Tree Planting and Metroparks Investment
Floor Speech
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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, during this fall season, thanks are due to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for its award of 10,000 trees to the city of Toledo, Ohio.
Worth millions of dollars, these trees will be planted in oxygen- short neighborhoods and barren industrial and commercial zones to achieve beautification and better air quality. Others will replace legacy trees damaged by severe weather events such as tornadoes that occurred in Point Place, to beautify our precious coastal community.
As a member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies, this significant boost from the U.S. Department of Agriculture will present our western basin with a major new opportunity.
Planting trees can develop community-wide and neighborhood environmental consciousness by organizing grassroots planting teams across our precious fresh watershed. We all have a responsibility to the future by helping seed a new and renewed consciousness across Lake Erie's abundant western freshwater basin. Indeed, the city of Toledo sits at the lowest elevation in our vast watershed that hugs Lake Erie and drains all the runoff into it. Thus, trees also provide a great filtering capacity as trees store and filter water.
The city of Toledo has been handed this rather major task to green up. My hope is that regional stewardship will include trees acquired from local growers, links to environmental organizations, and engagement of our Metroparks and Black Swamp Conservancy. Tree planting creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity for community betterment and for popular mobilization.
Toledo youth and other organizations in our neighborhoods, including downtown Toledo itself, will benefit from this 10,000 trees promise of a better future for our coastal city as a welcoming and beautiful destination where the Lake and the Maumee River, the largest river to flow into the Great Lakes, adjoin at the coastline's edge.
Coastal, river, and stream bank planting will help relieve flooding. Mature trees hold hundreds of gallons of water and reduce flooding to assist homeowners in places that are along Swan Creek, Reynolds Road, Byrne Road, Sleepy Hollow corridors, as well as west Toledo and other areas that still have water runoff on occasion and are challenged.
Strategic tree planting can improve our entire region. It can improve our freshwater rivers, streams, and ditches that run through Toledo. Their banks must be attended, starting where tornadoes have just destroyed hundreds and hundreds of legacy trees. Trees can help upgrade our civic center and many of our corridors along Cherry Street, the South End, and Junction neighborhoods.
The Ohio Turnpike exit onto U.S. 20 still is the only exit in the cities of Toledo and Maumee off the Ohio Turnpike. This corridor should be showcased by tree plantings leading to Toledo's Botanical Garden, its CYO fields, and then proceeding up to the Wildwood Preserve.
The U.S. 24 artery that I was proud to champion has been improved from the Port of Toledo all the way to the Indiana border, carefully winding through some of the richest farmland in the world.
This freshwater corridor can be visually upgraded even more with trees as one approaches our freshwater kingdom. Indeed, our region is located at the southernmost, warmest coastline in the entire Great Lakes. The Maumee River is the largest river that flows into the Great Lakes and we should showcase it and its boundaries regardless of political jurisdiction.
Currently, millions of potential visitors coming across the Ohio Turnpike would never think of exiting off into our region because signage does not create a reason for them to do so. A tree corridor can welcome visitors from far and wide. My hope is that this project is not just about sending out trucks with tree saplings and excavator buckets. My hope is that our region's leaders can use this opportunity to take bold leadership to spruce up our ``Glass City'' in a garden.
We know Toledo has oxygen deficits in several regions, especially where industrial development and leaching landfills cause pollutants like CO
Our citizenry is motivated to manage our precious assets going forward, including attention to new-age production greenhouses that produce millions of plants and fresh produce we all enjoy. If this were Amish country, there would be a welcome center, signage, websites, beautified exit ramps leading off the turnpike exit to Reynolds Road up to Hill Avenue at the Kyle Farm where we have the opportunity for a visitor center and dozens and dozens of local farm markets in the region.
Mr. Speaker, I thank you so very much for allowing me to speak today because we all know what America makes and grows makes and grows America.
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