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Nestled underground, below a mix of trees and brush, lies a 10-inch natural gas pipeline, installed in 1954. Little has been done to maintain it in recent decades, but Pacific Gas & Electric is trying to remedy that with an aggressive plan to remove trees and vegetation around the line and others throughout the state, said spokesperson Shaun Maccoun.

“You look at this little valley oak right now and it doesn’t look like much, but it’s very ominous,” said Joey Perez, senior land consultant. “And it’s going to get bigger ... When I consider the safety risk, these trees were doomed from the start.”

Robyn Difalco, executive director of Butte Environmental Council, said being able to see the actual project gave her perspective and context, and she retains hope for saving some of the larger trees.

Chico Enterprise-RecordPosted:   03/13/2014 08:01:01 PM PDTCommunity members may help at the Oak Way Community Garden work day, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, at 1400 W. Eighth St. Volunteers should bring gloves and drinking water. Cultivating Community North Valley and the Butte Environmental Council are hosting the work day. Information about this event and others scheduled for the future are available online at cultivatingcommunitynv.org.

In addition, the Butte Environmental Council is asking for permission for an oak planting project in upper park. The four-year plan calls for the planting of oaks, the engagement of community and protection for previously planned oak trees. BEC has acquired the funding to make the project possible.

If you've driven by Oak Way Park this summer or last spring, it's hard to miss something new. Neatly divided plots of land have sprung to life at the corner of Nord and West Eighth Avenues. The land is the second community garden organized through the Butte Environmental Council, http://www.becnet.org Some of the growers are people who were on the waiting list for BEC's community garden on Humboldt Avenue. Now that things have sprung up, BEC will host a potluck party at Oak Way Park Tuesday night, 5-7 p.m.

"Our agreement with the city is that we can do the community garden on the property until it is needed for something else," explained Robyn DiFalco, BEC executive director.

BEC has also partnered with Independent Living Services of Northern California. The plan is to build raised beds that will be accessible by people who have mobility limitation.

Chico >> Fifty years from now there should be more shade at the parking lot at Horseshoe Lake.Volunteers had their hands covered with mud Saturday while planting blue oak acorns.Normally this might be a job for squirrels. However, new seedlings have a tough time at Horseshoe Lake with people and dogs are running and walking over the area year-round.Saturday, a group organized by the Butte Environmental Council did all that they could to give the new acorns a great chance at survival.

Danielle Baxter, project coordinator for the Oak Restoration Project.

To increase the chances of these acorns living a long, long life, volunteers will revisit the area many times to add water. They bring in a big water container and literally set up a bucket brigade.Baxter explained that a $30,000 grant from the California Wildlife Foundation is funding the project for three years. The goal is to plant new trees, of course, but also to involve the public in the process.

Robert Dresden of Chico explains planting techniques Tuesday as Chico Tree Advocates, the Butte Environmental Council, the city and several volunteers prepare to plant valley oak acorns around the One-Mile Recreation Area in Bidwell Park.

Dozens of the old oak trees have fallen at One-Mile Recreation Area in recent years, due to drought, heavy winds and rains, or just the fact that they were old and vulnerable to the elements. The rest of the park has seen its fair share of oaks crashing to the ground, too. City of Chico staff, Butte Environmental Council (BEC) and Chico Tree Advocates have joined forces to identify areas where the forest canopy needs a hand. (BEC organizes a similar project that focuses on oak restoration in Upper Park.)

The proposed oak woodland mitigation ordinance, created by the county, made its way through the first workshop of the Butte County Planning Commission last week.

Natalie Carter of Butte Environmental Council attended the workshop.

DiFalco weighs in In last week’s column, I devoted a considerable amount of space to the plight of the huge historic valley oak tree

growing in the vacant lot at the corner of Salem and West Eighth streets. Thanks to the recent actions of the city’s Architectural Review & Historic Preservation Board, the grand, towering tree is slated to be axed to make way for a couple of duplexes. However, the Butte Environmental Council has (thankfully) filed an appeal, scheduled to be heard next month. Robyn DiFalco, BEC’s executive director (who penned the appeal), sent me a few words by email recently, expressing her thoughts about the situation of this valley oak, as well as that of other heritage trees still standing in Chico. “The mature street trees of Chico are one of the things I love most about this city—and I’m concerned that they’re vulnerable these days,” DiFalco said. “At present, the city has no urban forester or tree crew on staff, the Tree Committee isn’t meeting for lack of city staff, and consequently, the Urban Forest Management Plan is still just a draft. “This is not just about one small project and a few trees—it’s partly a concern about the future of Chico’s urban forest.”

Along the thank-you lines, Butte Environmental Council board chairman Mark Stemen offers these words, in reference to BEC’s recently dropping its appeal to save the historic valley oak tree and other trees at the corner of West Eighth and Salem streets. The trees are slated for removal to make way for the building of Salvation Army transitional housing (as covered in this column and in a recent CN&R Downstroke news brief). “I want to thank the folks at the Salvation Army and the Blitz Build program at the university. They have worked with us at BEC, and they are fully committed to doing the right thing,” Stemen wrote in a recent email to me. “They have agreed to plant three times the number of trees they are required to plant by code.

“The tree species will be of the valley oak mixed-riparian vegetation type, as identified in the [city of Chico’s draft of the] Urban Forest Management Plan, and they have agreed to put the fallen trees to a use that is ‘as beneficial to the City and planet as possible,’ also called for in the Urban Forest Plan.” Thanks, Mark!

Volunteer tree watering in Upper Bidwell Park: 8:15-11 a.m. Resources, including buckets, hose and water provided. Meet at North Rim Trail parking lot. Wear sturdy shoes and be able to carry a gallon of water from a truck to seedlings (5-10 yards). Butte Environmental Council planted 100 blue oak acorns last fall, and help watering is needed to assure their survival. For information or to schedule a group, Becky Holden, beckyh@becnet.org. Weekly through August.

Robin McCollum with Chico Tree Advocates said the area is a preserve of nature that was provided by Annie Bidwel nearly 100 years ago. "I'm very concerned about the park and nature," he said. "If this type of supervision is going to be the norm here then we're going to have a lot of destruction done to the park," McCollum said.

Robin McCollum had just begun talking about a field of fallen trees by the Chico Creek Nature Center when a white SUV slowed to a halt and the driver rolled down the front passenger window. “Is this where the village is going to go?” the woman asked, referring to the Mechoopda living history exhibit proposed to be sited adjacent to the center. “No,” replied McCollum, chair of local environmental group Chico Tree Advocates. The tribal installation would go in the old deer pens nearby. This clearing owes its existence to ignoble circumstances.

CHICO -- A vision has sprouted for another Chico community garden, with hopes a new crop of urban farmers will be tending seedlings by next spring. Mark Stemen, a board member with the Butte Environmental Council, went public last week with the idea for the Oak Way Community Garden. A one-acre vacant lot at the northwest corner of Eighth and Nord avenues, the space is slated for an eventual fire station. But until then it could be a great spot for people to grow their own food, he said.

"It would be a great alternative use," Stemen said. "People think it's a great location and it's clearly an unused space." Having spent the morning checking on seedlings at the Humboldt Community Garden, Stemen smiled last week as his dirt-stained fingers unfurled a canvas mockup of gridded plots, a model orchard and a looped walking path. The location has many perks, he said, including it's on the other side of town from the Humboldt garden, it has nearby parking and water hookups and it provides easy access for those with disabilities. It's also near a park operated by the Chico Area Recreation and Park District, which could prove mutually beneficial.

Like the Humboldt garden, the city would lease the property to the Butte Environmental Council, which would charge gardeners a small amount to cover water and insurance costs. And volunteers will fundraise for piping, fencing and other materials. Robyn DiFalco, executive director of BEC, said she is excited by the prospect of

Nani Teves, Butte Environmental Council’s water-outreach coordinator, sent me a press release announcing “phase two of the Code Blue water engagement campaign.” As some readers may recall, BEC’s 2013 Code Blue water-outreach campaign kicked off on Feb. 5 with a free educational forum at Chico State called “Ethical Issues and Water: An Interfaith Dialogue”; the ongoing series of no-cost, water-centric events will run throughout the year. Phase two—the “action” phase, which will begin Sept. 19—will include gray-water and rainwater-catchment installation workshops, and “actions related to statewide strategies to solving some of the more controversial and political water issues.” Thus, next Thursday (Sept. 19), a free action workshop related to the proposed Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta twin-tunnels project will be held at the Blue Oak Charter School community room (450 W. East Ave.), from 6-7 p.m.

The Butte Environmental Council and the city of Chico are partnering once again for the annual Bidwell Park and Chico Creeks Cleanup from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday. Last year, more than 350 volunteers helped collect several tons of garbage and recyclables from the park and creeks. Since 1995, BEC volunteers have pulled seven tons of recyclables, 14 tons of scrap metal and 77 tons of garbage from the parks and creeks. Volunteers are encouraged to wear long pants and sturdy closed-toe shoes. Bring gloves and a water bottle, and meet at the Hooker Oak Recreation Area parking lot for the park cleanup and at Park Avenue and 11th Street for the creeks cleanup. BEC will provide water and treat all volunteers to a free barbecue and raffle prizes afterward. For more information, contact Maggi Barry at maggib@becnet.org or call 891-6424.

Butte Environmental Council appealing anti-tree decision by Architectural Review & Historic Preservation Board

This article was published on 11.14.13.

Tearing down another beautiful historic tree CN&R photo contributor Karen Laslo first gave me the heads-up on this one, followed by Butte Environmental Council board president Mark Stemen. It seems that the very huge—what some would term “heritage”—valley oak tree that lives in the vacant lot on the corner of Salem and West Eighth streets is slated for removal so that a couple of single-story duplexes can be built there.

If it takes a village to raise a child, for me it takes a community to grow vegetables.

This year, we made a friend. His name is Mark Stemen, head of the Butte Environmental Council, and he introduced us to the idea of community gardening. Knowing we have a program for at-risk youth called Wilderness Experience, Mark encouraged us to lease a plot at Humboldt Community Garden to teach the kids the benefits of gardening.

The first time I talked to Mark about the garden, he told me his philosophy: the most important word in Community Garden isn't garden. He is absolutely correct. So far, we have done nothing by ourselves. Every time we go to the garden, we meet new people who are happy to be there, gardening alongside us. We use the tools provided by the community, the compost and the water. We were given some of the plants, and someone even gave us a hose when they saw ours was too short. We've chatted up our plot-neighbors for recipe ideas and tips on when to harvest our vegetables.

Flowers placed on a stump of a tree removed by PG&E at the Oroville Cemetery as part of the utility’s Pathways Pipeline Project. As the tree-removal work continues in Butte County, efforts are be made to avoid or ease the controversy that happened in Oroville.

Chico >> No one wants another Oroville tree fiasco.Butte County, PG&E and other stakeholders are working together to try to prevent another controversy surrounding tree removals planned to take place around Chico as part of the Pathways Pipeline Project. Final tree removal numbers and locations have not been established but both the county and PG&E pledge that communication is a critical factor.

“We are very hopeful we can have a collaborative process and the public can be very informed,” said Paul Hahn, Butte County’s chief administrative officer. “There will be no quick decisions and trees are not going to just start disappearing.”

Saturday morning, September 15th as the sun comes up, hundreds of community volunteers will gather in the parking lots of Hooker Oak Park and the Annie K Bidwell Parlor. Check-in stations and empty dumpsters will be waiting for volunteers to participate in the largest round up of trash and recyclables in Chico. In small groups, formed in advance or on the spot, volunteers will be supplied with trash bags, pickers, buckets, and coffee before they are sent out to clean every creek in Chico- in just over 3 hours! Hosted by Butte Environmental Council since 1988, this year will be the 31st annual Bidwell Park and Chico Creeks Cleanup.