If a tree falls near the Trans-Canada…

Will removal of trees along highway help or harm visibility?

The scenic route: Trees along the Trans-Canada Highway used to protect against blowing snow and soil erosion. Shosana Funk

Several trees were removed recently from along the Trans-Canada Highway after the reconstruction of a 22.4-kilometre stretch of eastbound lanes.

The government insists the trees were removed to improve visibility. But removal of trees along highways and roads seems to contradict the province’s previous practice of using long stretches of tree line, or shelter belts, to block blowing snow and dust, and to protect against soil erosion.

The highway section runs from Deacon’s Corner east of Winnipeg to the PTH 12 overpass. The reconstruction involved installing new culverts to increase drainage, reconstructing the lanes and removing trees and brush at several intersections.

“Thanks to our investment, this stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway is safer for Manitobans and all of the visitors to our province who travel on this road,” Minister Vic Toews, president of the treasury board, said in a release at the end of October. “We’re improving infrastructure to improve our quality of life, while boosting our regional economy by creating jobs.”

Tara Sawchuk, employee at Winnipeg’s Concordia Hospital, disagrees. She commutes daily from Portage la Prairie to Winnipeg and said trees along the highway help visibility rather than harm it.

“Every winter we get a whiteout,” she said. “The trees ... definitely help block blowing snow.”

Trees are particularly good at blocking snow blowing horizontally and halting drifting snow near to the ground. Visibility conditions during a whiteout often cause drivers to stop their vehicles entirely, said Sawchuk.

Josh Brandon is the Living Green co-ordinator of Resource Conservation Manitoba, a non-profit environmental centre. He said shelter belts have been a part of the infrastructure in Manitoba since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

“Before we had wind blockage with trees, thousands of tons of soil was lost due to the wind,” he said. “This [tree removal] just seems like a step backward.”

Spokespeople for infrastructure and transportation minister Steve Ashton do not believe the trees were shelter belts at all because they were placed along intersections of the highway.

The government maintains that Mulder Construction and the Nelson River contractors responsible for the reconstruction saw the trees as a nuisance. Nelson River could not provide any new information on a government contract.

David Lobb is a soil science professor at the University of Manitoba. He believes the trees sat at the north side of the highway and the south side of the adjacent fields, while shelter belts are usually planted on the north and west sides of fields, indicating that the removed trees were not shelter belts but were once meant to increase visibility and have now become a traffic hazard.

“[In this case] the shelter belts are primarily for the purposes of improving visibility during snow storms, and would have very little benefit to agricultural land,” he said in an e-mail.

The reconstruction was a $39 million investment as part of the federal government’s economic stimulus measures and phase one of a plan to reconstruct both sides of the highway. The cost was split between the federal and provincial government.

Published in Volume 64, Number 13 of The Uniter (November 26, 2009)

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