Trees Disappeared from the Danbury Green, Mayor Cavo Says They’ll Return

Where did all the trees go? Seemingly overnight, the trees on the Danbury Green disappeared.

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Danbury Mayor Cavo joined the Ethan and Lou Show on Thursday morning (6/10/21) and we asked him why the trees were removed. He said:

"Because we are doing the two phases of the downtown sidewalk rehabilitation and the trees that were planted back in the 80's or 90's when the sidewalks were done the last time have a root system that is not conducive to working with sidewalks.

So, what happened was, the trees were planted, you know, with the best intentions but the roots continually come to the surface in order to try and gather water and they push the sidewalks up and destroy them.

And, so one of the things we realized was that, before we make this large investment in the sidewalks downtown, we need to make sure that we correct that. And, there is a lot of science and a lot of technology involved in the purchasing of new trees that have a different root system that tend to do what they call a taproot, go down deeper looking for water rather than to the surface.

And, therefore when we put the new sidewalks in, we're going to replant every one of those trees that were taken down, will be replanted with a new tree, with a better root system that's going to be certain not to up-heave the new sidewalks."

The Mayor sounded excited about the new trees and the project in total saying,

"Believe me, that green will look beautiful, the downtown area is going to look beautiful when this project is done by next year and, you know people will not, it will be a short memory of these trees being taken down. Unfortunately, they just were the wrong type to live and cohabitate with sidewalks."

You can listen to our entire Ethan and Lou interview with Danbury Mayor Joe Cavo in the video player at the top of the page. In addition to the tree work we discussed a shift in how the show will do its local political interviews which will be changing in the fall.