Lower Manhattan Will Get Only 30 New Trees Under Adams Plan
As City officials embark on a program to plant more than 9,000 new trees throughout the five boroughs during the next few months, Lower Manhattan is likely to get fewer than one-third of one percent of this total. An analysis of data first reported by Gothamist indicates the administration of Mayor Eric Adams plans to sow just 30 trees within Community District 1, a conglomeration of neighborhoods comprising 1.5 square miles south of a line formed by Canal, Baxter, and Pearl Streets, and the Brooklyn Bridge. This translates into a single new tree for every 30 acres of land within Community District 1.
In a separate but related development, the City’s Department of Parks and Recreation has updated its online Tree Map to reflect the current census of trees in Lower Manhattan, and quantify their environmental benefits. The Parks Department reports that there are currently 1,797 trees in the area it calls “Battery Park City-Lower Manhattan,” which encompasses the zone delineated by the Brooklyn Bridge, Park Row, Vesey Street, West Street, and Harrison Street. Given this total, the Adams Administration’s tree push will grow the local total by approximately 1.7 percent.
(The Battery Park City Authority separately tracks and manages tree inventory within its 92 acres with the digital platform TreePlotter. A year ago, the BPCA undertook an inventory of its trees and assessed the biodiversity of the neighborhood. See the results here.)
Within the Battery Park City-Lower Manhattan area, according to the Parks Department, the existing complement of trees annually intercepts 1.7 million gallons of stormwater (enough to cover four football fields with water 12 inches deep), saves 1.3 million kilowatt hours of energy (chiefly because their cooling effect reduces the need for air conditioning), and removes 2,330 pounds of pollutants from the air. The Parks Department estimates the local financial value of these benefits to be $192,844.
While there are 77 distinct species of trees Downtown, according to the Parks Department, the most common is the “thornless honey locust,” which comprises more than one-fifth of the local tally.
The Parks Department’s updated Tree Map has also removed a feature that was contained in the original version. When it launched, this atlas estimated the amount of carbon dioxide that local trees removed from the community’s air. In January, 2023, the benchmark for Battery Park City-Lower Manhattan was pegged at one million tons per year. The newer version of the database no longer tracks this metric.