![]() “You’re looking at $700 to $1000 a day to get 100 to 200 trees watered,” said Palat. Local governments with wealthy tax bases are the ones that can allocate watering funds in their budgets. And many organizations that apply for tree planting grants will opt to rely on residents in order to appear more competitive and get more trees in the ground at a lower cost. ![]() ![]() Part of the problem, Malarich says, is that hiring someone to water is expensive. “We made the shift to talking about trees as critical infrastructure in the ‘90s, but some of our structures still reflect the era of beautification in that trees are not treated as a ‘must have.’” “But to really shift the landscape at the speed we need to, you have to have crews moving in tandem.” She added that tree planting used to be considered an amenity. “I got my start with an organization that did volunteer tree care and that’s a beautiful model for community building and connecting people with plants,” said Malarich. “I’ll be honest,” said Palat, “the best success we’ve had in the end is paying someone to water.” For a resident, the cost of watering a young tree is less than $10 a year, but it can still be a struggle to get people to do it, especially in places occupied by mostly renters who move away over time. Palat said he’s worked on all sorts of programs to encourage residents to water: asking people to sign volunteer agreements, sending text reminders, and running educational programs in different languages about the importance of tree care. In the past several years, nonprofits and governments have started to rethink how they get water to trees, and a movement towards investing more dollars in watering, especially during critical heat and drought times, is underway, even if progress is slow. “About 25 percent of the agencies we work with take on watering trees in the public right of way,” said Mike Palat, vice president of operations for Southern California and the Southwest at West Coast Arborists, a contractor that maintains trees for about 350 municipalities in California. On Stafford Avenue, trees planted three years ago are already casting much-needed shade. But most of the young trees planted by TreePeople are doing well – “that’s because we’re here watering them.” The leaves look crinkled and crispy at their edges. “We had to start at 5am to avoid the danger.” A few blocks over, Garcia points out a Brisbane box tree, planted by the team three years ago. Around her, crew members in wide brim hats and long sleeved shirts haul 5-gallon buckets across lawns fading from green to brown. “Last week we were out in the heat wave and it was brutal,” says Eileen Garcia, senior manager of community forestry with TreePeople. The watering team, from the nonprofit TreePeople, is responsible for thousands of newly planted trees in seven low-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles County, including Watts, South Gate, and Lynwood each tree comes with a guarantee that the nonprofit will provide water and other maintenance for at least 3 years. Every couple hundred feet they park their pickup trucks, loaded with 275 gallon water tanks, hop out, and fan out along the street, dousing the roots of young trees lining the strip between the sidewalk and the road. On an overcast Thursday morning in September, a team of five people slowly makes its way down Broadway Avenue, a residential street in the city of Huntington Park, California. This story is part of the Grist series Parched, an in-depth look at how climate change-fueled drought is reshaping communities, economies, and ecosystems.
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