Louisa Twitchel and Matthew Allen stepped outside to a reminder that a lot of the trees they’ve grown to love will soon be gone.
“I just had a FaceTime call with my friend this morning, who’s going to come visit in a couple of weeks,” Twitchel said. “I give her a little FaceTime tour of all the trees because we're going to miss them so much.”
UC San Diego is taking down about 250 eucalyptus trees in the Mesa Apartments neighborhood that school officials said could pose a safety risk if they fall.
A stump is what’s left after a tree fell on an apartment building in the complex. It broke a window and some siding, but no one got hurt.
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Matthew Allen lives downstairs.
“I think, for the university, that was just kind of the last straw because they were thinking, ‘Oh, we've trimmed all these trees to try to make it safe.’ And right after that, someone could have gotten really badly hurt and that would have been awful," he said. "I get where they're coming from. I do think the measures are a little bit drastic.”
Students like Allen feel like cutting down 250 trees is too many. They were only given 4 days’ notice before removal began. They said they’ve been left out of the decision process and without the trees, they sacrifice its protection from noise pollution, environmental pollutants and sunshade.
Students sent housing administration and the chancellor’s office a letter with their concerns.
Leslie Sepuka, Resource Management & Planning/CFO for UCSD responded in a statement that reads:
“A large eucalyptus tree recently fell on one of the housing units in the Mesa Neighborhood. Fortunately no one was hurt, but because the safety of students, faculty and staff at UC San Diego is always of highest concern, the university is removing the eucalyptus trees identified as presenting the most risk. The process is based on the size of the trees and their fall radius. If a tree is tall enough to fall on a building, car or playground, then it will be cut.”
The tree removal process will happen in phases and last through Aug.18.
UCSD said all Mesa Apartments will be removed and redeveloped at some point in the future with new trees planted “to mitigate the loss of the unsafe eucalyptus.”
