Metrolinx faces fire from Mount Dennis locals over tree removal
Community fears elderly foliage ripped out for airport-rail link will be replaced with young saplings.

thestar.com
Aug. 18, 2014
By Tara Deschamps

When a tree falls in a forest, people ask if it makes a sound, but when a few hundred trees are threatened by a transit agency, it can incite a loud war of words.

About two years ago, Metrolinx tore down trees near the Jane St. and Weston Rd. area in York and annihilated a forest by the Humber River. The removals were to accommodate the construction of the Union Station-Pearson airport-rail link, expanding the 20-kilometre Georgetown South corridor.

Since then, the transit agency has laid tracks and moved ahead with plans to construct noise-mitigation walls along the route.

But Mount Dennis Community Association secretary Simon Chamberlain says locals are still scarred from Metrolinx’s razing of some trees in the neighbourhood, especially those up to 35 feet tall that were ripped out of a nearby laneway.

“The laneway used to be quite a pleasant place to walk,” he said. “We went in there every spring and did a community cleanup for litter to keep it nice. It was the sort of place where people walked their dogs and then suddenly, everything was gone.”

Many of the corridor’s trees, which saw their demise, were decades old.

“Sometimes you regretfully have to take down trees that are old,” says Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins, who adds that the company has continuously worked to consult with residents about air-rail link construction and tree removal.

As a consolation and a way to rebuild the hearty foliage that had populated the land for years, Aikins says the transit company eagerly committed to planting more than 500 new trees in the area — three for every one removed.

But critics say the replacement trees are often saplings or a variety of trees, which can’t provide the function, shade or esthetic experience that the old trees did.

“(Metrolinx has) agreed to this commitment of three trees for every one, but how many of those three trees that they plant will mature and become real trees?” questions Chamberlain, who notes that it takes “a long, long time” for trees to reach a significant height or provide coverage.

“When you just plant tiny little trees the way they often do, the survival rate is relatively low, whereas if you plant a tree that is several years old and well-established it very quickly starts to do well.”

Aikins says the species, age, maturity and placement of what gets planted is the decision of arborists who take factors like soil conditions, sun and shade and esthetics into account.

The arborists work in partnership with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority and the city to ensure planting meets bylaws and construction has a minimal impact to the environment. In the Mount Dennis neighbourhood, Aikins anticipates that the 3:1 ratio of trees to be planted will provide plenty of coverage to the area to make up for what was lost.

For these reasons, York-South Weston MP Mike Sullivan says he would like Metrolinx to agree to replace trees of a significant size - 100-year-old elms and maples - that have been cut down along the Georgetown Corridor with their equivalents or something just as “significant.”

“It’s quite possible, though expensive, to get a 40-foot tree to replace a 60-foot tree they cut down,” Sullivan says. “My fear is that Metrolinx will put in the smallest trees they can get away with on a 3-for-1 basis and in 100 years, we will have trees back, but only if they can survive pollution from trains.”

On top of locals being worried about what kind of tree coverage they will have beautifying an area that will see trains rush past every day, they are also concerned about whether more trees will need to come down to accommodate the sound-mitigation wall construction.

Though Metrolinx repeatedly told the Star there are no plans to remove more trees in that neighbourhood, some residents fear that is not the case.

They say they are concerned because emails they have received from Metrolinx staff members say Metrolinx “will work to find creative solutions to ensure that the noise wall placement is done in a manner that existing trees along the rail corridor are preserved wherever possible,” but never disavow the idea of removing trees.

“Certainly that says to me, ‘we are going to do what we are going to do,’” says Chamberlain. “If they were serious about not taking down trees they would have written a very, very different email knowing that was our concern.”

But making those kinds of commitments is tough, says York-South Weston MPP Laura Albanese, because plans can change and problems can arise as projects move from planning to design to construction stages.

While she hopes as many trees in the area can be preserved as possible, she says it is important not to let the process of saving trees become a hindrance or cause for an accident later.

“I can see how this causes anxiety in the community,” she says. “This is a big project and I want to see everyone at the table working together and doing what is best for the community.”