By Joe Anuta
Some Queens residents may want to rename their neighborhood Deforest Hills.
Residents of the Forest Hills Gardens Corp. were set to meet with representatives of the Long Island Rail Road this week following a small June 18 uproar over a felled tree. But the LIRR postponed the meeting, which was scheduled after the railroad chopped the tree down along the track near Burns Street while a group of picketing residents held up signs.
“The LIRR has been clear-cutting along the railroad and it has been affecting a lot of different communities,” said Anna Guasto, a co-op owner in the corporation and president of the LIRR Committee, a coalition of neighbors who keep tabs on the railroad after they cut down other trees and took out a sound barrier in 2007.
Guasto, along with other property owners in the leafy enclave, said fewer trees along the track means she sees the trains and their undercarriages and cannot even hear her television when the cars pull into the Forest Hills station.
“It has brought down the neighborhood and the quality of life,” she said. “Now it’s like I’m in this train depot. You can’t open the windows.”
Guasto and the LIRR Committee said immediate area was not notified about the chopping and that the tree posed no immediate harm, anyway.
Frank Gulluscio, district manager of Community Board 6, said the LIRR said it was an emergency.
“We’re opposed to trees being cut down,” Gulluscio said on behalf of the board. “They should be replaced if they are cut down.”
A spokesman for the LIRR said the postponed meeting was an outreach session to alert the community about a tree-trimming initiative that will begin Tuesday and run from Forest Hills to Kew Gardens. The initiatives are a safety measure to ensure trains can travel unobstructed on the tracks and to keep falling leaves off of the rails, which can cause the trains to skid.
But Guasto said the lack of trees contributes to excess noise.
In previous years, Guasto and the committee have funded a study that found sound levels up to 20 decibels higher than the ambient noise.
She also had a strong ally in former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, who resigned earlier this month after a sexting scandal.
Weiner hosted a town-hall meeting with the LIRR and proposed $1 million in member items to fund a study about what could be done to mitigate the sound.
“This is really ironic, as soon as Weiner resigned, they came in a big rush and didn’t give our community any notice,” Guasto said.
She understands the need for safety on the tracks, but Guasto would like the LIRR to replant evergreen trees in place of the greenery it cut down.
As precedence, she cited a group of Flushing residents in 2007 who lobbied the LIRR to replant trees near the Broadway Flushing station.
“We want the evergreens, we want the trees replanted and for them to clean up the area,” Guasto said. “They left big stumps and weeds and they said they would communicate with us and find a way.”
Reach reporter Joe Anuta by e-mail at januta@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4566.
