Prince George’s County has spent $68,000 and cut down 836 trees to complete the first phase of Anacostia River levee repairs, according to Susan Hubbard, a county public works and transportation spokeswoman.
In February, the Army Corps of Engineers issued a report that identified levees on the banks of the Anacostia in Bladensburg and Hyattsville as posing a risk of failure. The corps cited trees on and around the levees as potential problems, and gave the county a year to address the situation.
“The next step is we have to wait for the corps to give us specification for the stump removal,” Hubbard said. “And then we’ll have to let a contract for that and then it will be awarded.”
After finishing the first phase Tuesday, Hubbard said the county should complete the second phase by early this fall.
“Hopefully, with the trees coming down and the stump removal, we’ll go back to a satisfactory rating,” Hubbard said.
According to Hubbard, there are no plans to plant new trees in the area.
Earlier this month, Anthony Vidal, chief of the corps’ civil engineering section in Baltimore, said the corps adjusted its levee rating criteria following Hurricane Katrina. When the corps last inspected Prince George’s levees, Vidal said, they received a “very good” rating and nothing has really changed.
“I would like to see the county do an assessment of what the loss of these trees will do to the water quality in the Anacostia and what they might do to compensate for that,” said Daniel Smith, co-chair of Friends of Lower Beaverdam, a stream that flows into the Anacostia.
Smith said community members planted many of the trees on the levees.
“It seems like this is really a setback to volunteer participation in river restoration,” he said.
Interestingly, Prince George’s announced this week that it received a Tree City USA award for the 23rd straight year. Mary Fulton, a Prince George’s environmental planner, said the county planted about 6,000 trees last year and won the award for being an “environmentally tree-friendly county.”
The National Arbor Day Foundation in conjunction with the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the National Association of State Foresters sponsors the program.
