Project would add 550 trees

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Talk about it

The city of Jamestown and the Lions Club are working together on a project to plant about 550 trees that will serve as a living snow fence at the old BMX track just west of Ave Maria Village.

“It’s not just pointed at one or two individuals. It helps the whole community out,” said Mitzi Hager, treasurer of the Lions Club. “It’s a project for the entire community.”

The plan is still in its early stages, and the earliest planting could begin would be May 2013, said Vern Quam, city forester.

Should it go forward, approximately $10,000 in costs and labor will be provided by the Lions.

The remaining $15,000 to $19,000 in costs and labor would come from other sources, such as a possible grant from the U.S. Forest Service, administered by the North Dakota Forest Service. That grant has not yet been secured.

Part of the rationale behind the endeavor is aesthetic — the trees will help beautify the area — but there is also a practical element.

In the winter months, blowing snow coming from the north over Jamestown Reservoir glides along a slope and then packs into 19th Street Northeast in the area of its intersection with Fourth Avenue Northeast, Quam explained. Stopping snow before it gets to the road will help the city keep its snow removal costs for the area down.

The land is owned by the Bureau of Reclamation, but because it’s administrated by the Stutsman County Parks Board, a federal grant can be used to fund the project. The Parks Board unanimously agreed to support the project at a meeting earlier this year.

“It’s an exciting project. We’ve got a lot of partners involved,” Quam said.

Officials from the North Dakota Forest Service have supported the project. So have local committees focusing on shade trees and on city beautification, along with the Stutsman County Soil Conservation District and the Jamestown Community Foundation.

The Lions Club became interested in the project because of a directive from its national level — each club is to plant a tree for each of its members.

That means 41 trees for Jamestown’s group, Hager said.

The project includes a lot more than 41 trees, though. If all goes according to plan, there will be about 550 trees, including junipers, pines, spruce, burr oaks, flowering crabs and elms resistant to Dutch elm disease.

That number includes 220 lilacs of two different types that will form a dense shrub “to make a good snow stop,” Quam said.

Keeping the trees diverse will mean a bit of color in that area year-round, and it will also protect them from being wiped out by species-particular illnesses.

Some of the trees will be 6 to 8 feet tall when they’re planted, but others will be only 1 to 2 feet high, so the snow problem won’t be solved immediately, Quam cautioned.

Part of the Lions’ contribution will involve maintenance. If it’s very dry after the trees are planted, the Lions will be the ones to water the trees. There will be deer fencing and weed barriers that should help keep maintenance to a minimum.

Volunteers and donors are definitely welcome, too, Quam said.

Anyone wishing to donate money for a tree can send it to the Jamestown Community Foundation at P.O. Box 372, Jamestown, ND, 58402-0372, and designate the check to the northeast living snow fence project.

Sun reporter Kari Lucin can be

reached at 701-952-8453

or by email at

klucin@jamestownsun.com

Tags: local news, news, trees