SPSA cutbacks prompt alternative recycling solution for trees

VIRGINIA BEACH

As the yuletide season closes, and as all those dried-out Christmas trees get tossed to the curb, SPSA says it cannot recycle them into mulch this year because of budget cuts.

The Southeastern Public Service Authority, facing $240 million in debts, was forced to temporarily close its yard-waste facility in Virginia Beach, effective Jan. 1, meaning that most Christmas trees this year will be dumped into the regional landfill as trash.

But into this environmental vacuum has stepped the city of Virginia Beach Parks and Recreation Department.

It teamed up with state biologists, local businesses and SPSA, too, to collect some 600 unwanted trees in Virginia Beach so they could be turned into artificial fishing reefs.

Workers started crafting the piney reefs Monday morning, tying about 200 trees to cinder blocks and tossing them into the shallows of the North Landing River off Munden Point Park, in southern Virginia Beach.

The trees, picked clean of all ornaments and tinsel, will provide a cozy place for juvenile fish to feed, grow and take shelter from predators - except, of course, local anglers.

"It's an opportunity to help the fish - as well as the local fishing community," said Shawn Hopson, city director of open space, who organized the reef program.

Hopson and biologists from the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries expect to sink 200 more collected trees into Lake Trashmore next week and 200 more in Lake Smith after that.

Most of the trees went unsold during the holidays at retail outlets in Virginia Beach, including Lowe's, Home Depot and Taylor Do-It centers. Instead of paying SPSA to dump the trees, the retailers gave them to the city, Hopson said.

For its part, SPSA allowed some city residents to drop off used trees at the yard-waste facility and agreed to truck them to reef sites around the city, officials said.

Until this year, many businesses and residents could count on their Christmas trees being hauled away and shredded into mulch. But as part of about $2.2 million in cost-cutting moves, SPSA shuttered its mulching facility and laid off nine workers there, agency spokesman Tom Kreidel said.

"It's a temporary shutdown," Kreidel said, "and we hope to get operations going again. But no one can really say when that might start back up."

Eric Brittle, a state fisheries biologist, said Christmas trees have been used to construct artificial reefs across Virginia and the rest of the country for years. They have been popular and productive, lasting two or three years before the trees decompose and must be replaced, Brittle said.

The state game department dropped trees into Oak Grove Lake in Chesapeake the past two years, a project that already is bearing fruit, said Chad Boyce, a biologist familiar with the recycling effort.

Virginia Beach previously has placed Christmas trees along sand dunes to control erosion but wants to stick with fishing reefs for awhile.

Hopson said he hopes more businesses participate in the drop-off program next year so he can sink more trees and build more fishing spots in local waters - all without any taxpayer expense.

"Now that's something to build on, right?" Hopson said Monday at Munden Point Park, as a boat full of Christmas trees puttered off toward another reef site.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com