The city of Maple Valley is in the process of building Summit Park Ballfields, which involves taking a lot of trees out.

Environmentally speaking, this seems wasteful.

According to ScienceDaily, logging — removing trees — impacts the environment in multiple ways including altering species composition, habitat loss and nutrient depletion.

Luckily, Maple Valley came across a logging company — Cherry Valley Logging — that had a plan to reuse these trees for the good of the environment.

According to Greg Brown, capital projects manager of Maple Valley, 200 of the trees being removed from the Summit Park construction area will be reused in the Entiat River Habitat Improvement Project.

A press release from the city stated Cherry Logging is working in Chelan County — where the trees are going — as well as in Maple Valley.

“It wasn’t really planned, it just happened to be that the contractor doing the logging is also working on the Chelan project,” said Jennifer Cusmir, communications specialists for Maple Valley. “It’s a huge project that’s been going on for multiple years, they just happened to need trees and we had trees available for them to use.”

The purpose of reusing the trees in the Entiat River is for salmon restoration, Brown said.

“Along the middle Entiat River area is where these trees are designated for to my understanding. Engineers came up with a plan about specifically where they would be placed, the trees with their root wads in tack. So Cherry Valley is delivering them from this site over to Chelan County and then a helicopter will pick up the trees from the drop site and then deliver them and place them along the river,” Brown explained.

Cusmir explained in more simple terms by saying, “I think it’s just a big woody house for fish to live in as they travel through the river, is how I understood it as in a ‘I’m not an environmental scientist kind of definition of what they’re doing with them.’”

Brown said the trees have already been taken over to the river.

Cusmir said logging at the Summit Park location was completed last week.

She also said the city council are excited that the trees will be reused for the good of the environment.

“We’re just really excited that some of the trees were able to be reused in such a way that’s going to benefit the environment,” Cusmir said.

The Summit Park project in Maple Valley is expected to be done in May 2019, according to the city’s website.