Parishes find resources for holiday tree recycling
3rd January 2012 · 0 Comments
By Susan Buchanan
Contributing Writer
If you can take the time to remove all tinsel and sparkle from your holiday tree, Orleans and nearby parishes will send it to a bayou for marsh rebuilding. The state cut funds for Christmas tree recycling several years ago but a number of parishes have pulled together resources to continue their programs—which local leaders say have environmental and educational payoffs.
Louisiana and other Gulf Coast states use recycled holiday trees for marsh restoration while inland states employ them to refurbish lake habitat for fish or to make mulch for parks. Some northern U.S. municipalities grind up discarded trees to fuel power plants and paper mills. To be recycled in these ways, however, trees should be the real thing and they can’t be flocked or painted.
In New Orleans, the City’s Department of Sanitation, the Office of Coastal and Environmental Affairs and the Materials Management Group will collaborate this season to collect, sort and bundle holiday trees for the Bayou Sauvage National Refuge Area in eastern New Orleans, said Ryan Berni, spokesman for Mayor Mitch Landrieu, last week. An environmental improvement fund from the city’s Office of Blight Policy and Neighborhood Revitalization will pay for the $8,000 project.
In south Louisiana, Christmas trees are placed by hand from boats or dropped by the Louisiana Air National Guard from helicopters into already-constructed wooden pens or fences in bayous. Trees trap sediment and since organic matter gradually decomposes, a fresh batch of holiday trees is usually dropped into the pens each new year. Pens are located near the coastline but far enough away for boats to travel past them. Last year, the City of New Orleans recycled nearly 8,000 trees for marsh rebuilding.
After the state’s Dept. of Natural Resources eliminated funding for holiday tree recycling a few years ago, Jefferson Parish has done the job through an effort involving local government entities, said Jason Smith, parish project coordinator. “The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office and the fire departments of the West Bank Presidents and Chiefs Association will offer the use of their boats and personnel this season as they did last year,” he said. “And the 24th Judicial District Court, State Probation and Parole, along with other parish-related justice programs, are assigning court-ordered, community service workers to participate. The New Orleans Fire Department and several Jefferson Parish municipal police departments are also providing support.”
Smith said court-ordered, community service workers in Jefferson Parish will load trees into boats, and fire department and law enforcement personnel will man the vessels, using the experience as a training exercise for maneuvering shallow-draft boats in tight quarters. Trees will be placed in shoreline fences in Goose Bayou, near the Jefferson Parish town of Jean Lafitte.
According to Smith, a study by Louisiana State University found that tree fences in marshes reduce the rate of shoreline retreat. Sediment carried over and through the trees by wave action slowly adheres, building land between the fences and the shore.
In St. Tammany Parish, spokesman Tom Beale said “currently, we don’t have funding to continue the program that existed in the past, though alternate funding is being sought.” The parish won’t have curbside pickup this winter but residents can drop trees off at two sites. “Hopefully, at some point in the spring we’ll have secured funding to use the collected trees,” he said. St. Tammany’s annual tree collection project always involves marsh rebuilding but the 2012 restoration area won’t be announced until funding is secured.
Beale said “this past summer, I had the opportunity to visit a site in the Big Branch Marsh—one of the wetland areas where St. Tammany deposited trees in past years—and based on the amount of new growth, it was evident that the program really works.” Big Branch Marsh on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain is home to a national wildlife refuge, headquartered in Lacombe.
So what should you do with your Christmas tree this month? Orleans Parish residents interested in recycling can leave them on the curb on regularly scheduled, garbage collection days on January 5, 6 and 7, Berni said. Artificial and flocked trees won’t be collected for marsh building, however. And he said no trees should be placed on the city’s neutral grounds.
Jefferson Parish residents are instructed to leave trees curbside on the evening of January 11. Garbage trucks will make one pass through that parish’s neighborhoods to collect trees between January 12 and 14. And in St. Tammany, two drop-off locations will be open starting the week after Christmas—one at the Covington Fairgrounds and one at the Levee Board Building in Slidell.
Another meaningful way to protect Louisiana, which loses 50 square miles of coast a year, is by planting young cypress trees around marshes. Under the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana’s 10,000 Trees project, volunteers planted new cypress trees at Jean Lafitte National Park’s Barataria Preserve from December 8 to 10. For more information about future planting activities, contact coalition@crcl.org.
And if you’re not recycling, the Louisiana State Fire Marshall’s office warns not to burn holiday trees or wrappings in your fireplace, and says let the authorities dispose of them.
This article was originally published in the January 2, 2012 edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper
