How will the upcoming restoration project affect the Tidal Basin this summer

How will upcoming restoration project affect the Tidal Basin this summer

It’s going to be a busy summer down at the Tidal basin. Sidewalks that are usually packed with morning joggers and tourists will instead be packed with work crews for a multiyear restoration project to raise the sea wall and stop flooding there.

The project is expected to begin later this month with the removal of hundreds of trees.

Near the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, the lone struggling cherry tree, known as stumpy, is one of 158 cherry trees and 300 total trees to be removed.

And despite its new social media fame, which includes a mascot, there will be no ceremony when the small and struggling tree is cut.

“Tree removal will start probably late May, early June and expect it to take about two months to take all the trees down,” Mike Litterst with the National Park Service tells WTOP.

Contractors have already set up staging areas in West Potomac Park and the very edge of the southern 20% of the Tidal Basin. The area between the FDR and Thomas Jefferson Memorials is closed off with barriers and fencing to prepare for the tree removal.

Those trees will have to be cut down, rather than dug up, “because the trees are old, and a lot of the times the tree roots are intertwined with other trees,” according to Litterst.

It’s the preliminary step for the restoration and raising of the sea wall, aiming to stop the flooding many visitors see as they walk the southern edge during high tide.

“There are large areas where there are no cherry trees, because they’ve been flooded for so long that they’ve died and had to be removed,” Litterst said. “We can’t replace any of the trees until we fix the underlying cause.”

The three-year, $113 million project will conclude by planting brand new cherry trees that have been gifted from Japan, as the originals were around 112 years ago.

“When it’s finished, we won’t have any other trees that look like stumpy. We will have created an environment where the trees cannot only survive, but they can thrive,” Litterst said.

Litterst says there will be pathways to get around the project.