News Releases
Wednesday, May 30, 2012 News from the City of Lawrence
(Sent: 2012-05-30 09:37:26)NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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Wednesday, May 30, 2012 News from the City of Lawrence
1) 23rd Street construction progressing; shooflys to be in use on Thursday
2) South Park Wading Pool open for summer
3) Douglas County to learn bottom-line value of living with trees
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Contact: Megan Gilliland, communications manager, (785) 832-3406
(Lawrence, Kan.) – KDOT announced that motorists travelling through the construction area on 23rd Street, between Haskell and Barker, will begin using the shoofly detours on Thursday, May 31. Traffic patterns will be shifted over to start utilizing the shooflys and motorists will no longer travel on 23rd Street. The bridge at Haskell Avenue is slated for demolition in June. Two lanes will be available in each direction during the construction but vehicles will have to slow down on the detours and use caution when travelling in the work zone.
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Prepared by: Shane Warta, (785) 832-3458
(Lawrence, Kan.) – Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department announces the opening of the South Park Wading Pool located in South Park, 1141 Massachusetts St., for the summer season beginning today.
The wading pool will be open 1:30-7 p.m. Monday-Friday and 1-6 p.m. Saturdays through Saturday, Aug. 11.
South Park Wading Pool is free and open to the public and open to children ages 6 years-old and younger.
The pool features a zero-depth entry pool, water sprays and fountains. Fully-accessible restroom facilities with private changing rooms are available. All children must be accompanied by an adult when using the facility.
Reservations are accepted between 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays for $25 an hour.
For more information contact Jimmy Gibbs, aquatics manager, at (785) 832-7946.
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Contact:Kim Bomberger, Kansas Forest Service, (785) 532-3315
(Lawrence, Kan.) – Assessing a harvested tree’s value in board feet and bark chips isn’t hard. The real challenge is to measure a living tree’s benefits – particularly for communities, their people, and the environment.
The Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Office and the Kansas Forest Service will take on that challenge this summer. Starting May 31, they’ll be measuring and inventorying trees and other vegetation on a random sample of one-tenth-acre plots of both public and private property.
The Douglas County project will use new software called i-Tree Eco, said Kim Bomberger, KFS community forester coordinating the project. The Kansas City metro area tested the tool in a multi-state project in 2010. (http://www.marc.org/Environment/itree.htm ).
“The USDA Forest Service and Kansas Forest Service hope that our results will serve as a model for hundreds of communities and counties across the nation. The i-Tree Eco tool can be a way for cities and towns to measure the bottom-line results of trees, forests and community tree programs,” Bomberger said.
The approach is pretty straight-forward, she said.
“We won’t be trying to quantify trees’ proven benefits for wildlife, for instance, but we do want to illustrate the positive water-quality impact of forests along streams and rivers and show that forests contribute to human and community health – our well-being,” Bomberger said. “We will not focus on specific data from individual landowner properties. We’ll aggregate the plot data to create countywide numbers and values.”
The USDA Forest Service will complete the Douglas County data analyses. When the study’s results are in hand, local residents and community leaders will have real measures for such factors as:
* How much carbon dioxide and other air contaminants local trees are removing from the air. Also, how much carbon the trees are storing in their wood.
* The effects local trees are having on buildings’ energy use. Plus, the amount by which carbon dioxide emissions would increase if those effects were not in place.
“This should be interesting. We often talk about the impacts that deciduous trees’ shade has on cooling costs and the impacts evergreens’ protection has on wintertime costs. With this study we will be able to provide a specific dollar value of the annual savings in building energy reductions. In the Kansas City Metro area i-Tree Eco study, that amounted to $14 million a year” Bomberger said.
* The hourly rate at which the county’s urban and rural forests remove such air pollutants as ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter.
* The composition of those forests, as well as their susceptibility to destructive insect pests.
* The structural value of trees and forests in Douglas County. Structural value is the cost of having to replace a tree with a similar tree. Bomberger expects this value to be calculated in the millions, if not billions, of dollars for Douglas County.
The results should prove useful to communities throughout northeast Kansas and serve as a guide when cities or counties set priorities and develop policies, Bomberger said.
“We’ll be building a picture of the roles trees are already playing in communities and the county as a whole. That should help Douglas Countians and their cities make cost-effective plans and management decisions that give them the levels of tree-related benefits they want.”
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