driven by stupid and/or drunk people, in order to put in on street parking for cars. Basically that is the worst place you could put a tree and have it survive, house move or no. So the fact that they took out a few more little trees is just salt in the wound, that wound being the big trees they took out on the wide medians, which CANNOT be replanted there because there isn’t room.

  2. Yeah I want to be upset about this, but, the amount of waste a home that size makes versus 3 new trees…

    I’m more upset at the “cause heads” of Portland for finding more shit to latch on to to give meaning to whatever useless crap they do with their lives.

    We’re not gonna protest, we’re not gonna protest

  3. I don’t know… Did they really have to chop them down? Couldn’t they have just dug them up, and then put them back a few hours latter?

  5. Once trees are in and the roots are established you might as well kill them if you’re going to move them — it’s one and the same. Of course one thing that makes the MLK plantings even more special is that they run a plywood box several feet down around them so the roots can’t go anywhere, e.g. under the roadway, even though they specifically pick varieties of trees for streets that won’t buckle streets and sidewalks (that’s why you see a lot of sweetgums planted in Portland years ago, but no more). The city forester told me specifically about the MLK trees that it was like putting them “in a coffin”.

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