BALTIMORE — The first trees of fall have been planted at Fallstaff Elementary Middle School, and thousands more are going to other underserved communities throughout Baltimore City thanks to new grant funding.
In August, $8 million was awarded to 26 community organizations to plant over 28,000 new trees in urban and historically underserved areas through the Urban Trees Program. Baltimore Tree Trust is one of those organizations and planted the first set of trees at Fallstaff Elementary Middle School.
WATCH: Thousands of new trees planted in Baltimore's underserved communities
"We are celebrating not just this incredible tree planting activity here at the school but all 147 communities that have participated in the Urban Tree program to be able to plant 92,000 new native trees in our communities," Dr. Jana Davis said.
Davis is president of Chesapeake Bay Trust.
This program is made possible thanks to the partnership between the Chesapeake Bay Trust, the State of Maryland and BGE. The program aims to increase the quality of living in underserved communities throughout the state from the benefits of trees, while also fighting back against global warming.
"Greater communities are healthier communities in this program helps us all participate in making our neighborhood more green," Davis said.
A group of students at Fallstaff got to name one of the trees and plant each of them in the ground with the help of Baltimore Tree Trust.
Mayor Brandon Scott says he is proud of organizations like Baltimore Tree Trust and the Chesapeake Bay Trust for working to improve the quality of life for future generations.
"Over the next decade, those trees that we're going to do will remove about 72,000 pounds of carbon from the environment and we are talking about over the last four years when we planted 23,000 trees. That's that amount of carbon is the emission of eight railroad cars full of coal removed from our air," Scott said.
The director of the Maryland Energy Administration, Paul Pinsky, says the Maryland General Assembly has been working on investing in this type of work for the past four years.
"We didn't ask we demanded me mandated that 5 million more trees be planted across the state and at least 10% of them be in urban areas," Pinsky said.
Along with the Urban Trees Program, the Maryland General Assembly's Tree Solutions Now Act of 2021 calls for those 5 million trees to be planted across the state by the year 2031.
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