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New York City is under a “street tree emergency” sparked by drought conditions — with recent rain doing little to end what could be a crisis for the city’s plantlife.
Experts warn that even with an inch of rain last week and more precipitation that street trees are facing dry conditions not seen in decades,
“The reality is, almost every street tree growing in New York City today has never lived through this kind of drought and we won’t know how bad the street trees are impacted until there is a mortality count in the spring or summer,” said Matthew Lopez-Jensen, an assistant professor at the New School’s Parsons School of Design in Manhattan.
“They are living under conditions that no trees, especially in Manhattan, should have to live with,” Lopez-Jensen added. “The amount of heat reflected on them [from city buildings] is unbelievable – the sun is being blasted at them from all sides.”
The professor, also an environmental artist and contributing author at the New York State Urban Forestry Council, told The Post that the city is facing a “street tree emergency” with trees “essentially being evaporated.”
Still, the Department of Parks and Recreation, which manages the planting and care of park and street trees in New York City, doesn’t believe the trees are facing any major crisis.
A spokesperson said trees become less susceptible to drought as they prepare for winter – and that planted trees are “generally tolerant of urban conditions” like road salt exposure, salt spray and flooding.
An X post from Parks from 2022, however, notes that “young street trees are especially vulnerable to extreme heat and drought,” encouraging New Yorkers to give their local trees a “long, slow soak” of four to five buckets of water when it hasn’t been raining.
Lopez-Jensen’s warning comes on the heels of a CUNY Graduate Center study published this summer that found urban trees suffer more from heat waves and drought compared to their rural counterparts.
Dead tree removal costs the city about $2,000 per tree, Lopez-Jensen said – and if just 10,000 of the city’s 660,000 seriously dehydrated trees die of thirst, it could cost up to $80,000,000 for removal and new tree replacement, he wrote in a column last month.
The city has not reported an increase in the number of dead trees compared to previous years, a Parks rep told The Post, noting that parks inspectors “are continuing to monitor tree health throughout the city to determine potential future effects from drought conditions.”
Lopez-Jensen isn’t the only one sounding alarms, either – city Council Member Shekar Krishnan called attention to the same plight in a Nov. 18 X post, hours after the city upgraded the drought watch to a warning.
“With NYC’s drought watch now elevated to a WARNING, our parks and trees- our first line of defense against the climate crisis- are in greater jeopardy,” Krishnan wrote. “We must act now to protect these vital spaces, the planet, and the workers who care for them.”
Since Nov. 18, city agencies like the parks department has been instructed to limit water use for fountains and golf courses, as well as stop replenishing water in artificial ponds and lakes until further notice, due to the ongoing drought warning.
The drought warning, the first in Gotham since 2002, asks New Yorkers to voluntarily conserve water on their own – by taking actions such as taking shorter showers and stopping running water while brushing teeth.
The next action plan stage is a drought emergency which, if implemented, would ban watering golf courses, athletic fields and water use in fountains. It would also impose water shortage rules with sanctions and fines.
The only water parks that can be replenished under the restruction is to be used for fish or wildlife habitats, according to a news release from the Adams administration. Barbecuing and grilling is banned until further notice.
A spokesperson for Prospect Park told The Post the massive Brooklyn greenspace has seen some of the worst impacts of the drought – including a 2-acre fire that consumed swaths of the woodland Ravine on Nov. 8.
“New York City is experiencing unprecedented drought conditions, and damage to the Ravine is particularly devastating: it is home to hundreds of species of trees, plants and wildlife that depend upon our woodlands for their health and well-being,” a rep for the Prospect Park Alliance, the nonprofit that maintains the park, told The Post.
Though the organization is still assessing damage to the park, the rep said the area will need “major” forest restoration efforts – including slope stabilization and replanting three layers of rare and important native species to the “Forever Wild” section – that will take three years to complete.
Scores of native wildlife like squirrels, birds and racoons fled the area – and it could take years for them to come back, Sunny Corrao, the public engagement coordinator for the city Department of Parks and Recreation’s Wildlife Unit previously told The Post.
Wintertime parkgoers won’t be affected by water fountain limits as all park drinking fountains have already been winterized for the season to keep pipes from freezing, the rep said.
Mayor Eric Adams also issued a directive suspending fleet washing for the Department of Sanitation, NYPD and FDNY, as well as reducing fleet washing at the MTA.
A city Department of Environmental Protection rep told The Post the drought conditions aren’t expected to get better until at least after the New Year, as it would take a historically wet December with 10 inches of rain or more for the drought to end.
That seems unlikely as the metro area will largely miss out on upcoming drought relief opportunities, according to FOX Weather meteorologist Christopher Tate, who told The Post that the Big Apple is running more than three inches behind the year-to-date average rain total.
“While we are expected to get some rain from the passing storm system over the next couple of days – and perhaps even a few snowflakes – I don’t think we’re likely to pick up more than about 1/10” here in the city between now and the end of the weekend,” Tate added.