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Monday, June 30, 2008

Portland What's Greener: Saving a Tree, or Saving a House?

Posted by Amy J. Ruiz on Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 9:57 AM

We got this in our inbox over the weekend:

I was on my way to work Sunday morning, when I noticed a house was being moved along NE MLK Jr. Blvd and Tillamook. To my surprise, 3 blocks of trees that line the center of NE MLK Jr. Blvd were being cut down to move this home.

I am writing this email because I feel that the city should not have permitted this move. We are a city that values "green" themed agendas and cutting those trees down goes against our cities value system and so much we have worked towards.

-Michael Russell

Here's the house:

big_house.jpg

And here are the trees, before they were chopped down:

scaled.streettrees.jpg

Hmm. Maybe it's because I haven't had coffee yet this morning, but I'm having difficultly mustering up any outrage over this. The way I see it, that's an old house that's being reused, which is a helluva recycling project. Sure, a few trees were removed to facilitate that recycling, and I can see why that's upsetting. But trees can be replanted, and will grow back (and as you can see, they weren't exactly majestic trees to begin with). Old houses, however, can't be as easily replaced--at least not without using up a ton of resources. Even if you factor in the death of a few trees, this is still fulfills our city's "'green' themed agenda." Doesn't it?

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