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Richard Alles Interview, Part 1 of 2

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Title:	Richard Alles Interview, Part 1 of 2
Identifier:	alles_richard_2332
Related:	alles_richard_2333
Location:	3J453
Description:	Alles discusses his early influences, the history and conservation of trees in San Antonio, the urban tree canopy, and his activism.
Country:	United States
State:	Texas
City:	San Antonio
Date:	2006/02/15
Creators:	Alles, Richard (interviewee)
	Todd, David (interviewer)
	Weisman, David (interviewer)
Source:	Conservation History Association of Texas, Texas Legacy Project Records
Language:	en
Publisher:	Dolph Briscoe Center for American History
Rights:	Dolph Briscoe Center for American History
Original Format:	Mini-DV

The rich media version of this video was created by Eryn Whitworth, April 2007. Her work was made possible by the School of Information, University of Texas at Austin and the Institute for Museum & Library Services.

Contents

Interview Start

Early Influences

The Impact of Trees

Historic Trees in San Antonio

Tree Cover and Aquifer Recharge

Trees and Erosion Control

Urban Tree Canopy

Early Tree Conservation efforts in San Antonio

Activism

Transcript

TRANSCRIPT INTERVIEWEE: Richard Alles (RA) INTERVIEWERS: David Todd (DT) and David Weisman (DW) DATE: February 15, 2006 LOCATION: San Antonio Texas TRANSCRIBERS: Melanie Smith and Robin Johnson REELS: 2332 and 2333

Please note that the recording includes roughly 60 seconds of color bars and sound tone for technical settings at the outset of the recordings. You can select Interview Start in the Table of Contents to skip this section.

DT: My name is David Todd. I'm here for the Conservation History Association of Texas and were in San Antonio, outside of the urban core, and it's February 15th, 2006 and were at the home of Richard Alles, who has been the director of a group called the Citizens Tree Coalition and has been involved in trying to protect trees from being removed and trying to enhance some of the values that trees provide for the community. So I wanted to thank you for taking time to talk to us.

RA: Well, thank you. It's an honor to do this interview.

DT: Thank you. I thought we might start by talking about your childhood and if there were some kind of experiences that you had or maybe mentors in your early life that contributed to your interest in trees and protecting the environment in general?

RA: Well, I'd have to say that my mother was a big influence on my interest in conservation. She loved nature and she loved birds and she also instilled a sense of compassion or an ethic of compassion in me that I think is very important, not only for people in environmental conservation but people who are working for animal rights or the rights of the elderly or people who are working to help victims of child abuse. I think the politics of compassion are something that play across a a broad spectrum of of interests, but they all speak to compassion for one another and compassion for the environment.

So at a at a young age, well, I grew up in a suburban neighborhood and we had trees around the house that we liked to climb up in and play in and one of our favorite sports, if you will, was to climb up to higher and higher limbs in a tree and jump out of it.

DT: You were telling us about the trees that you used to climb.

RA: We we had a favorite tree that wethat myself and the neighbors would climb up in and wed jump out off of the limbs and dare each other to go to the next highest limb and jump off of that. And eventually, we worked our way up to a dangerously high limb and I jumped off of it and when I hit the ground, it had become so slick and compacted from our weeks of jumping that my feet just slipped out from under me and I broke my arm, breaking my fall. And that was my, I guess, a painful bond with trees but it didn't discourage me from loving trees.

And as I grew out, up, we moved out to the suburbs, a an even more suburban area where we had a lot of trees and my dad and I would spend a lot of time in the yard, trimming the trees and caring for them and and he liked the trees and I enjoyed them. I always appreciated their beauty and I guess felt felt kind of a bond with them. Sometimes I would go off to a a park somewhere and I'd just look at the form of the tree and the complexity of the branching and the the multitude of leaves and it just fascinated me that such a a complex creation existed and could be appreciated just for its its innate beauty.

DT: Any particular kind of tree?

RA: Well, I I always liked the live oaks because they grow slowly and so their branches take on a lot of unusual curves and they get real gnarly and have very interesting shapes and and a lot of variation in their trunks. And I I think soand I've really spent all my life in the central Texas area and have always appreciated the live oaks since theyre the trees I've been most exposed to, I guess.

DT: Maybe you can go through some of the values that you see in trees. I mean, you talked about some of the, I guess youd call them aesthetic values, the beauty of their form, but maybe some of the ecological values that you see in trees?

RA: Well, as a, as a child, I had asthma and I've always been very aware of of our air quality here in San Antonio, which has been on the decline lately. In fact, a few years ago, San Antonio exceeded the EPA limits on ozone and are working to correct that problem. And of course, trees not only emit oxygen, you know, they convert carbon dioxide to oxygen, but they also clean the air of pollution and they prevent the formation of ozone toor help reduce ozone formation. So from a the standpoint of air quality there, it's very important that we try to maintain a certain level of tree canopy cover here in our city so we don't suffer from the smog and ozone problems that a lot of large cities suffer from.

And then they're very valuable for reducing storm water runoff, which has been a big issue here in San Antonio. We've had many deaths from flooding here over the years, many, many, deaths. And recently the city has had to institute floodplain buyout programs for people on the south side of town who live in areas that have become part of a floodplain. In other words, as more trees on the north side of San Antonio, which is the the higher ground, the Balcones Escarpment area, are removed and replaced with asphalt and concrete, the volume of storm water flooding into the less affluent south side areas is increased and the floodplains have expanded because of that.

And people have found now that their houses are flooding where years ago they didn't. And, you know, we have had some torrential rains in the past few years that have contributed to that, but it's costing the city money and the federal government because they found that theres really no economical way to reduce the volume of storm water going into these creeks and floodplains, so it really is cheaper to just buy peoples houses and demolish them and to remove the development that's in those floodplains.

So from that standpoint alone, an urban ecosystem analysis that was performed for the city of San Antonio in 2002 showed that just on the basis of storm water management alone, trees are worth billions of dollars to our city. You have the I think most people are aware that they reduce energy usage, they reduce your utility bills in the summer and reduce the amount of air conditioning your house requires by shading it.

And I in cities like Atlanta where theyve lost a lot of tree canopy over the years, the studies have shown that their urban heat island has increased proportionate to the the loss of tree canopy cover. And in Atlanta, I know on a summer day, its, I believe, eleven or twelve degrees hotter in their downtown area than it is in the outlying areas that still have good tree canopy cover.

And San Antonio has a similar effect. It hasn't been studied to the the level that they have in Atlanta, but I think anyone who goes down to the Riverwalk, which is, you know, our biggest tourist attraction here, in the summer immediately recognizes that i'ts miserably hot on a, on a summer evening. It's much hotter than, you know, the surrounding suburban areas in San Antonio and reallyit really detracts from people's enjoyment of the Riverwalk. So those are, you know, the the three main effects, other than the aesthetic effect.

And there's, there's one more study I'd like to point out, one more effect and this is an effect on people's health and sense of well-being. And one study showed that people who had hospital rooms with a view of trees outside their window actually had a a quicker recovery time than people who didn't have a view of trees. And it was small it was a small but statistically significant effect. I think perhaps it shortened their recovery time by a day or so. So, you know, from that standpoint, I think there are effects that that's an effect that people wouldn't recognize right off the bat.

It's important for homeowners to maintain the value of their home that that they have trees around them, especially if they want to resell the house because the first thing a lot of homebuyers look for is house with mature trees around it.

And in a study that was done in New York called Trees Mean Business, they showed that that businesses, retail establishments and restaurants and the like that have trees around them are more likely to attract customers and that the customers are more likely to spend more money at those businesses. So I think the, not only the economic, but the aesthetic and the, you know, spiritual value of trees areare things that people need to consider.

I, I know the argument against tree preservation from the development community has been that it costs money and while tree preservation does cost money, itofto theto the developer, this is somebody whos going to resell the property. They're they really just own the land temporarily until it can be resold to the person whos going to live on it or the business thats going to be there and and own the land for the long-term. And so I it seems shortsighted to only look at the initial costs of doing the development and not what the long-term economic benefit would be of the trees.

DT: You had mentioned earlier that theres also somean historic or cultural value, especially large and very old trees. And you said theres the Rough Rider Pecan, is that right and maybe some other ones. Can you explain how that has been an issue in San Antonio?

RA: Well, fortunately, I I don't of any historic trees like that that havethat have been lost and let me say that that doesnt mean theres hasn't been any. I'm just not aware of them.

But we've got several trees that are historic. One is the Ben Milam Cypress that's on the Riverwalk and this is a tree where a sniper in the Mexican army would perch himself and wait for passersby to to fall into his snare. And one of those passersby was Ben Milam and he was shot and killed by a sniper who was perched in that cypress there, which is still there on the Riverwalk with a marker on it.

And the Rough Rider Pecan is a historic old pecan tree that is at the site where Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders used toto train and congregate back in the early part of the twentieth century. And offhand, those are the the two historic trees that come to mind.

DT: Are you aware of any trees in the San Antonio area that might date back to Native American days? I've heard there are some trees that point towards springs and they tend to be saplings at the time, they were bent down and now youll see them as horizontally leaning or bent trees. Have you seen any like that?

RA: Well, it seems like there are trees that fit that description near the the Blue Hole or the San Antonio spring, which forms the headwaters of the San Antonio River, but actually I was not aware of that phenomenon and there a around the San Pedro Springs in San Pedro Park, there are also trees like that. Huge live oaks that and so I guess, perhaps they're they're bending toward the springs because thatstheir root system is extending in that direction, possibly. I don't this is the first I've heard of that, but you know, now that you mention it, I have seen trees like that around our two major springs here.

DT: Do you find that tree cover has any impact on aquifer recharge?

RA: That's a a complicated question. Tree root systems promote infil, storm water infiltration or rainwater infiltration because they loosen the soil and and create void spaces that are conducive to storm water infiltration. So from that standpoint, I do believe that they would help maintain the the base flow in the streams that flow across the aquifer recharge. I mean, and by base flow, I mean sort of the average dry weather flow that that occurs in a stream or or river. And it's been shown in in areas where the watersheds been developed, there's a lot of impervious cover and therea lot of the trees have been removed that the base flow in that stream goes away. And so how does that affect aquifer recharge? Most of the recharge going into the aquifer comes from streambeds. Not all, obviously not all of it, but the majority is from water flowing through streambeds that go across the recharge zone. So I think from the standpoint of of preserving trees and maintaining a healthy base flow in these streams that it could help recharge.

Now that said, its also believed by people I've talked to at the Edwards Aquifer Authority that if you increase runoff into these streams flowing across the recharge zone, that that would increase recharge. And obviously trees reduce runoff and they also transpire moisture out of the ground and and into the atmosphere. You know, the the water cycles very complicated and we we have a kind of a mentality now, it's the the cattle rancher mentality, that we need to get rid of all the ash juniper and cedar trees to help recharge the aquifer.

Now really the motivation behind clearing of ash junipers, cedars is to create pastureland and grazing land for cattle because those lands, you know, are being displaced by by the cedar trees. So there have been a lot of studies done by the the cattle ranchers and the people at Texas AandM, the who are interested in that type of agriculture into what are the effects on the hydrology of an area because the cedars were cleared.

And most of the studies I've seen are are inconclusive. They've shown in some areas that it does help increase stream flows and in increase flows out of slittle localized springs in that area. Other studies have shown that after the trees are removed, other vegetation grows up to replace the trees and that other vegetation also transpires water out of the soil and into the atmosphere and that after a number of years, you know, following the removal of the trees, the streams spring flows have gone back to what they were before.

A lot of people point to the ranch that David Bamberger restored near Johnson City called Selah. And you know, he did a wonderful job restoring that ecosystem that had been devastated by overyears of overgrazing. But it wasnt just cedar removal he did there, it was cattle removal. He took the herds of cattle off the land. He did a lot of sculpting of the land with bulldozers to to terrace the hillsides so that water wouldnt run off of them rapidly. And he planted hundreds of tons of native grass seed out there.

So there it's a very complicated issue and to get back to the question of aquifer recharge, the there are ongoing studies by the Edwards Aquifer Authority but they're they're incomplete. And to say that there's been a quantifiable link established between clearing cedar trees and an increase in aquifer recharge is not justified at this point in time. It's, you know, it's it's the hydrology is is very complicated and it's taken some very elaborate studies to try to establish a quantifiable link between these two events and it hasn't been done yet. But in a few years, they they expect to have these studies finished. So the jury is still out on, on that issue.

DT: Let me ask you another question about this connection between trees and hydrology and runoff. What do you think the connection is between trees and erosion, erosion control?

RA: Well, well clearly they they prevent erosion and annobody should even think of clearing cedars from a hillside in the hill country because the cedars are keeping that hillside and what little bit of soil it has on it from washing, you know, down into the stream and into the Gulf of Mexico, I guess eventually. So you know, the the root systems of trees spread far beyond the dripline of the tree, which is the the extent of the tree canopy where, you know, I guess water would, you know, drip sort of from the edge of the canopy, which is why it's called the drip line. The root system of trees are shallow and they extend well beyond the canopy of the tree and they hold soil in place and prevent erosion.

So one of the biggest untold or I, unrecognized ecological crises, according to Malcolm Beck, who's our, who you've interviewed before and who's our local organic gardening guru, is the disappearance of topsoil, or just, you know, soil from from the land and his data showed that weve lost just a mind boggling amount of topsoil, you know, over the the past century or so. So, clearly, you know, trees help stabilize hillsides and prevent erosion.

DT: Maybe could you talk a little bit aboutmoving on from some of the values and uses of trees, and talk about the trends that have been seen in the tree canopy in San Antonio. I think that back in 2002, there was an urban ecosystem analysis that you had mentioned and tried to track. What was happening over long periods of time in number and aerial extent of trees? Can you talk about the results of that?

RA: Well, that was a a very valuable study. That was performed using satellite imagery and a GIS, or Geographic Information System, software and some proprietary software that was developed by American Forests, which is a, a national advocacy, nonprofit for trees. And that study showed that between 1986 and 2001, San Antonio lost something like 39 percent of its heavy tree canopy cover and that's primarily due to develand developmentor almost entirely because of land development. And along with that loss in tree canopy cover, you know, the city has seen an increase in storm water runoff and flooding, seen a decline in air quality not entirely due to the loss of trees, but also the increase in the number of cars in the area.

And it it was very alarming because I don't think up till that point anyone realized how rapidly trees were being destroyed. That was the first large scale study of of the city and its urban forest. And that study was very helpful in getting a stronger tree ordinance passed because it was really a wakeup call to city leaders to see the headlines in the [San Antonio] Express News, tree cover down 39 percent in 16 years. You know, that's something that's that's a big number that that people paid attention to and I think was a a major boost to our efforts to improve the ridiculously weak '97 Tree Ordinance.

DT: Maybe this would be a good point to talk about the efforts to preserve trees, going back to some of the early efforts. You mentioned the 1997 ordinance, I guess there were groups that were working before that, on the 281 Corridor that touched on trying to protect against tree damage.

RA: The tree preservation efforts here in San Antonio go back a long ways and I know The Conservation Society, which has been around for many, many decades has worked for tree preservation all along. We had a fight back in the 60's that The Conservation Society was involved in. It pitted The Conservation Society and the Sisters of the Incarnate Word University and other folks against the Chambers' of Commerce and people who, you know, wanted San Antonio to grow and to expand its transportation system. And this was the fight over what was, at that time, called the North Expressway and and nowadays is called the McAllister Freeway or or US 281. And that expressway was planned to go through some of the most beautiful areas in San Antonio and, in fact, through part of the Incarnate Word University campus.

Right next to the Trinity University campus, right next to the Sunken Gardens Theatre there in Breckenridge Park, through the Olmos Basin area, which is still one of the most beautiful natural areas inin San Antonio, inin the urban part of the city. It's a huge floodplain area with thousands and thousands of trees and beautiful rock bluffs and even caves back in there. And of course, the the Olmos Creek flows through that area. And in addition, there were many very affluent folks that had beautiful homes in that area.

So it was a a bitterly contested expressway and, unfortunately, the the freeway advocates won. But that was, to my knowledge, and I I grew up here in San Antonio that was the first big fight over the environment that I was aware of.

There were also some women, and I can't recall if they were members of The Conservation Society or not, who fought to prevent the destruction of some giant cypress trees along the San Antonio River and thethisthe legend is that they chained themselves to those trees to stop the bulldozers and and literally faced down these people who were intent on destroying the trees and saved them.

Some of the, I think, at that point, I've I left San Antonio, orand moved to Austin, so there's there's going to be a lapse in in my historical account here.

But in the in the 80's and 90's, as development the pace of development increased, there were a number of high profile tree massacres that really disturbed the people here in San Antonio. One of them was the CarMax over on I10 near Callahan Road. They went into a a site that was covered with very large oak trees and completely clear-cut the entire site. And you had a a K-Mart, a huge K-Mart go in on 281 north of the airport that wiped out acres and acres of giant, giant oak trees near the Salado Creek. And the Builders Square on the other side of 281 did the the same thing in their development. And I think those were some of the events that were, I guess, seminal events in in the the efforts to preserve trees here in San Antonio.

DT: And I guess the frustration with the '97 ordinance resulted in the 1999 creation of your group, the Citizens Tree Coalition, is that correct? RA: That's right.

DT: Can you talk about how that coalition was put together and what its first efforts were?

RA: Well, initially, I was involved I was I was on the board of directors of a 501(c)3 called San Antonio Trees and our organization is primarily interested in planting trees and weve done a number of tree planting projects around the city. And there was also a member of the Alamo group of the Sierra Club, Loretta Van Coppenolle, who was the most outspoken advocate at the time offor tree preservation in the city, for protecting trees from being destroyed by development.

And so Loretta and people from San Antonio Trees, Richard Summer and Eloy Rosales and myself, got together in late 1999 to talk about an upcoming revisionor actually, it was a review of the 97 ordinance. And that review was actually created by the City Council when they adopted the ordinance. They they mandated that in three years, there would be a review of the ordinance to evaluate its effectiveness and the reason that that review had been implemented at the request of environmentalists whod felt like theyd really gotten gypped onon the '97 ordinance and they wanted another shot at it.

So that in '99, wewe formed the Citizens Tree Coalition specifically to address the revisions to the tree ordinance. And the the coalition grew, we went out into the community and we made preserva presentations to different neighborhood associations and environmental groups, told them what our recommendations were going to be on reforming the tree ordinance and managed to get about 50 neighborhood organizations, neighborhood associations, religious groups, civic groups and environmental groups to join the coalition and endorse our efforts to strengthen the tree ordinance. And so that was '99 was the beginning of that process. I was atat the time not really one of the leaders. I had agreed to draft the the white paper for the group. The I was going to draft this white paper and be involved for about three months and then, you know, in 2000, we were expecting the City Council to reform the ordinance and then our work would be done.

Unfortunately or foratunately, fortunately, it didn't work out exactly that way. It turned out, through a process thats mysterious and I don't understand completely I ended up being the leader of The Tree Coalition and carrying the the ball I I shouldn't say that. But, you know, leading the efforts to reform the ordinance for an additional over three years. When the deadline expired for the the review to occur, the the city really hadn't even started it yet. Then they, the city, hired a consultant out of Kansas City to look at not only the tree ordinance, but the entire realm of the city's development codes.

And in 2001, that consultant ha really hadn't had time to deal with the tree ordinance. He issued his final recommendations on the development codes and the tree ordinance was sort of left hanging and that was really a decision that was made by Mayor Howar, Howard Peak at the time.

Mayor Peak, for reasons I only partially understand, did not want to change the tree ordinance at that time and I, I remember a a meeting that that was probably one of the low points in our efforts. We'd gotten dozens of people from the community to turn out for this meeting where we were going to discuss the tree ordinance al along with people from the development industry and the consultant who was doing the revision on the development codes. And we all showed up at this this meeting, you know, forty or fifty people and I immediately noticed there weren't any developers at the meeting.

So, you know, I knew something was up at that time and and that was confirmed when Mayor Peak walked out and and told us that the the tree ordinance revisions were off the table, that we werent going to deal with it and that if we wanted to petition the next City Council that that was coming in in a few months that, you know, that was our prerogative. That that the his City Council wasnt going to deal with the issue.

DT: Why do you think that the mayor didn't feel bound by the 1999 ordinance, that it sounds like it provided for this revision?

RA: Well, I was told by one of the the chairs of of this committee that was revising the development codes that Mayor Peak had made a deal with the developers that he would kill the tree ordinance revisions if they would go along with some of these development code revisions.

One of the major provisions of of the new development codes was that residential developers would have a set aside a certain amount of land for parks and open space in every new subdivision. And until that point, the city had no requirement for that and we were seeing vast areas of of high density, residential, single-family development going in.

You know, miles and miles of development with no parks or green space or open space in any of these neighborhoods. It was just, you know, house after house after house as far as the eye could see.

So, you know, that and somesome other kind of smart growth standards in those development codes were were something that wasthat Mayor Peak wanted to see happen. The new it's called the Unified Development Code was sort of the grand accomplishment of his administration and he, I guess, saw that there was a lot of opposition to these this new Unified Development Code and cut this deal to get it passed.

Now the the ordinance didn't exactly mandate that it be revised. Therethere wasnt any requirement that City Council change the ordinance, just that itthat it be reviewed, so you know, I'm not sure, you know, what his thinking on that was, exactly. You know, whether he was violating the ordinance or not, but the review was terminated at that time, it was never completed.

DT: And what year was this? RA: 2001. DT: And so for the next two years, there was, I guess, a continuing effort to get the revisions through. Can you tell us about that two-year period?

RA: Well, the city hired the consultant from Kansas City, Mark White, again toto come in and work with the stakeholders on revisions to the, specifically, the tree preservation ordinance. And he convened, I believe, four meetings and they were large meetings, you know, maybe a hundred people or more would show up for each meeting.

And there was a lot of dissension at at those meetings. A lot of, you know, because they combined two groups that that seemed to be at odds with each other. You had the development industry representative and then, frankly, somesome very hard-line representatives from the development industry and I think of some people who, at the time, worked for KB Homes, which is the biggest residential homebuilder here in San Antonio and developer.

And they'd come to the meetings with studies that showed people didn't want parks in their neighborhoods. That, if we amended the tree ordinance and made it more expensive, that you would price all these low income folks out of the housing market and they wouldnt be able to own a home and all all of the benefits that home ownership brings with it.

They they didn't want the ordinance changed; in fact, their argument was we don't need a tree ordinance. Residential developers recognize the benefits of trees for theyou know, in increasing the sales price of a home and so we save all the trees we can. And theres no need for a tree ordinance, it just adds expense to theto a house without bringing any benefit along with it.

And for, you know, wewe had people from the environmental community at the meetings that didn't buy into these arguments and some of the meetings got a little rancorous or argumentative. And I don't think the consultant, Mark White, really knew quite how to deal with the people of San Antonio and to deal with these large meetings.

And he did his work and he issued a report and it was a big comprehensive report, but it really didn't go very far in improvingor in making any changes to the ordinance. He left a lot of it as it was. So the it was the feeling atat that time, Councilwoman Bonnie Connor, was leading the the tree preservation ordinance effort and she saw fit to establish another smaller committee that had, you know, maybe five or so environmental representatives and five or so development representatives on it.

And these commit this committee was to meet it would be facilitated by members of the City Development Services staff and the the hope was that at the end of these meetings, the developers and the environmentalists would sign an agreement that we had come to a an agreement on what the new ordinance should be and we agree to support this ordinance in getting it passed by City Council and not try to work behind the scenes to get amendments tacked on when it went to a vote and that sort of thing.

But the this this smaller committee met, I think, six times or so over the course of I think it started meeting in 2002 and met maybe six times and were was not able to come to an agreement. In fact, one of the developers, Norm Dugess, walked out of of one of the meetings.

And the the representative of the Real Estate Council of San Antonio state in the the Real Estate Council of San Antonio, to give you a little background, is the local advocacy and lobbying group for developers.

It's i'ts not like the Board of Realtors that's involved with realtors, you know, real estate sales people. This is a organization thats made up of developers and and builders and large landowners here in the city and their primary effort is, you know, political advocacy and they have, you know, their own lobbyist who works the city.

They they stated that they didn't feel like they were ever going to reach an agreement with The Tree Coalition and the environmentalists and that they werent going to continue with the meetings.

So that committee ended without an agreement and itat that time, the city staff members were directed by, I believe, Councilwoman Connor, to take what had come out to that committee and cobble together a new ordinance and, you know, submit it for consideration to the Council committee that that she was on. And that ordinance went to the Council committee.

We we protested vigorously over the ordinance, we felt like it didn't go far enough, especially in the the quantity or number of trees that were required to be preserved and in doing anything about a lot of the big deficiencies in the ordinance.

Like it it left intact these huge areastheresinin residential development, there were huge areas within any subdivision that were exempt from the ordinance, where trees standing in those areas didn't even count. And [End of Reel 2332]

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Richard Alles Interview, Part 1 of 2

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