In today’s Metro-West Daily News, a local paper focused on news and stories of interest to the suburbs that ring the greater Boston area, noted gas leak expert, Bob Ackley is profiled for his work in the Shade Tree Trust project.

You can access the entire story, written by David Mclaughlin, by click here.

The story goes into greater detail about the process of finding leaks, the effects the methane has on the soil around the tree’s roots, and the inevitable decline and damage to the tree the leaks create. The Shade Tree Trust was featured in an AP story early last week that was carried in over 200 papers or websites world wide, and has garnered a great deal of attention in a very short period of time.

Clearly the gas industry would like to deny the problem, and in most of the stories written so far their response has been one of denial of a wide spread loss of larger old growth trees. However, the leaks are easy for an expert like Bob Ackley to locate and identify, and the damage caused is relatively simple to observe when a train arborist is given the chance to evaluate a specific tree. Time will tell as to the extent of the problem, but there is no doubt this issue is moving to the front pages of many news papers and that the environmental and arborist community will begin to take greater notice of the unique application of the shade tree trust in helping to work to solve this problem.