Sacramento makes new push to keep City of Trees title
SACRAMENTO — Sacramento has long been known as the City of Trees, and new efforts are underway to make sure the city keeps that title.
Every branch, limb, and leaf helps make Sacramento a cooler place to live.
Rachel Patten, the city's sustainability specialist, said trees provide an important benefit for people and the environment.
"They lower the temperatures in the communities so we don't have to run our A/C as much," she said. "They're cleaning our air quality so that we can breathe."
An MIT study of satellite data has named Sacramento the greenest city in the U.S. and the third-greenest on the planet.
"That City of Trees slogan that we are known by is true, but there's work to do to make sure that we stay that way," Patten said.
There are an estimated 1 million trees across Sacramento, and now, city leaders are trying to get that number to grow so that an urban tree canopy covers 35% of the city skyline by 2045.
To meet that goal, an average of 25,000 new trees will need to be planted each year.
"It's going to take a lot of partnerships," Patten said.
The Sacramento Tree Foundation has a "neighbor-woods" program that offers free trees for people to plant.
"We rely a lot on volunteers and those communities to be involved in it so they have some investment in the tree planting," said Garret Werner of the Sacramento Tree Foundation.
In February, CBS13 uncovered a city document saying Sacramento has no more money to plant trees in its own parks. However, there's now new cash coming courtesy of a $2 million grant from the federal government.
"It's something that's really necessary in our fight to make sure that we have sustainability," Congresswoman Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento).
Neighborhoods in Sacramento are not equal when it comes to tree canopies. That's why the majority of the money will be used in underserved communities.
"The trees are really a part of what makes Sacramento such a beautiful and special place to live," Patten said.
The City of Sacramento will be holding a series of neighborhood workshops over the next few months to get feedback on the tree planting goal before the city council votes on adopting the plan later this year.