Thick plantings of particulate-guzzling-and pollution blocking trees are coming to West Oakland next month. <\/p>\n
The Prescott Greening project \u2014 which has been in the works for over a decade \u2014 is finally breaking ground, answering the calls of generations of residents asking for more trees and other barriers to reduce pollution and prevent health complications<\/a>. The project will add dozens of 10- to 12-foot-tall trees along Frontage Road, near the I-880 freeway. The trees will eventually grow up to 40 feet. <\/p>\n Art Garden Design, the landscape designer that will oversee the planting, will, for the next few weeks, remove old trees, upgrade irrigation, and regrade the site. In March, workers will start planting trees. The project is expected to be completed within five months. <\/p>\n According to Alana Corpuz, the owner of Art Garden Design<\/a>, Frontage Road is an example of broken infrastructure caused by neglected maintenance. All kinds of activities nearby cause air pollution.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s waste management on 10th Street nearby, a skate park, trash, and people burning metals and there\u2019s so much else happening, but the goal is to create a tree buffer with depth that reduces off-gassing for the community,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n Hyphae Design, an ecology firm in Oakland, designed the tree planting project with foliage from the ground up so that it creates a canopy of leaves and branches where a good amount of pollution gets stuck or drifts up into the atmosphere without coming back down into neighborhoods. The tree species that will be added include fern pines, long leafed yellowwoods, and Japanese blueberry trees, and the shrub species will include California lilacs, manzanitas, and bottlebrushes.<\/p>\n Brent Bucknum, Hyphae\u2019s director, told The Oaklandside that their research has found that the dense planting pattern can reduce between 20% to 40% of roadside pollution. That\u2019s much more than the 1% to 4% drop in pollution seen when trees are randomly placed and separated from one another. Bucknum said that the tree plantings they\u2019ve installed in Louisville<\/a> have already led to 25% drop in air pollutants. <\/p>\n The project will clean the air even as more of California\u2019s vehicle fleet transitions to electric power. That\u2019s because some of the worst pollution comes from ultrafine particles from brake and tire wear.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re learning that really fine particles are more impactful health-wise because they move through the blood-brain barrier and through the lungs,\u201d Bucknum said. \u201cA lot of people want to just blame the trucks, but it\u2019s actually passenger vehicles and the number of them that are going by this location in West Oakland that has a bigger impact.\u201d<\/p>\n The project, which is a pilot and part of a larger plan to surround all the highways and major thoroughfares in West Oakland with trees, could eventually expand to other highly polluted parts of the city and San Leandro.<\/p>\n The Prescott Greening project includes three different components, the first of which is the Frontage Road planting. If they get more funding, said Bucknum, the teams will work on greening alongside Caltrans land next to the I-880 highway. Dense tree plantings would then become part of road diet construction projects, when major roads have vehicle lanes and parking reduced while pedestrian and bike infrastructure expands.<\/p>\n A decade-old vision of using trees to scrub the air<\/p>\n West Oakland has had polluted air<\/a> for a long time, dating back to the turn of the 20th century, when it was a key hub for the growing shipping<\/a>, manufacturing, and transit industries. But starting about 70 years ago, residents started suffering from even higher levels of pollution when highways were built around them and the port underwent rapid expansion. <\/p>\n In the early 2010s, Bucknum\u2019s firm, Hyphae Design, worked with the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project<\/a> for years on lead remediation and then developed a \u201cmaster plan\u201d focused on the potential of re-greening Oakland to reduce pollution, called Adapt Oakland. <\/p>\n But at the time, the technology at their disposal to understand the scope of West Oakland was not very sophisticated. <\/p>\n \u201cWe used one or two air pollution sensors from the port,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we did this extensive study, and we started to understand that especially depressed areas and sunken areas can collect air pollution, like sunken freeways or on-ramps. So then we did a lot of research that proved some of our hypotheses.\u201d<\/p>\n