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<p>FORTY FORT &#8212; Some environmentally conscious students and other volunteers spent a couple hours Thursday helping to beautify a borough street and bringing other benefits to the neighborhood as well.</p><p>Six seventh-grade students from the Wyoming Seminary Lower School Environmental Club helped plant 10 skyline honey locust trees along the Sordoni Construction storage site on Murray Street.</p><p>Taking a break from shoveling dirt over the roots of a sapling, 12-year-old Environmental Club member Hannah Frels said she joined the club &#8220;because I thought it had potential and I&#8217;m really concerned about the environment. I mean, with all the global warming and water shortages and pollution that&#8217;s going on today, I think the environment needs some help.&#8221;</p><p>Frels said that she at first was &#8220;kind of skeptical&#8221; about how planting 10 trees was going to help the environment.</p><p>&#8220;But after hearing the numbers of minerals and gases and particulates that it&#8217;s going to take in, I feel that it&#8217;s really going to impact our environment a lot &#8212; in a good way, of course,&#8221; she said.</p><p>According to a project analysis by i-Tree Design, the tree planting project over the next 25 years will produce:</p><p>&#8226; $2,031 of stormwater runoff savings by intercepting 253,874 gallons of rainfall.</p><p>&#8226; $433 of air quality improvement savings by intercepting pollutants such as ozone, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter and lowering air temperature.</p><p>&#8226; $404 of savings by reducing 41,854 pounds of atmospheric carbon dioxide.</p><p>&#8226; $290 of summer energy savings by direct shading and air cooling through evapotranspiration.</p><p>&#8226; $719 of winter energy savings by slowing down winds and reducing home heat loss.</p><p>&#8220;The students know the benefits of trees. It&#8217;s part of our club studies, it&#8217;s part of our science curriculum, but this is a real-world application of it,&#8221; said Jill Carrick, advisor to the Environmental Club for grades three through eight and Science chair at the Lower School.</p><p>But the project also promotes the community outreach philosophy of the Lower School, Carrick said, which is a big focus of the Environmental Club.</p><p>&#8220;We also like partnering with the Forty Fort Shade Tree Commission. That&#8217;s been a part of our school history. This club helped plant trees on the front of our campus and we&#8217;ve also planted trees around campus as part of service learning efforts. For two decades, now, we&#8217;ve been doing this, so it&#8217;s very nice that the Tree City USA banner that the commission has is displayed in our school,&#8221; Carrick said.</p><p>Forty Fort Shade Tree Commission member Melissa Tomascik said the commission applied for a TreeVitalize grant through the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Bureau of Forestry and were awarded funding to help plant 40 trees &#8212; 19 this fall and 21 in the spring.</p><p>Some of those trees will be planted starting at 10 a.m. Saturday, and volunteers are welcome. Tomascik said those interested can send a message to the Forty Fort Shade Tree Commission page on Facebook.</p><p>&#8220;We were awarded around $4,000, and then there are a lot of in-kind services, too. The borough workers have been awesome, the contribution from Sordoni, all the volunteers helping us, so I think the whole project, including in-kind contributions, was almost $9,000,&#8221; Tomascik said.</p><p>&#8220;I live right around here and I&#8217;ve always known that this area right here needs trees desperately. I worked with William Sordoni &#8212; this is their storage property &#8212; and he was thrilled about the idea. So they also gave us a little bit of a contribution as well toward the effort because they think it&#8217;s important too,&#8221; she said.</p><p>Tomascik said trees not only beautify the area, but increase property value, reduce crime and tend to cause people to drive slower, so it&#8217;s safer for neighborhood children.</p><p>At 87 years old, Carol Seltzer, chairwoman of the Shade Tree Commission, wasn&#8217;t able to attend the planting because of some mobility issues, but as one of the borough&#8217;s biggest tree advocates, she&#8217;s thrilled with the project, Tomascik said.</p><p>Urban Forester Vinnie Cotrone, who works for the Penn State Extension College of Applied Sciences and assisted with the project, noted that municipalities can apply for the grant through the Bureau of Forestry &#8220;and do the exact same thing we&#8217;re doing here. We use a lot of volunteers. That&#8217;s the scope of TreeVitalize, to really work with the community, involve it.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a vested interest. These kids are going to walk by these trees and be more likely to look at them and say, &#8216;Are they OK? Is someone hitting them with a mower? Does someone need to water them?&#8217; versus if a contractor came in and planted this. Plus, we&#8217;re also helping the municipality keep the cost down,&#8221; Cotrone said.</p><p>Cotrone said the 10 saplings are &#8220;not going to look like much for probably two, maybe three years. But this spot needs them. It&#8217;s a stretch of Murray Street that needs some shade, needs some screening (to mask) the construction trailers (on the Sordoni property). Give it a couple years, and I think this is going to look great.&#8221;</p><p>The leaflets are so small they&#8217;re going to blow away and won&#8217;t have to be raked up by neighbors. Also, they&#8217;re very tolerant of road salt and tend to survive droughts as well, Cotrone said.</p><p>Mayor Andy Tuzinski said he&#8217;s through towns &#8220;that literally have no trees and, in my opinion, have no soul. There are stark sidewalks, it&#8217;s just drab.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;People say, oh, we&#8217;d have to get rid of the leaves. But you know what? That&#8217;s one time of the year. At least when the leaves are coming down, they&#8217;re colorful. But this makes a difference and I&#8217;m grateful that we have a Shade Tree Commission that is made up of dynamic people who really care about the town and are really unsung heroes.</p><p>&#8220;They sometimes have to take a lot of grief because somebody wants to cut down a tree that&#8217;s healthy, but they&#8217;re looking at the town as a whole and sometimes they need to reconcile the needs of the whole versus the part of one person. But it&#8217;s great to have the kids here planting and giving back. It&#8217;s a win-win all around, a very positive thing for Forty Fort,&#8221; he said.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Grace Carrick, a seventh-grader at Wyoming Seminary Lower School, and her mom Jill Carrick, a science teacher at Wyoming Seminary, take part in the Wyoming Seminary Environmental Club&#8217;s tree planting project along Murray Street in Forty Fort on Thursday. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/web1_treeplanting01.jpg</photo0><caption0>Grace Carrick, a seventh-grader at Wyoming Seminary Lower School, and her mom Jill Carrick, a science teacher at Wyoming Seminary, take part in the Wyoming Seminary Environmental Club&#8217;s tree planting project along Murray Street in Forty Fort on Thursday. </caption0><photoCredit0>Pete G. Wilcox | Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/web1_treeplanting02.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Wyoming Seminary Lower School students seventh-grader Hannah Frels, left, and 6th grader Bridget Dowd stomp down dirt around the trunk of a tree that was just planted on Thursday along Murray Street in Forty Fort by the school&#8217;s Environmental Club. Looking on in the background is seventh-grader Grace Carrick. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/web1_treeplanting02.jpg</photo1><caption1>Wyoming Seminary Lower School students seventh-grader Hannah Frels, left, and 6th grader Bridget Dowd stomp down dirt around the trunk of a tree that was just planted on Thursday along Murray Street in Forty Fort by the school&#8217;s Environmental Club. Looking on in the background is seventh-grader Grace Carrick. </caption1><photoCredit1>Pete G. Wilcox | Times Leader </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/web1_treeplanting03.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Forty Fort Mayor Andy Tuzinski watches Wyoming Seminary Lower School sixth-grader Kieran Sherry shovel dirt onto the base of a newly planted tree along Murray Street in Forty Fort on Thursday. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/web1_treeplanting03.jpg</photo2><caption2>Forty Fort Mayor Andy Tuzinski watches Wyoming Seminary Lower School sixth-grader Kieran Sherry shovel dirt onto the base of a newly planted tree along Murray Street in Forty Fort on Thursday. </caption2><photoCredit2>Pete G. Wilcox | Times Leader </photoCredit2></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Steve Mocarsky</p><p>smocarsky@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Steve Mocarsky at 570-991-6386 or on Twitter @TLSteveMocarsky.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Students, volunteers plant trees in Forty Fort to beautify street, benefit environment