After Hurricane Ike, Mayor White unveiled a new program called “Million Trees + Houston.” I haven’t heard anything about it since then, but KUHF-88.7 has a nice story on the Harris County Flood Control District’s tree-planting program:
Everything the Harris County Flood Control District does relates to flooding. Tree planting is one of those activities…and it’s almost by magic.
“One of our basins was just very bare. Went out four days later, and there were about seven thousand trees out there. It was amazing.”
Heather Saucier handles media relations for the district. She says for the past five years, they’ve planted an average of 30-thousand trees every year.
[snip]
The activity makes it one of the largest tree planting agencies in the area. But it doesn’t come cheap. Saucier says the district is getting help from Apache Corporation. It is a Houston based independent oil and gas exploration and production company.
“Had we had to purchase these trees, we would be spending more than three hundred thousand dollars. And so, this was a very generous gift from Apache, and we’re gonna make sure we make very good use of these trees.”
And without a lot of fanfare, Apache Corporation has almost reached its goal of planting one million trees:
“We have a goal of planting a million trees through the Apache Foundation and the Harris County Flood Control District, along with a number of other governmental agencies, schools, volunteer groups in five states have helped us with our goal of planting these trees and we’re looking forward to this Spring and planting our millionth tree, hopefully right here in Houston.”
That’s excellent.
