RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - In the sea of asphalt and low-slung strip mall buildings along Jefferson Davis Highway, it’s nearly impossible for pedestrians to find a shady place to cool off on a hot day.
A coalition of Richmond city officials and environmental groups says more trees in the city’s South Side would help lower scorching summer temperatures and improve health and quality of life in majority-Black and Latino neighborhoods that were segregated by racially discriminatory housing practices in the past.
As members of the Greening Southside Richmond Project prepare to plant 650 trees around community centers, schools, churches, and areas along the Jefferson Davis Highway corridor over the next three years, the group said it aims to alleviate socioeconomic disparities that can be traced back to the redlining history of banks and mortgage lenders denying loans for properties in Black neighborhoods before the civil rights era of the 1960s.
The prevalence of shadier parks and communities in wealthier, white neighborhoods means that low-income areas can be up to 16 degrees hotter, project organizers said. That disparity, according to a recent study by the Science Museum of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University and Portland State University, has a strong correlation to higher temperatures in neighborhoods that were deemed undesirable decades ago. Researchers also found that the city’s four warmest ZIP codes had the highest rates of heat-related 911 calls.
“If you’ve ever been in South Richmond, you’ll see there’s fewer trees, a lack of access to fresh food and poor air quality from exposure to pollution,” said Sheri Shannon, co-founder of Southside ReLeaf, a community group that’s involved in the tree-planting initiative. “That all has an impact on people’s health. As a result, residents in the South Side have lower health outcomes and a shorter life expectancy than in other parts of the city.”
The higher temperatures, experts and advocates say, leads to increased health risks, higher energy bills and more pollution in urban parts of the city where Black and Latino people are clustered, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and cinder block buildings that radiate heat on extremely hot days.
“It’s built into our DNA has been this notion that there’s an inequity in the impact of heat in the city. It’s more dangerous than we know. It’s an invisible killer,” said Rob Jones, executive director of Groundwork RVA, another community group involved in the project. “Here we’ve got efforts around remediation. That’s really what matters - that we’re looking at how to put equity into this conversation.”
The lack of trees in Richmond’s low-income communities is common in other cities as well. As noted in a New York Times article last month that highlighted heat disparities in Richmond, a recent study found that formerly redlined neighborhoods in more than 100 cities during the summer are, on average, 5 degrees hotter than neighborhoods that were targeted for investment at the time.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which is working with the city and other community organizations on the project, announced the initiative Wednesday after the acquisition of a $227,000 grant from the The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to support the project.
The project is also expected to help reduce pollution, as tree roots are able to absorb stormwater runoff that would otherwise wash into streams and creeks that feed into the James River and the Chesapeake Bay.
Kenny Fletcher, communications coordinator for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said the location of all the tree plantings has yet to be determined, but that there are preliminary plans for work at the TB Smith and Blackwell community centers. He said officials are also planning to work again with Branch’s Baptist Church to remove asphalt on the property and plant additional trees after a similar project there a few years ago.
The Greening Southside project will also include green job training program for local students and community workshops. Officials said that it would help area residents understand the importance of the project to develop broad community support and involvement.
Oscar Contreras, a deacon with Branch’s Baptist Church, said he’s seen firsthand what the tree planting project can achieve after 100 trees were planted there in 2018. “It gives people a sense of ownership when they see the trees they planted grow,” he said. “It gives a sense of community.”
The project is scheduled to begin later this year and continue into 2023.
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