They’re sending in the tree-inforcements.
The city wants to plant half a dozen new street trees on a Dyker Heights block — the latest coup in the age-old war between Brooklyn homeowners and city trees. The news came as an unpleasant surprise to locals who say they’re already besieged by bark-clad battalions that are destroying their homes and yards.
Tree roots have rent sidewalks asunder, upheaved once-placid lawns, and flooded homes by clogging sewer pipes, locals said. And the city plays residents for saps, quartering the trees on public property while forcing neighboring homeowners to pay for arboreal collateral damage, one homeowner said.
“These are the kinds of things that homeowners have to endure when you have trees that are not maintained by the city,” Donna Dottavio, who owns a home near the corner of 11th Avenue and 79th Street. “They can put in whatever they want, but they don’t maintain them. All the financial repercussions lie on the homeowner. I can’t see how they’re gonna put another tree to do more damage to our homes.”
Dottavio had to pay plumbers about $2,000 in March when her basement flooded after roots from a city street tree wrought havoc on her sewer pipes, she said. The plumber told her the flood was caused by toilet paper getting tangled in roots that had pierced her clay sewer pipes, Dottavio said. Now she and her husband have to put all their used toilet tissue in trash cans — a practice that keeps them from inviting many people over, she said.
“There’s no way I’m having people in my house,” she said. “How am I gonna have people in my house and tell them they can’t flush the toilet paper?”
Now the city wants to plant a new tree next door — in front of Dottavio’s mother’s house and the driveway they share. Spray-painted markings indicate the tree pit will be right next to their gas and sewer lines, and Dottavio’s mother fears the new tree will mount a scorched-earth assault on her home.
“This thing eventually will tear into my sewer line and also my gas line,” said Mildred Farlese.
But the city says she’ll be safe.
Workers plant trees at least two feet from gas and sewer lines, and the Parks Department now digs larger tree pits to encourage roots to grow downward rather than outward, a spokeswoman said. The city hasn’t determined what species of tree it will install along 11th Avenue, she said. Residents can log suggestions, but Parks makes the final call, because it has to maintain the plants, a spokeswoman said.
Another neighbor fears roots from trees planned in front of her home will tear up her expensive sidewalk heating system.
“It was costly for us to put it in, and for them to say all the sudden, ‘we’re gonna put in trees’ — what about my pipes?” said Staci Anthoulis, whose sidewalk along 78th Street and 11th Avenue is embedded with hot-water pipes to melt winter snow.
Man has been locked in a tug-of-war with trees for terrestrial supremacy from time immemorial, but the war heated up after Hurricane Sandy’s salty flood waters killed the root systems of thousands of Brooklyn’s street trees. Since then, undead “zombtrees” have been dropping limbs on unsuspecting residents at an alarming rate.
The city botched its tree-trimming program in 2012 and 2013, barbering baby arbors while letting old growth go untrimmed, a Comptroller’s report found last year.
Not everyone on the Dyker block says that installing new trees is the root of all evil. The trees may cause homeowners headaches, but they also make the block pretty and increase property values, one neighbor said.
“What’s the first thing you look for in a real estate listing? ‘Tree-lined block,’ ” said Angelo Sciascia, who wants a tree but can’t have one because there’s a power pole in front of his house. “Do they break up the concrete? Yeah. So does snow.”
Residents can suggest tree species and alert the Parks Department about sidewalk heating systems by calling the Parks Department’s borough office at (718) 965–8900 or by calling 311, a spokeswoman said.
