Onondaga County Goes Green

After a long, colorless winter, there are few in central New York who wouldn’t mind a bit more green when springtime rolls around.

Adding more green is exactly what Onondaga County plans to do. Following the guidelines of the Syracuse Urban Forest, the county is beginning its own Urban Forest Project.

It is a 2-year, state-funded project, Jean Smiley of the County Executive Office said.

The project will help the community look better while providing better air-quality and more shade, Smiley said.

More important, the Project is a piece of the “Save the Rain” plan, which is designed to prevent rain water from overloading the systems, Smiley said.

Onondaga County is in a good position to begin this project. The city of Syracuse has the most extensive research plan in the country, says the Syracuse Urban Forest Master Plan published by U.S. Department of Agriculture.

David J. Nowak has been project leader for the Syracuse Urban Forest research since 1997, but the research began in 1978, said Nowak.

Of the many benefits of the project, Nowak identified two that offer the greatest reward. “It would be climatological, the changes in temperature, which affect air pollution, and the other is probably socially related, people like trees.”

“[People] probably may not understand all the physics behind how the trees clean the air. They can feel the cooling breezes. There are a lot of things trees do that people can’t sense,” Nowak said.

Though trees are visually appealing, “the impact is probably changing the climate of the city, affecting the temperature.”