The City of Washington’s Maintenance and Construction Department is winding down their annual collection of Christmas trees. Today is the last day to have them out near the curb or dropped off downtown. The city has a specially designated area to drop off trees in Central Park.
Maintenance and Construction Superintendent J.J. Bell says that he expects a total of less than 100 trees collected this year. That’s fewer than past year; he says it can be as high as about 200 trees.
Normally, the city takes many of the trees to Lake Darling for use in the lake as fish habitat and other purposes, but right now there is no Darling. The lake is still drained for dredging work to be completed. Bell says that instead, workers are bringing the trees to the yard waste disposal area at the city’s waste-water treatment plant to be ground up with other brush.