Over the years, there’s been much discussion regarding the future of the Dawn Redwood trees on the 315 West Ponce property and whether they would be spared when the site was developed to include a mixed use building fronting West Ponce.  Ultimately the developer, property owner, neighbors, city and other interested parties came up with a plan to keep the trees on-site without disturbing the root system.

Too bad no one spoke with the Dawn Redwoods themselves, who reportedly have caused their own bit of trouble late last week.

According to an incident report from the property manager, which was sent to the Deputy City Manager Hugh Saxon, around lunchtime on Friday, December 15th water started bubbling up out of the ground near the water meters on West Ponce.  This ultimately resulted in the stream you see flowing down Ponce Place in the pic above.

A plumber was called out to the site and it was determined that there was a leak in the water line to the existing office building, which needed to be addressed immediately or the ground could potentially become saturated and make the trees unstable.

As reported by Mr. Saxon to DM…

While repairing the water line, the plumber excavated the area around one of the large dawn redwoods that are to be preserved at the property and damaged the tree’s root system.  The City’s forester and Arborguard Tree Specialists examined the damage and Arborguard has prepared a preservation plan to treat the damage and to provide support for the tree. It is unclear at this time whether treatment will affect the long-term viability of the tree.

 

However, the rub of all this is that the leak was reportedly caused by the Dawn Redwood tree roots and not the ongoing construction at the site, according to the incident report.  Mr Saxon reiterated this in a response to DM stating “This appears to be completely unrelated to the new development taking place on the property.”

Here’s to hoping that the remediation plan works!

Dawn Redwoods photo courtesy of Neil

Feel free to use this post to make comments or ask questions about local issues not discussed here over the last week.

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