Writer doubts the need to remove so many quality trees along canal

Editor:

Must be there isn’t enough to get us “wound up” coming from Washington.

The tree stumps pictured on Orleans Hub recently are almost certainly black locust. Hey, if you have seen one tree, you have seen them all, right? Wrong! Earlier, there were black cherry logs pictured lying on the north bank of the Canal in Orleans County – the County that seems to count for so little in the minds of most politicians, state and local. One friend told me he figured the wood was going downstate to be sold as $250/face cord firewood. Another said the log load he saw may well have been headed to a saw mill to be cut into boards. Terry and Chad were probably just too suspicious.

I had a “hunch” things would be rockier once the cutting made it into Monroe County. “Clairvoyance” is something. Theories abound about what is really going on, but I had always understood that trees stabilize stream banks. Maybe canals are different. I am decidedly not a hydrogeological engineer.

I can tell you that the century-old black maple that, until a few years ago, stood four feet from our house had not penetrated the masonry and fieldstone cellar walls of our 186-year-old house. I can also tell you that some trees are very shallow rooted. And oh, by the way, poplars are not the same as black locust and Osage orange.

Just sayin’.

Mostly sincere,

Gary Kent

Albion