Trees on Lamson Road. Trees on Maple Avenue. Trees near the middle school property. A huge tree on Lorraine Street. 

All over Barrington, private companies and public contractors have been very busy cutting down big, healthy, shade-giving, temperature-cooling trees. In some cases, it is hard to point the finger of blame at the town, as the tree removal was done by a private resident on private property. That was the case on Lorraine Street.

But the carnage on Maple Avenue and Lamson Road was town-sponsored. Contractors hired by Barrington — a town that employs a full-time resilience planner — chopped down more than a dozen trees to make way for concrete sidewalks. 

On Maple Avenue, there was hardly enough foot traffic to support the old, buckled asphalt sidewalks. On Lamson, the number of bicyclists and walkers will drop off significantly once officials close Hampden Meadows School as part of the district-wide school construction project. 

There are promises of replacing the lost trees with two new plantings for each tree eliminated, but we have not seen that yet. 

Unfortunately, things are going to get worse for Barrington trees (and in turn, for our environment) in the near future. Just wait until work begins at the former Carmelite monastery property and, after that, at the old Zion Bible College property. Those planned developments offer the promise of more housing — we’ve got to have more housing, right? — at the cost of clean air, shade, habitat for wildlife, cooler temperatures, a more beautiful landscape, etc., etc., etc. 

That is not a great trade-off.

It is hard to understand how a town that completed a tree study and is in the middle of a new program to plant trees in the Foote Street neighborhood (where heat mapping shows we are desperately in need of trees) could endorse a construction project that results in clear-cutting trees on Maple Avenue, just a few hundred feet away.

It is even worse on Lamson, where a little planning and creativity could have saved some of the prettiest trees in Hampden Meadows and still allowed for safe passage by walkers and bicyclists. Instead, Barrington took the easy way out and just cut them down. 

Inch by inch, oak by oak, Barrington is losing the fight.