Battling Toxins and Environmental Degradation one Tree at a Time
First, the bad news: If you live in West Oakland, pinned between three freeways and a large, dirty port, you’re a lot more likely to develop cancer than people living in many other parts of the country.
In fact, a recent study found that exposure to diesel fumes from cars and ships leads to 1,200 “excess cancers” (above the national average) for every one million people. And as though this weren’t alarming enough, another study shows that residents in the area have life spans about two decades shorter than their neighbors in Berkeley. West Oakland families are also beset with asthma and diabetes.
Now the good news: Somebody’s doing something about it.
The answer is surprisingly basic, says Kemba Shakur, founder and executive director of Urban Releaf, an Oakland-based urban forestry/environmental nonprofit. In a word, it’s trees.
“I used to work in a prison, and the prison looked greener and more livable than a lot of the communities in the flatlands” of Oakland, says Shakur, a former corrections officer. “It just freaked me out to not see any birds.”
And so, partnering with the University of California, Shakur and Urban Releaf spent 2004-2007 planting trees in 1,800 trees in West Oakland.
“By planting 1,800 trees, you save 9 million gallons of contaminates from entering the [San Francisco Bay],” she says. ”The more trees you have, the more they’ll help suck up that contaminated water.”
Moreover, pollutants including dust, pollen, ash, and smoke are trapped and held by tree branches, leaves and stems. When it rains, this detritus is washed into storm drains. Trees further absorb CO2 and other gasses through the surface of their leaves and, in turn, produce enough oxygen per acre for about 18 people to breath for an entire day.
The city of Oakland also has plans of its own to clean up the city’s air. The port, for example, is talking about instituting “cold ironing” for ships (the term refers to vessels shutting down their engines—which burn very dirty bunker fuel—while in port, to receive electricity, heat, water, and other utilities from shoreside). Another plan is to build a special parking lot for big-rigs, so that vehicles no longer cruise the streets of West Oakland looking for overnight parking. The project, officials say, will lead to less traffic, fewer accidents, a reduction in oil spills on Oakland’s streets, and finally, to cleaner air filtration for residents and cleaner water running into the San Francisco Bay.
These initiatives, though, appear to be at least a couple years from fruition. Meanwhile, Shakur says Urban Releaf has a memorandum of understanding with the cities of Oakland and nearby Richmond to plant an additional 600 trees a year.
And it’s not only the environment that’s benefiting from the leafy new neighbors. Boosting an area’s tree population also helps beautify neighborhoods, improving the psychological well - being of the residents, Shakur says. Through its educational and outreach activities, Urban Releaf works “to empower our residents including children and youth to beautify their neighborhoods. We believe that rehabilitation through tree planting and environmental awareness will revitalize our core urban areas.”
The organization also works with at-risk youth to promote beautification projects, exposing them to fields such as arboriculture, biology, and advanced plant sciences. So far, they’ve trained more than 4,000 young people in tree planting and maintenance projects.
To this end, Urban Releaf is now involved in retrofitting a local library—which will conform to LEED building standards—into a local Sustainability Center that will house Urban Releaf as well as other nonprofits, and will offer job and GED programs for residents.
So if you ask Kemba Shakur how to spell Releaf, her answer is simple: T-R-E-E-S.
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Photo: Courtesy of Urban Releaf
