Christmas trees get new life

After the holidays, the beloved Christmas tree suffers a horrific fate n sent to landfills, chipped into small pieces or burned in back-yard barbeques.

Keith Lovell, of the Louisiana Department of Natural Recourses, said trees usually thrown out after their decorative duties can serve another purpose after the holiday season. Placed in brush fences, the skeletal frame of a dying pine makes for effective marsh stabilizers.

The Coastal Restoration Division, a subdivision of the DNR, has been collecting Christmas trees for nearly two decades and putting the usually wasted wood to good use.

Lovell, a coastal engineer project manager, said the DNR created the “Christmas Tree Program” in 1990 and delegated responsibility to parishes for implementation.

“This program has been very successful,” he said, noting 250 acres of marshland has been created by placement of over 1.5 million used trees since its inception.

After collection, the trees are transported to interior marshes, shorelines, abandoned oilfield canals where brush fences are created to slow wind and water motion. Excess motion is abrasive to wetlands, washing away land at a rate of 24 square miles per year.

Christmas trees are tied together and placed within brush fences as fillers. Lovell said the trees are especially useful because they slow down tides and winds without creating a barrier, which allows sediment to build and overtime will create marsh.

Lovell said generally the trees are only collected from the Bayou Region because of transportation costs, but will receive some trees from Shreveport, Lafayette and Alexandria.

“This is a good way to recycle the trees, instead of just throwing them away,” said Lovell.

Les Reflection du Bayou has been pairing up with local schools to collect and place trees for three years in Lafourche Parish. Susan Terrebonne, project director, said each year has been a tremendous success in land maintenance.

“We really haven’t seen any growth, but to be able to see some stabilization in an area of great erosion, that’s a good sign,” she said.

Residents are able to access three sites to drop-off used Christmas trees: South Lafourche High School, Central Lafourche High School and Thibodaux High School.

After collection, dumpsters with discarded arbor are moved to pen sites where students volunteer their day to place anywhere from 2,500 to 3,500 trees. This year, Terrebonne said most of the work will be focused on refurbishing pens near Fourchon and the South Lafourche Levee System in Golden Meadow.

“The students work hard, non-stop, to get this project finished in one day. They have great respect for their teachers and the project at-hand,” she said.

Terrebonne expects over 80 students from Central Lafourche High School, Lockport Middle School and Raceland Middle School to volunteer for the project. Others from the community volunteer time as chaperons, or tangibles such as boats or trucks to transport trees and volunteers.

St. Mary Parish will begin a short tree collection beginning Jan. 4 and ending Jan. 6 by a waste removal service. In previous years some 5,000 trees have been collected for parish pens around Hammock Lake, according to parish environmental officer Frank Cali.

Contractors will rebuild damaged pens around the lake from this year’s collection, which will include trees donated from the Lafayette area.

“The damaged pens would float off,” explained Cali “those trees will hold the area together.”

Cali said contractors will also be planting sea grasses that act like glue and facilitate growth behind the pens n something Lovell and the DNR highly suggest.

“Just by looking at the aerial photos (in comparison) from last year, we can tell there has been growth and a lot of improvement,” Cali said.

The DNR uses aerial photography as well as ground photography, shoreline configuration markers and land surveys to monitor sediment levels around pens. Through the years the project has been proved a success and other states around the nation have been following Louisiana’s example by using brush fences.

According to Terrebonne Parish Coastal Restoration and Preservation Director Leslie Suazo, Christmas trees will not be collected this year because of shortages of collection dumpsters. Re-growth and rebuilding throughout the parish is causing a high demand of dumpsters of all sizes.

“This year Shreveport Green will be donating trees in January, which will be held until planting can occur in Mandalay. That project is on hold until pens can be refurbished n many were in need of repair even before the storms,” said Suazo.

About 2,000 trees will be donated and Suazo hopes to have them planted by contractors and volunteers from schools and civic groups sometime in February.