ROXBURY, MA

In late January, the people of Lower Roxbury finally saw the end of a decade-long struggle with Boston officials to save the trees of Melnea Cass Boulevard. The street is home to over 400 mature linden, maple and oak trees.

Back in 2011, the Boston Transportation Department (BTD) planned a complete redesign of Melnea Cass Boulevard, which connects Massachusetts and Columbus avenues. The plan would have required the removal of the boulevard’s entire tree canopy.

In a call-to-action event held by community organization Friends of Melnea Cass Boulevard, longtime Roxbury resident Louis Elisa said, “They mentioned that we want to save the trees, but I want to save my life.”

Roxbury is a victim of the “urban heat island” effect; the area retains more heat than suburban neighborhoods due to its infrastructure. Local environmentalists have said that removing the tree canopy will only exacerbate the issue. 

Dr. Brita Lundberg, a physician with Climate Code Blue, said cutting down the trees will also exacerbate a “health inequity issue.” The mature trees provide a degree of protection against harmful particles in the air. Chopping them down would be damaging for those with health conditions like asthma, COPD and heart disease, which disproportionately affect Black and brown communities like Roxbury. 

Still, the city plan was presented as part of Boston’s Complete Streets initiative, an effort to put “pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users on equal footing with motor vehicle users.” City officials hosted walks and bike tours with community members along Melnea Cass Boulevard in an effort to garner support for the project and learn about the experiences of those who use the boulevard the most. 

Residents expressed concerns about uneven sidewalks, short traffic light times and lack of speed-limit indicators along the boulevard. According to Yvonne Lalyre, who attended these community engagement events, the city promised attendees that it would mend all of these issues. Still, Lalyre was skeptical that officials would follow through.

“I disapproved,” said Lalyre. “I thought, ‘Why are we talking to these people? They’re not going to do what we want them to do. They are going to just do whatever they want.’”

And so in early 2012, she, Alison Pulpinas, Ken Kruckemeyer, Kay Mathew and Zara Zsido co-founded the Friends of Melnea Cass Boulevard. The group held weekly meetings, discussing ways to fight against the BTD’s plan.

“Tactics back then were very focused on getting the public’s attention and the media’s support,” said Mathew. The Friends engaged in street theatre and attended the BTD’s public meetings about the boulevard. 

In 2013, the group held a demonstration during one such meeting. The demonstrators banded together and carried a 40-foot string indicating just how much space would be added to the boulevard. The Bay State Banner ran a story about the meeting the following week, which gave the movement more fuel.

By 2014, the City retracted its initial plan to cut down all 400-plus trees, but still planned to move forward with widening Melnea Cass. The group spent the next four years negotiating new designs for the boulevard with the BTD. Mathew said the BTD “had no sense of the impact the designs would have on the community. Their design remained a project for moving traffic.”

The group’s relationship with the BTD diminished, even as the city trimmed the number of trees it wanted to remove. The group was able to negotiate the number down to 124 trees by 2018, but at that point, the city’s patience for the group had run out. 

“They would talk to us, but they wouldn’t actually listen to what we were saying,” Mathew said. “Community members would stand up and say, ‘Don’t take the trees down,’ but they completely disregarded us.”

Boston’s move to officially hire a contractor in 2019 left the Friends of Melnea Cass distraught. “It showed that throughout the whole 10 years of this, all the meetings and public hearings, they were completely disingenuous,” said Mathew.

Lalyre believed if the community could see how many trees would be struck down, they would react. In early 2020, she spent days tying fluorescent rope around each tree set to be removed so that passers by– pedestrians and drivers alike– could see the magnitude of removing 124 mature trees.

That year, the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), a non-profit organization seeking solutions to environmental challenges through legal action, joined the fight. The CLF combed through hundreds of documents shared between the Friends of Melnea Cass and the BTD, eventually finding a loophole: the Massachusetts Public Shade Tree Law. According to the statute, a public hearing must be held for every public shade tree set to be cut down in Massachusetts. In August, the CLF wrote a letter to Boston officials informing them that they had failed to hold any such hearing.

David Meshoulam, co-founder and executive director of Speak for the Trees Boston, then composed a petition to the City of Boston to hold a public hearing for each of the 124 trees it planned to cut down. The petition garnered over 13,000 signatures and 15 other environmental groups joined the coalition to save the trees of Melnea Cass Boulevard.

In early September, the Friends hosted a call-to-action event for the community, featuring residents as well as elected officials. The officials, including Boston City Council president Kim Janey, state Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz and councilwoman Michelle Wu, all stood in solidarity with those advocating on behalf of the trees.

“These trees represent safety, health, shade, wellbeing, coolness, in an urban heat island,” said Wu. “We reject that we must choose between climate justice and environmental justice or safe streets. We deserve all of that in this community and throughout the city, and we will make sure that happens in Roxbury.”

Janey promised attendees she would hold a public city council meeting to discuss the plan for the trees. According to Lalyre, this meeting was unlike previous ones. Usually, officials take up most of the time talking, giving the public very little time to speak. This time, however, elected officials opened up the floor for locals to speak on what mattered the most to them: saving the trees of Melnea Cass Boulevard.

In a January 21 letter addressed to the “Community,” the City of Boston officially postponed its plan to redesign Melnea Cass Boulevard and promised hold public tree hearings before “the removal of even a single healthy tree.”

“I still can’t believe it!” said Lalyre. “Things have changed, and people are realizing that trees are essential, especially in the city. We don’t have enough trees– it’s not like we can go walk in the woods! This is it. I think that people definitely realized that these trees are important, more than anything. We don’t have any other air to breathe.”