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Cummington Tree Alliance members, from left, Alma Owen, Pam Howland, Shelley Rieman and Richard Gooding, stand on Brickhouse Road in Cummington. Some two years after Eversource removed 20 ancient maples along the south side of the road, the alliance replanted new trees this spring. “It’s a shame,” Rieman said. “The canopy covered both sides of the road.” -
A young tree grows along Brickhouse Road in Cummington. Some two years after Eversource removed 20 ancient maples along the south side of the road, the town’s tree alliance replanted new trees this spring. -
Cummington Tree Alliance members, from left, Alma Owen, Pam Howland, Shelley Rieman and Richard Gooding, stand on Brickhouse Road in Cummington. Some two years after Eversource removed 20 ancient maples along the south side of the road, the alliance replanted new trees this spring. “It’s a shame,” Rieman said. “The canopy covered both sides of the road.”
CUMMINGTON — More than two years after Eversource cut town 20 ancient sugar maples on Brickhouse Road without the town’s knowledge, in what resident Aliza Ansell equated to a “pillage and massacre,” a new tree alliance formed in the wake of the incident recently began restoring some of the lost beauty.
The removal of the trees in late 2022 along one side of the road — the work was done by a subcontractor on behalf of Eversource as a way to prevent potential power outages — led a group of neighbors to create the Cummington Tree Alliance (CTA).
The 10-member group, which includes Ansell, spent three days in May planting 26 new trees along the stretch of Brickhouse Road where the trees had come down. They also helped property owners plant any trees they had previously purchased.
“We put back a little bit of what was taken down,” Ansell said.
The CTA secured $6,000 to offer free trees and plantings to residents — a $4,000 urban tree planting grant from the state Department of Conservation & Recreation, and a $2,000 grant from the New England Grassroots Environmental Fund. The funding also allowed the alliance to organize educational and community events on trees by Richard Parasiliti, Northampton’s tree warden and arborist.
The total cost of the 26 trees purchased was $3,400 including delivery, with the rest of the money going toward community events and supplies for planting.
Member Alma Owen said that returning to the place where Eversource cut down the trees made her “so incensed” and gave her a feeling that she was “reliving the horror.”
She commented that while it is understandable yet still sad to lose trees to fires or hurricane, “This was very intentional, and we took it personally.”
No disease was evident in the trees, and they weren’t touching power lines, she said. “So it’s still not apparent what happened,” she said.
At the time, town officials said that the trees removed from Brickhouse Road were cut down without the town’s knowledge. The subcontractor had an agreement with the bordering property, a farm, but had no agreement with the town to remove the trees.
Among the group of CTA members and planters this spring was Bill Hoehne. Given his background of familiarity with plants, he volunteered to pick out a dozen of the 26 trees that were planted. Among them were Eastern Red Buds, which have pink flowers in the spring. Red maples will have a reddish color in the fall. And among the other trees, Hoehne, as a native of Virginia, chose the American Yellowwood, an Appalachian tree which will bud with whitish yellow flowers.
As a homeowner in town, the trees he selected were inspired by the question, “What do I think people would enjoy owning?” he said. “I wanted to pick trees people enjoy growing in their yard.”
At 75, Pam Holland was out there doing her best to help in the cause to shovel mulch and carry buckets of water as she helped her peers.
“I love that everyone on the tree committee stuck it out until the very end,” she said, and described the days of planting as “gratifying,” with a “family-like” atmosphere.
“We all need to dedicate ourselves to noticing old trees, and start doing succession planting,” she said. Talking of streets like Main and Pleasant in Northampton, Holland added that, “Maple trees are on their last years, and the ash trees are dying.
“People need to open their eyes and see how much they are needed,” she said.
Richard Gooding lives a mile from where the Eversource uprooting occurred. “They wanted to trim mostly maples,” he said, but the trees ended up coming down altogether. “They cut one-third of them and declared them dead.”
He said many may think that Cummington is replete the trees, but he notes that many trees currently standing are suffering from age and damage from road salt in the winter.
“We need all the trees we can get,” said Gooding.
Members of the CTA all voiced, in addition to planting new trees, the removal of trees has also led to more communication with the Select Board to pursue other projects in town related to plant health and trees.
Samuel Gelinas can be reached at sgelinas@gazettenet.com.
