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Friday Slide Show: Tree Cutting
21 July 2023
We were surprised the other day when we drove by Laguna Honda Reservoir to see the stately eucalyptus trees that guard the reservoir along Seventh Ave. being cut down.
It's no small job. The trees themselves are gigantic and they inhabit only a sliver of shoreline between the road and the water.
The work is being done by ArboristNow, which has been providing both advice and service to Bay area residents for over 20 years. Their blog covers topics like what trees not to plant near your house.
Every year or so PG&E, our electrical and gas company, sends a crew by to check our red berry tree. A few power lines go right over it and they intend to keep it that way. So it gets a free hair cut every few years.
And all the neighbors with big trees come over to ask them if they'll cut their trees back. Until they get a quote. It's not cheap.
In our case, a youthful but small guy climbs up the tree and goes out on a limb, tying it down and then cutting it off. Over the last 20 years, they've been pretty good in shaping the tree rather than butchering it.
The eucalyptus are being cut down by a different company. But the technique is similar.
They use a basket on an articulated arm to go up the tree, tie the branches and saw the off before taking the trunk down section by section. The branches are dragged over to a chipper that spits them into a truck that hauls them away.
San Francisco Water & Power is supervising the work. It describes the Hazard Tree Removal Project on its Web site:
SFPUC crews will be removing hazard trees on SFPUC land within the Laguna Honda Reservoir. The trees are dead, dying and diseased, as well as encroach on existing power lines and overhang the adjacent roadways along 7th Avenue and Laguna Honda Boulevard. Removing these invasive trees will reduce the risk of fire and public safety hazards in the area. It will also help the restoration of the existing native grasslands.
After our winter atmospheric rivers passed through, we've seen quite a few fallen trees on the surrounding hills. So a high-traffic area like this probably should be pruned back for safety if nothing else. You wouldn't want to be driving along the reservoir as a giant eucalyptus lost its hold on the banks.
Still there is something sad about seeing them cut down. They framed the utilitarian reservoir as if it were a lake in the Sierra Nevadas. And if you managed to stand under their shade for a few minutes, you had the feeling you were three hours away from any urban area.
Now it's just a reservoir again, with a rather short concrete wall some oblivious motorist is sure to breech in the days ahead, plummeting down 30 feet or so into the denuded bank below.
The eucalyptus trees may have been unsafe but they were certainly obvious.
