Towns say gas harms trees

Jan R. Schlichtmann, a lawyer who is a leader of the Massachusetts Public Shade Tree Trust, said he planned to file lawsuits yesterday on behalf of Nahant and Saugus to seek recovery of damages against the utility. He said he recently filed similar suits on behalf of Brookline and Milton, and also planned to file a suit this week on behalf of Hingham.

Schlichtmann and Robert Ackley, president of Gas Safety USA, jointly operate the trust, established in 2007 to help communities identify trees that have been damaged by exposure to natural gas leaks and to try to get gas utilities to pay for that damage.

The two say that surveys Ackley has conducted of public shade trees in nine communities have shown widespread tree damage attributable to gas leaks. National Grid, the natural gas provider in those communities, disputes the assertion.

Ackley, a former gas company consultant, said the trust’s goal is to secure compensation for the communities, but also to get National Grid to adopt a more timely policy of repairing leaks.

“They have to acknowledge what they are doing is wrong and they should be fixing these gas leaks around trees,’’ Ackley said of gas companies, noting the financial burden imposed on cities and towns when they have to replace damaged trees, sometimes only to see the replacement trees also damaged.

Ackley said natural gas dries out tree roots and reduces their oxygen levels. He said that can kill the tree over time or weaken it, which can make the tree more vulnerable to disease and other stresses. In some cases, he said the leaks pose a public safety hazard.

In addition to Brookline, Hingham, Milton, Nahant, and Saugus, the trust has undertaken its surveys in Lynn, Newton, Revere, and Quincy.

Schlichtmann said the trust submitted damage claims to National Grid for all of the communities except Newton, whose survey is not complete. He said National Grid to date has refused to pay the claims, prompting the lawsuits, all of which are being filed in Norfolk Superior Court.

“All the results have been presented to National Grid and we asked them to sit down and try and resolve this and we continue to do so, but they are not at this point interested in doing that,’’ said Schlichtmann, a Beverly resident best known for his work in the 1980s representing eight Woburn families who sued two companies for contaminating the city’s water supply. The case was the subject of the book “A Civil Action’’ and a movie of the same name.

Schlichtmann said Quincy has given the trust provisional authorization to file a suit, and that he is waiting to hear whether Lynn and Revere want to pursue court action. Under their contracts with the communities, Schlichtmann and Ackley will be compensated only if damages are recovered, in which case they would receive 40 percent of the proceeds.

National Grid spokesman David Graves said no evidence exists “to support the contention that underground gas leaks cause widespread damage to trees. Most damage to trees is caused by road salt, automobile emissions, insects, disease, age, and where the roots have been disrupted by construction.’’

He said his company works with any community that contends a tree has been damaged by an underground gas leak and if gas is found to be the cause of the problem, replaces the tree at no cost to the city or town, noting that National Grid follows all state regulations on the subject. Any hazardous situation is dealt with immediately, he said.

But Graves said the company was not willing to negotiate a group settlement of claims by a number of communities, which is what he said the Shade Tree Trust was seeking.

“Our policy is we will work on individual cases, but their allegation of widespread damage is unsupported and the dollar amounts they placed on . . . those damages we feel are grossly inflated,’’ Graves said.

Schlichtmann said that the damage claims were based on “painstaking’’ field work Ackley undertook with the help of three well-credentialed arborists who applied “standard procedures well known in the industry.’’

He said the trust is willing to entertain a settlement on behalf of all the communities, or individual settlements. “And we’re happy to go tree by tree.’’

Ackley said in the eight communities where surveys have been completed, the combined damages the trust is claiming total $2.95 million. The estimates take into account pruning, fertilization, removal, and replacement costs.

The surveys found damage to 73 trees in Lynn totaling $219,806; 36 trees in Nahant totaling $76,626; 53 trees in Revere for a total of $74,238; and 60 trees in Saugus for a total of $106,819.

Nahant Town Administrator Mark Cullinan said the town was initially reluctant to take legal action against National Grid, preferring to work with the company to address the impact of gas leaks on town trees.

“But we never got anywhere with National Grid. We were frustrated,’’ he said, and that led the town to pursue court action.

Saugus Town Manager Andrew Bisignani said he felt the town had nothing to lose by having the trust pursue a legal claim for it. “They identified areas where the town has lost trees,’’ he said of the trust.