By Debby Woodin
dwoodin@joplinglobe.com
A stand of trees planted by a prominent local educator on the north side of Joplin High School might be endangered by a stormwater drainage project.
The Joplin City Council last week authorized a contract for the design of a stormwater drainage project around the high school to reduce flooding on 20th Street and on Iowa and Indiana avenues, which border the school campus.
Councilman Morris Glaze questioned the assistant public works director, Jack Schaller, about whether the trees would be affected by the project. Schaller said the route of the drainage system will not be determined until the engineers work on the design.
Engineers will have to decide what is to be built, but they can’t guarantee that the trees won’t be endangered by the work, said Dan Johnson, the city engineer working on the project.
Johnson said the engineers will meet with representatives of the school district to get information that will help them design the drainage system.
“We want to work with the high school,” Johnson said. “One of our concerns is what plans the high school has for that land.
“Also, those trees are a concern. We’re not sure what we’re going to do about the trees, if we have to do anything with them. We realize there is a certain value to those trees being there, and we will take that into consideration when we’re trying to make a decision.”
The trees were planted by the late Roi S. Wood in an X layout on the north lawn of the campus shortly after the building was constructed in 1958, said William Brill, a former Joplin teacher and principal. The current administration building at 15th Street and Murphy Boulevard is named for Wood.
Brill worked for the school district for 40 years, retiring in 1995. He said he was a teacher at Joplin High School when Wood worked in the lawn to delineate where the trees were to be planted.
“He was responsible to design and choose the type of trees (pin oaks) that were planted there,” Brill said.
“Wood had a small (plant) nursery outside the administration building at the time, and I have a feeling a lot of those trees were started in that nursery. Of course, the nursery is gone now.”
Johnson said the current drainage system, which has become inadequate for the amount of water that flows through the area in heavy rains, has a pipe that runs alongside the trees.
“The question is: What’s the condition of that pipe, and do we leave that pipe as part of the system or replace that with a larger pipe, which would likely kill the trees?” he said. “Or do we route around it?” He said that is what the engineers will decide during the design phase of the project.
The trees could be endangered even if they don’t have to be cut down for installation of a larger drain pipe or to change the location of the pipe.
“Even if you get close to them, if you damage the root system enough, it kills the trees,” Johnson said.
School view
C.J. Huff, school district superintendent, said Friday that he was under the impression that the engineers would route the drainage pipes around the tree grove.
