The real reason ginormous trees are being cut down at Modesto’s Downey High | Opinion
Chopping down a big, beautiful, healthy-looking, shade-providing, carbon dioxide-absorbing tree can be a time of sadness for many.
Removing nine such trees at one fell swoop, like they’re doing at Modesto’s Downey High School, can seem almost criminal.
For decades, these monstrous wonders have shaded families, spectators and players at games on ball diamonds near Downey’s main parking lot. Some look to be more than 50 feet tall. One or two are kind of straggly, but most are huge — the massive trunk of at least one exceeds 8 feet in diameter.
I felt a little pain when I heard that a tree removal service is cutting them down. Complaining readers said the powers that be at the school district must have decided that the ginormous trees would prevent solar panels going up nearby from getting maximum light.
Modesto City Schools hopes to save $700,000 on electricity costs at four of its high schools with offsets from solar panels in parking lots, which will provide shade for cars of staff and students — 120 at Davis High, 420 at Beyer, 400 at Johansen and 350 at Downey.
But apparently, the trees at Downey have no link to its solar project.
The trees are coming out because the school must build a wheelchair-accessible sidewalk approach to the nearby football stadium with its newly resurfaced, all-weather track, I learned upon contacting Modesto City Schools. The trees are in the path of that future sidewalk, and leaving them be just isn’t an option under state law and the Americans with Disabilities Act, I was told.
“I could see why someone would connect the dots (and conclude) that the tree removal might be connected to the solar panels installation,” Brad Goudeau, a district associate superintendent, told me. But the new sidewalk is the real reason, he said.
Later that day, I had an unrelated meeting not far from the campus. I swung by, got out and watched the tree crew at work. A man identifying himself as a senior site supervisor for the solar project approached, I said I’m with the newspaper, and we chatted a bit. A sweet menthol smell from the newly sawed wood indicated camphor trees, I told him. Workers agreed.
Well, they have to go to keep from interfering with his solar panels, he told me — unsolicited.
What?
The school district just told me one has nothing to do with the other, I said.
I called back Goudeau, who provided chapter and verse of the California Building Code supporting his sidewalk explanation. And the district will plant new trees a bit to the south, to replace those being cut down, he said.
I’m betting the new trees will need many years, if not decades, to reach the grandeur of the old ones. But saplings are better than nothing.
So the district is trading something good — those big, beautiful trees, which may be gone by the time you read this — for something else that’s also good, and required by law. And which has nothing to do with the solar project going up at the same time in the same place, despite what the guy in charge of the solar project is telling people who happen by.
At least now we know how the rumor got started.
This story was originally published June 2, 2023 at 6:30 AM.
