On Monday there was a public meeting about the trees in Bunker Hill Housing in Charlestown. The meeting opened with a message of solutions by Councilor Lydia Edwards: “I hope that everyone is here is ready to get to solutions... making suggestions that are moving the ball forward in the perspective of environmental justice. That means holding everybody accountable, especially the developers who have the deepest pockets.” She provided numerous concrete suggestions, including planting mature trees and not saplings, hiring an independent arborist to oversee the process, and having a youth-led environmental justice team to lead the process. After a lengthy presentation by the development team, the meeting opened for public comment. It was a frank but difficult conversation that exposed deep rift and mistrust. Feelings were raw and real. We wanted to clarify our position on the trees on the site and our current position on how to proceed. About 5 months ago our organization posed several straight-forward questions to the developers about the extent and status of the urban forest on this 24-acre parcel. The developers shortly thereafter released a full tree inventory in which they "discovered" 150 more trees on site than they had expected, many of them mature and healthy. Since October, we have been saddened to see how our concerns have been misconstrued as efforts to derail the project. Nothing could be further from the truth. We stand in support of the residents of Bunker Hill Housing and the members of Charlestown Residents Alliance and youth in the Turn It Around program in their calls for clean, dignified, and sustainable housing. We, unfortunately, have been painted by the developers as "tree huggers" who are simply not interested in the well-being of residents. We reject that characterization and hope that phase 1 can proceed in a timely manner. Instead, it is our belief that it is the developers who failed us. They did not do due diligence. They never took the trees into account because they never saw them until it was too late. If the trees were inventories back in 2017 and taken into account during the design process, we likely would not have found ourselves in this predicament. Even the BCDC has asked the developers to reexamine their design and take trees into account. They did and saved an additional dozen trees. What's next? In a letter we wrote to the development team on Monday, we provided 4 simple recommendations: 1) That an urban forest plan for the site be put in place for the remainder of the project and that residents and tree advocates be at the table to help construct it. 2) That mature trees slated for removal be preserved through air-spading and replanting. 3) That a qualified arborist be on site throughout the project to oversee that preserved trees not be harmed by heavy machinery and construction. 4) That the footprint of the developer's tree planting program be expanded to within a quarter-mile radius of the site, mitigating the effects of the canopy's reduction. What this process has exposed, perhaps more than anything else, is that there needs to be a city-wide process put in place to ensure that trees are included in future development projects throughout so that this doesn't happen again. Not only are we losing a grove of mature trees, but we have also lost neighborly trust in one of the most important and sensitive development sites in the city. Our position is, and will always be, that trees are important because they provide residents with healthy and livable neighborhoods. Trees are not expendable things things to be cleared and replanted. Instead, trees need to be valued as part of our shared landscape. Trees care for us and we must care for them. In the coming year, as the city embarks on a Urban Forest Plan and as a Mayoral race unfolds, it is time examine how we value trees in Boston and what steps we, as a community, should take to preserve them. | 
