Removal of trees at the Playfield explained
On a warm August morning you may have seen a group of people, many wearing yellow hats, working on the Playfield along the drainage area between the running track and the road guardrail. They were trails committee volunteers who were helping Public Works.
View from playfield before work started.
What it used to look like 14 years ago, on November 2007.
The purpose was to remove the saplings and small trees that were growing along the banks of the dam drainage and sluice gate channel output, between the road and the base of the spillway. Those of us who have been in Big Canoe a long time may recall that area had no trees and was mowed regularly. At some point in time the area stopped being mowed, and a slew of trees, most of them rapidly growing sweet gums, took hold.
It turns out this section is considered part of the dam, and the presence of trees is not a good thing. The reason is that the roots of trees, as they grow big, can create underground channels when they die and rot. So our Public Works department was told by our consultant on dams to remove the trees before they got too big. Also the presence of trees could interfere with the proper flow of water should the sluice gate need to be opened in the future.
This was an unexpected task added to the long list of work items already on our maintenance department’s plate, but one that members of the Bg Canoe Trails Committee could assist with, and they took on the challenge.
Armed with the experience of the recent cleanup of the pavilion view at Lake Disharoon, plus chainsaws, loppers and grunt, 13 men and women showed up early on a Saturday and went to work. One day was not enough, so they came back a few days later to finish clearing the massive amount of growth, on another warm August day. It was not easy work; the hardest part was hauling the cut trees up the steep embankments, using ropes, to pile them into stacks for maintenance personnel to take away later. The trails committee crew left the work days drenched in sweat, sporting foggy glasses, caked up sawdust and bramble thorn scratches, but with the satisfaction of a job well done that saved the community time and money.
A couple of larger pines were left for the more experienced sawyers of the Grounds and Landscape crew to deal with, but the majority of the work needed to restore the slopes of the output channel back to its original neatly mowed state is now complete, thanks to the volunteers’ combined 55 hours of work, which included killing a yellow jacket nest that stung some of them.
Many people were wondering why the trees were being removed, as they had an attractive quality about them, and now they are presented with why this is one of the places where it was necessary to cut them down.
Google Earth view from October 2012. Notice the area to the right of the path to the road is clear of trees from the base of the spillway upward.
Google Earth view from October 2019, 7 years after the other image. It is clearly overgrown by then.
View from the edge of the guardrail before the work started.. All that growth to the left was not there years ago.
Volunteers making good progress on the guardrail side, piling up the cut trees at the top.
Good progress being made on the Playfield side.
Finalizing the cleanup.