This summer, Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice’s Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) Community Building and Outreach Youth Program has been working hard on street tree stewardship around the Bronx River neighborhood. During the competition, each group was given a street tree pit on Morrison Avenue and asked to not only beautify the street tree pits but to improve their design in order to capture more stormwater from the streets! Esteemed judges of the competition included Anne-Marie Runfola, Damian Griffin and Teresa Crimmens from the Bronx River Alliance and Henry LaJara from YMPJ. Judges decisions were guided by Paul “Keep it on the Land” Mankiewicz. Group 1 won the Design Execution and Pit Functionality Award and Group 2 won the Team Presentation and Pit Design Award. The plenitude of french drains, compost, and herbaceous plantings caused the judges to be overwhelmed with joy at the amount of stormwater that would be captured by these two retrofitted tree pits, which will mean less pollution to the Bronx River, healthier trees and cooler temperatures in the neighborhood. Nice job CSO CBOP! This street tree pit competition was supported by The Home Depot Foundation and will complement the larger scale street tree installations being coordinated by YMPJ and the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation.
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