In the last few weeks, two large old-growth trees have fallen along the sidewalk bordering Columbia High School’s Ritzer Field on Valley Street.
The fate of the trees was predicted in May by local gardening writer Joy Yagid, who noted that a vendor who was repouring the sidewalk had cut the roots of the trees. Yagid provided the following photos on her substack:
Yagid also noted that, besides providing nutrients to the trees and stabilizing soil, “the roots hold up the tree so it DOESN’T FALL ON YOU. Or your house, or passing cars, or powerlines. … That tree that probably weighs about 20 tons. Heavy rains + wind = tree comes down. This is on a very busy street. There is a high school field on one side and a daycare on the other. If it falls, and when you remove half the roots you increase the chances exponentially, those 20 tons could kill or seriously injure people.”
Yagid continued, “If they had only just repoured the cement to loop around the roots …, The tree could have lived a longer life. Now it could be dead within three years. A dead tree, is a weak tree, and one [of this] size on a major street could even cost more if someone is hurt or killed.”
Read Yagid’s full substack post here: https://joyyagid.substack.com/p/this-is-not-how-trees-work
Since Yagid’s post, two of the trees with severed roots have fallen.
Photo of fallen tree at Ritzer Field on Valley Street on July 4, 2026, by David Black.
Hixon Place resident Jessica Miller, who has taken core training through the New Jersey Urban & Community Forest program (NJUCF), wrote to school district officials seeking information about the sidewalk vendor and providing information about the condition of the tree that fell during a storm on July 3.
“The cross section photo shows that there was no rot in the trunk [see photos below]. The only reason this tree fell was because its legs were cut off. I do want to emphasize that, as a stakeholder, I question why our facilities director was not overseeing this work and why nothing was addressed until the trees fell. Anyone who knows even a little bit about trees who saw the work that was done by this tree company, could have predicted the outcome. Our community is so very lucky that no one was injured (or worse) and yet we seem to say this every other month as ceilings cave in from deferred maintenance or trees topple over due to botched work. Aside from the unacceptable risk to our students, there seems to be sizable liability exposure for our public school district.”
Miller recommended the NJUCF program for the district’s facilities team as well as meeting with the shade tree teams within South Orange and Maplewood’s municipal departments of Public Works.
South Orange-Maplewood Schools Supt. Jason Bing says that the school district is seeking answers from the vendor.
Responding to emails by Miller, Bing wrote that the school district is waiting for direction from legal counsel: “The district was issued a summons because sidewalks were dangerously raised due to tree roots, a neighbor tripped, fell, and then reached out to Maplewood Municipality. The district was given until October 30th to remedy the hazard. SOMSD hired a tree vendor to analyze and fix the issue. This is where we currently stand. Thx.”
Contacted for comment, Maplewood Mayor Vic De Luca wrote, “This was not a project of the Township.”
