Tom Dickson and Joel Chavez, of Dominion Energy, plant a tree on 200 North in the Fairpark neighborhood of Salt Lake City on Thursday. A total of 205 trees were planted by 100 volunteers from Dominion Energy during the event, which was billed as the largest single-day tree planting ever in the city and the biggest volunteer tree-planting in at least a generation. The project is part of Mayor Erin Mendenhall’s initiative to plant 1,000 additional trees throughout the city’s west-side neighborhoods to address the inequitable distribution of the city’s urban forest. “Today we’re putting silver linden, catalpa, English oak, spring snow crabapple, and flowering cherry trees into the ground to put down roots,” Mendenhall said. “It will take time for them to create a towering, mature canopy, but today’s efforts represent hope, growth and resilience.” Like many areas along the Wasatch Front, the Fairpark neighborhood lost many mature shade trees during last month’s windstorm, which knocked down or damaged an estimated 1,500 trees on city property and many more on private property. City crews, private contractors and agencies from neighboring communities have spent more than 20,000 hours on the cleanup effort. Crews have cleared an estimated 4,000 tons of storm debris, and have about 4,000 tons to go. The city anticipates cleanup work to be completed by mid- to late October.
