Barrington officials are working to cool off a “heat island” identified in the town’s recent tree canopy plan.
Barrington Director of Planning, Building and Resilience Herb …
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Barrington officials are working to cool off a “heat island” identified in the town’s recent tree canopy plan.
Barrington Director of Planning, Building and Resilience Herb Durfee said the town’s work developing its Tree Canopy Plan led officials to discover a series of “heat islands” across Barrington. Heat islands are locations that have fewer trees and can experience higher surface temperatures.
Durfee said the Tree Canopy Plan revealed that there was a heat island in the Foote Street/Maple Avenue area. He said officials are planning a significant tree-planting effort for that neighborhood.
“This is not like four trees — this is like 140, 150 trees,” Durfee said. Money for the tree-planting is coming from a grant. The work is expected to cost about $150,000, Durfee said.
The new director of planning, building and resilience said the project offers multiple “wins” — it implements a climate action plan issue, it is part of the tree canopy plan, and it is focused on resiliency.
Durfee said officials are working hard to ensure that the project is not dumped on the Barrington Department of Public Works.
“One of the wins in this is to not make a maintenance nightmare for DPW in the future,” Durfee said.
“We’re actually going to use the neighborhood as best we can to identify the persons who want to participate,” he said. “We want to have them take ownership of the trees we’re trying to plant. The species selection will not only be focused on trying to cool the area, but obviously there’s an aesthetic component to it. It’s an area that doesn’t have a lot of trees, so we think it’s great for the neighborhood to begin with.”
Durfee said the intent is to have neighborhood buy-in — participation is part of the process.
“If someone doesn’t want to participate, we’re not going to (make them) participate,” he said. “If there’s someone who doesn’t have the capacity to take care of the tree and there’s a neighbor that’s participating and is willing to go over and do that, that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Durfee said the plan is to plant most of the trees on private property, although he is expecting that some of the trees will be planted on public property.
"This is a very exciting project,” he said. “It’s implementation. It’s not another planning study we’re going to do under climate change. We’re actually grabbing the bull by the horns.”
Durfee said residents who live in the Foote Street/Maple Avenue area should expect to receive some type of notification from the town regarding the upcoming project.