Four days to go!
Tuesday was all about USA North. USA North is an agency that helps you make sure that if you’re going to dig somewhere, there aren’t water, power, phone, cable company or gas lines buried underground that you’re going to hit with that shovel, backhoe, auger or whatever.
The city requires that I call USA North before planting any trees, which I can totally understand. Once you call, the folks on the line want a lot of information. Beyond the who, what, when and where kinds of stuff, they want to know what’s the nearest cross street, what I’ll be using to dig the hole, who the foreman on the job is, whether or not I’ll be using any explosives (I had to ask the guy at that point, "Do you remember that I said that kids would be doing the digging?").
You can set it up so that they call you before they make a time to come look at the site if you want. They just need the area marked with a stake, or ideally a big flour X shape if you don’t plan to be there when they come by.
So Tuesday, while I was in school, my mom called USA North for some more of the residents we’re getting trees for who had marked their backyards with an X in flour. Then, she called the folks who hadn’t let me know that their backyards were “floured” to make sure that they did it Tuesday night.
USA North wants two working days minimum to check a prospective dig site, so today is our cutoff for having folks flour their backyard planting target and letting me know.
USA North sends out an instant message to a lot of folks about each hole that we’re planning to dig. The list includes the city of San Bruno, Daly City, three different Comcast cable groups, Pacific Bell, PG&E and the North Coast Water systems. These organizations have all shared their information about what’s running where with each other, and USA North coordinates the “watch out, don’t dig there” part of the process.
Kind of cool, but it takes a while with 40 trees. More calls to make tomorrow.
To learn more about Julien's project, Reforesting San Bruno, visit http://www.4hmilliontrees.org/.
