The canopies of trees across Salt lake will be pruned from next week in preparation for the monsoon, officials of Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation have said.
The city was lashed by thunderstorms in the past few days, and according to the forecast by the Met office, another spell is likely between Wednesday night and Friday.
According to estimates by the civic body’s environment department, there are more than 10,000 trees in the three sectors of Salt Lake.
While most are in parks and boulevards, there are many that line the median dividers of the roads that criss-cross the township.
The decision to start pruning the trees was taken by the environment department of the civic body, officials said.
An official of the department said they would despatch multiple teams equipped with chainsaws, truck-mounted hydraulic ladders and earthmoving machines from next week to prune the trees.
“We will first conduct a survey to find out if there are trees that have tipped to one side because of the weight of their canopies or other factors. We will start with these trees and then move through the township in phases. We want to complete the pruning before the monsoon arrives,” the official said.
More than 10,000 trees had got uprooted and crashed into homes and driveways during Cyclone Amphan in 2020. Teams from the army had to move in to remove trees from roads, homes and driveways.
Salt Lake has a large number of krishnachura, radhachura, kadam and spathodea trees that have large canopies and are often the first to topple during a storm.
Rahima Biwi Mondal, mayoral council member-in-charge of the environment department of the civic body, said the pruning would be supervised by engineers of her department.
“We have asked all our teams to be extremely careful and ensure that the trees are pruned scientifically,” Mondal said.
There have been several instances in the city of trees having been hacked in the name of pruning, leading to their untimely deaths. Those that survive such scientific pruning become too unstable to withstand a storm.
