Natural Gifts
December 2006

It’s the season of giving. Giving thanks for the friends and family eating turkey and watching football together. Making year-end gifts to favorite charities. Shopping for the items that will be given out between now and the end of the year at various celebrations both secular and sacred!

There is also the receiving side of the giving season. From an early age, people are taught to say thank you, send thank you notes and count our blessings.

As the regular reader might suspect, I like to spend some of my time as the year draws to a close reflecting on the gifts that nature offers.

A recent news article caught my attention in this regard. There was a fire in San Diego in 2003. Nearly 30 thousand acres of trees were burned to the ground. This natural disaster represented a loss of habitat and scenic beauty surely, but would one believe that the fire also had a large impact on the City’s bottom line?

As a result of the loss of tree and brush cover, stormwater run-off in the city increased by over 12.5 million cubic feet a year. For reference, there are nearly 7 1/2 gallons in one cubic foot, so imagine 94 million gallon milk jugs to help imagine how much additional run-off the city had to manage.

In addition to the increased run-off resulting directly from the loss of tree cover, the city also faced an increase in air pollutants. The air pollution impact did not come from the fire directly, but rather from the loss of air cleaning services that the trees and brush provided to the city.

Trees filter the air, reducing dust and pollutants (like carbon monoxide). According to the US Department of Agriculture, pollution removal by urban trees in the United States is estimated at 711,000 metric tons ($3.8 billion value) each year.

In San Diego, the estimated cost to the community due to managing increased stormwater and increased air pollution as a result of the loss of tree cover was estimated at $26 million a year.

This same scenario plays out every day around the country as trees are felled and land is paved for development projects that are typically billed as “improving the community’s bottom line.”

In McHenry County, approximately 3000 acres of land are developed every year. Those acres include:

- lost trees that were cleaning the air and intercepting stormwater,

- filled wetlands that were cleaning water, and

- mass-graded soils that once helped recharge stormwater to the groundwater aquifers.

These are just some of the gifts that natural soils, wetlands and woodlands provide communities. The good news is that society doesn’t have to choose between development and nature. The two can co-exist, and in fact, it will be more cost-effective for everyone if communities choose to develop in ways that do just that.

Woodstock residents might be interested to learn that the City’s Environmental Commission, working under the direction of the City Council, is preparing a Natural Resource Plan for the City that not only will identify the resources in the community, but also will outline out a program for integrating them into the City’s infrastructure as Woodstock continues to grow.

Their efforts are a gift to current residents and future generations. A thank you letter just might be in order!