Ann Jurczyk, Virginia director of advocacy and outreach for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, plants a tree at Branch’s Baptist Church in late September. (Photo courtesy Chesapeake Bay Foundation)
Over the years, the expansive parking lot at Branch’s Baptist Church on Broad Rock Boulevard sat mostly unused as membership declined. Meanwhile, the church was paying $600 a year in stormwater runoff fees.
So church leadership reached out to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation for help.
Oscar Contreras, a church deacon and host of the Spanish station Radio Poder, 1380 AM, connected with the foundation as the church was struggling to pay its stormwater utility bills, says Kenny Fletcher, Virginia communications coordinator for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
Virginia property owners are assessed stormwater fees based on the square footage of impervious surfaces, such as paved sidewalks and parking lots. Branch’s Baptist found itself with more parking space than it needed — even during the Easter and Christmas seasons.
The foundation helped the church secure a forestry grant to remove more than 20,000 square feet of asphalt, including an unused basketball court, significantly lowering the stormwater fees. The undertaking was completed in late September.
Affiliated with the Greening Southside Richmond Project, the church’s initiative is part of an effort to replant trees in largely paved-over neighborhoods that have a history of racially motivated housing discrimination. With a lack of shade-providing trees to offset paved areas, these communities suffer from the urban heat island effect, which can make temperatures in some neighborhoods up to 16 degrees warmer than in other parts of the city.
“It’s one project among many,” Fletcher says, “and it shows what you can accomplish when a lot of people join around a common goal.”
Removing asphalt also limits the amount of polluted runoff that ends up in creeks and, ultimately, the James River.
At the church, the trees have already brought wildlife back into the area, including Canada geese. “You can immediately see nature appreciating [the trees],” Contreras says.
