(Radio Iowa) – It’s been almost four years since a powerful derecho blasted across Iowa, causing some 11-billion dollars damage, and the rebuilding of our landscapes is still far from complete. The storm’s winds of up to 140-miles an hour wiped out millions of trees and a grant program is offering funds to help communities recover and replant. Ellie Jones is the Iowa D-N-R’s community disaster recovery coordinator, and she’s partnering with Trees Forever. “We lost a lot more trees than we can replace within a couple of years,” Jones says. “Between urban and non-urban areas, we lost over seven-million trees. We’ve had this grant program going on pretty much since the year after the derecho happened, but unfortunately, with the amount of funds that we have available and the sheer amount of recovery that needs to be done, it’s probably going to – hopefully – continue for the next 10 years as well.”

The Community Forestry Grant Program offers grants of between 500 and 10-thousand dollars to purchase and plant trees suitable to Iowa. “This is a grant that’s for public landowners,” Jones says. “Unfortunately, we’re not able to work with private landowners, especially with this grant, but if you are a public entity or work on behalf of a city, you can apply and you have to be in one of the 27 counties that were in the governor’s proclamation of disaster.” Unlike with previous grants, she says matching funds are -not- required from communities with this effort. Cedar Rapids was one of the worst-hit communities, losing more than half of its tree canopy to the derecho’s winds on August 10th of 2020. Jones says trees help to purify our waterways, and they filter out carbon and other harmful pollutants from the air. Trees also help to offset what’s known as the urban heat island effect.

“In cities, because there’s so little green space, they tend to be a lot hotter. Since we have these really high temperatures in our cities,” Jones says, “people are more prone to heat-borne illnesses and things of that nature. When we lost a lot of these trees in our urban areas, you’re making that problem worse and we’re not getting the benefits that those trees provided.” The deadline to apply is August 26th.

To apply, visit www.iowadnr.gov/urbanforestry