Las Urbanistas

“We’re forecasting 111 for Wednesday, 109 for Thursday, and 110 again on Friday,” says Keith Kincaid, a forecaster with the National Weather Service here. But if the temperature doesn’t hit 110 on those days, he adds, “we have had 110-degree days in September before.”

This summer is hot elsewhere, to be sure. But in few places can you fry an egg on a sidewalk as quickly and thoroughly as you can here. And you’d have to fry a lot of them: Experts say the main reason the number of 110-degree-or-higher days has risen so steadily – and steeply – is rapid growth. In the 1950s, for example, the temperature rose to 110 or higher an average of 6.7 days per year. In the 1960s it was 10.3 days per year; in the 1980s it was 19 days per year, and in the 2000s (through Aug. 21, 2007), 21.9 per year, according to the National Weather Service.

For Westerners living here, it’s about as much fun as an earthquake, a drought, or, well, a 110-degree day. But it does have people’s attention. True, it’s not as difficult as this summer’s devastating floods or fires elsewhere in the US. Many people have swimming pools, and most have air conditioning. But that, too, adds to the problem of the heat-island effect, experts say.

“Every time you use that mechanical air conditioner, you’re throwing hot air back into the environment,” says Jay Golden, an expert on urban climate and energy at Arizona State University in Tempe. “It’s not only the sun and the pavement, but we’re generating more heat because of human adaptation.” And that’s where global warming comes in: The hotter it is, the more we need to cool off; and the more we try to cool off – with air conditioning, for instance – the more heat-trapping greenhouse gases and “waste energy” we create, feeding both phenomena.

No escape in the Phoenix nights

The lows at night are rising, too. Three decades ago, the nighttime low here was about 30 degrees cooler than the days. Today, it is on average only 20 degrees cooler. That’s because cities are slower to cool off at night, retaining their heat in roads and buildings.

Dr. Golden points to differing temperatures between downtown Phoenix and a rural weather station at the Casa Grande National Monument, about 50 miles southeast. In 1950, he says, it was only six degrees warmer in Phoenix than at the Casa Grande Monument. By 2000, the temperature in Phoenix was 12 degrees higher. Now, it is almost 14 degrees warmer in the city than in the adjacent rural areas.

That has a huge impact on water consumption and electricity generation, he says. Researchers in his department recently calculated the correlation between nighttime temperatures and water consumption. “A one-degree nighttime [temperature] increase equals 677 gallons more on average per household per year,” he says – due as much to evaporation from pools, irrigation, and agriculture as to human consumption. Golden and his colleagues study these rises in temperatures for urban areas from here to London and Beijing.

“We are trying to do two things,” Golden says. “One is to quantify the impacts from this national trend of climate change in the broad context…. Then, we try to provide policymakers sound science and engineering to understand what the impacts are.”

Looking toward solutions

Here in the Phoenix area, for example, 40 percent of the heat-island effect is due to paved surfaces, according to Golden. “We’re trying to transition to pervious pavement, which would allow for water penetration,” he says.

That, he adds, would support the growth of urban vegetation, which is typically removed for new building projects. And urban vegetation planted at intervals, as well as the water pervious pavement retains, would lead to cooler temperatures at night.

“If we were to take all the surfaced parking lots in this city and cover them with 50 percent tree cover,” that would significantly decrease the surface temperatures, he says. His department is also studying the survival methods of this area’s early inhabitants, such as the Hohokam with their earthen structures.

Today, two-story houses are popular, he says. But what if policymakers were to ban future building of two-story houses – or at least upper floors – in order to make buildings shorter, and less prone to trapping heat. Instead, housing plans could include basements, he says, which would naturally remain cooler – though the prospect of lower levels has long been considered too expensive or difficult, despite the plethora of inground pools.

The good news about these rises in temperatures, if there is any, Golden says, is that local governments are beginning to pay attention to how they design cities, how closely they space houses, and how much forestry and agriculture they plan.

Phoenix, for example, is pushing for more open-space parks with trees downtown. And the city of Mesa is offering $500 rebates to residents who convert their yards from lawns to xeriscape, including desert trees that provide canopy shade.

As investors continue to pour money into malls, analysts say the signs of a real estate bubble are growing, as are predictions that some retailers may be heading for trouble. Empty malls are just one indicator of an overheating economy – growing at its fastest clip in over a decade – that is proving hard to cool.

To curb rising inflation, led by food prices, China’s central bank raised interest rates last week for the fourth time this year. Real estate is also in the spotlight: Property companies were ordered in June not to borrow offshore. But the race to build goes on.

“The problems of overheating are already apparent,” says Wang Yao, director of the information department for the China General Chamber of Commerce, an industry umbrella group. “The commercial real estate industry is facing problems. After some buildings are finished, nobody wants to rent space.”

Too many malls in China

Since 2002, China has built hundreds of malls in towns and cities, each trying to get a slice of a retail pie worth $800 billion last year. Captivated by the promise of a vast consumer class itching to spend, foreign brands have jostled for space at the table only to find a scarcity of customers. As a result, retail vacancy rates in Beijing are currently 8 percent and rising as more malls enter a crowded market. [Editor's note: The original version misidentified the occupancy rate of Beijing's retail stores.]

Mr. Xu, who pulls in $266 a month – below Beijing’s $400 average – is typical. He socks away one-fourth of his pay packet, as does Chen Ping, his girlfriend, who makes a similar wage as a store assistant. Asked if he isn’t tempted to save less and spend more, he shakes his head.

“If we enjoy life now, what about the future? We need to think of our future,” he says.

The rising cost of living is one reason why many here are reluctant to splurge in fancy malls. Unlike US consumers, many of whom use credit liberally, Chinese workers opt to save, knowing that a feeble welfare system is unlikely to provide for them.

As a result, consumption accounts for only 37 percent of China’s economic output, about half the rate in the US.

Such stinginess bodes poorly for Beijing’s mall developers.

When it opened in 2004, Golden Resources Shopping Mall was the world’s largest shopping center, with 550,000 square meters of retail space (a new mall in southern China has since taken this title). But it has struggled to generate enough customer traffic and sales to justify an investment of nearly $500 million and is fast being overshadowed by newer, glitzier retailers. An additional 2 million square meters of new retail space will be added this year, according to Mall China Information Center, an industry association.

“The question is not whether people can afford [luxury] products, but how many big malls that a city like Beijing should have. That’s the issue. If there’s too many malls, some will fail,” says Mr. Wang.

It’s a common problem that points up the inexperience of mall operators and the readiness of China’s state-run banks to lend to prestige projects with political backing, say analysts and industry sources.

“I think that the issue is not that we’ve misjudged consumption. It’s just been too easy to borrow money and build these things,” says Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Just as US home loan woes have left a nasty aftertaste, Mr. Pettis warns that a real estate downturn in China would saddle banks with dud loans to empty malls. In recent years, policymakers have cautioned banks against excessive lending to malls, to little avail.

Exports still rule China’s roost

At the same time, authorities have long sought to lessen China’s dependence on exports by stimulating domestic spending. But private consumption still lags far behind investment in real estate and factories, fueled by a hoard of savings in state-run banks.

New bank loans reached $364 billion in the first seven months of this year, exceeding last year’s total lending, state media reported. Property remains a favorite bet: housing in Beijing is fetching 10 percent more than last year.

However, industry sources say that many first-time mall operators aren’t borrowing money but reinvesting profits from their other businesses. That’s one reason why they don’t always make the smartest decisions, says Victor Guo, president of the Mall China Information Center.

“The developers aren’t so professional in China; they don’t know how to develop and market their product. The industry is at an early stage,” he says.

Golden Resources has adjusted its mix of stores to increase sales turnover, says Fu Yuehong, general manager of New Yansha Group, which operates part of the mall. Weekend crowds swell to 100,000, she says, though it’s much quieter on weekdays.

One blind spot in China’s real estate sector is the focus on well-heeled elites who can afford to pay top dollar for imported luxuries, such as the $6,000 fur-trimmed leather jacket on sale last week at Shin Kong Place. Developers are neglecting the vast ranks of middle-income families in Beijing and provincial cities that aspire to a better lifestyle.

The reason may be less economics than vanity. “Every developer wants Louis Vuitton and Prada in their retail space. They don’t want a mid-market project,” says Anna Kalifa, head of research in Beijing for Jones Lang LaSalle, a real estate company.

On Sunday, at least 51 people were confirmed dead in the worst series of fires to hit Greece in decades. And still, fires, many of them blamed on arsonists, continued to spread across the country, fanned by gale-force winds and fed by vegetation dried out from long months of drought.

Now, as authorities struggle to deal with the immediate crisis, the fires have pushed the environment to the top of the political agenda in a country where such issues previously won little attention. With Greek national elections less than three weeks away, questions are being raised about how seriously the government takes the protection of the country’s open spaces.

Calling the fires an “unspeakable tragedy,” Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis declared a state of emergency Saturday, along with three days of mourning. For the time being, campaigning in the election has been called off and some analysts suggest that the election may even be delayed. Indeed, the fires have spawned outrage and anger across the country.

“Right now we’re in state of hiatus, and no one knows how it will finally shake out, but clearly it will be a key issue,” says John Psaropoulos, editor of the Athens News, from near Zaharo, one of the hardest hit areas of Greece where dozens have been killed.

This has been one of the hottest and driest summers in recent history, and much of southern Europe has been plagued by forest fires. In Greece, the dry conditions have played a role. But many of the fires, government and forestry experts say, have been set by arsonists, hoping to clear land for development.

“So many fires breaking out simultaneously in so many parts of the country cannot be a coincidence,” Mr. Karamanlis said in a nationally televised address Saturday. “The state will do everything it can to find those responsible and punish them.”

Already, at least three people have been arrested for setting this weekend’s fires; one, accused of setting a blaze that killed six people, is being charged for murder as well as for arson. But in the past, local activists say, the state has had a poor record of catching and prosecuting these types of arsonists. The problem persists, they say, and in large part perpetrators have previously gotten away with it.

“Most of the reasons concern changing of land use – from forest to something else [such as] construction, or building, or to grazing, or agriculture,” explains Nikos Georgiadis, head forest officer for the Greek office of WWF (the World Wildlife Fund). “But the response from the government has not been effective at all.”

But there is beginning to be a backlash against government inaction – as Greek villagers desperately battle blazes using garden hoses and buckets of water – that is likely to intensify as a result of this weekend’s fires.

Earlier this summer, after a fire burned one of the last remaining forests on Mount Parnitha, near Athens, thousands of people took the streets outside the Greek parliament demanding more action from the government to protect forests and ensure that burned areas were replanted.

Many observers saw that fire as a turning point in local politics toward a greater green consciousness.

“People in Athens, but also around Greece, are becoming more green,” says Dr. Georgiadis, who said that hundreds of people called the WWF office in the aftermath of that fire, outraged and offering to help. “Since the response that we got after the big forest fire on Parnitha mountain, there is a big change. More and more people became sensitive on environmental matters.”

Greece has one of the worst records in the European Union on environmental issues, and on forest protection in particular. Environmental groups say recycling is in its infancy, development is largely unregulated, and protected areas neglected.

Although forested areas cannot legally be built on, that law is difficult to enforce because Greece – unlike every other country in the European Union – has no national record of what land is forested.

For now, the country is focusing on putting out the blazes and helping those affected. Thousands are now homeless and whole villages destroyed. At least 12 countries have responded to Greece’s plea for international help.

But ultimately, says Georgiadis, Greece must develop a long-term plan for saving its natural spaces.

“Forests are an ecosystem that needs time to grow, time to manage,” he says. “It’s not something you can do in one or two weeks.”

“This trend … is about people making a little change to help the environment as opposed to something like solar panels which is much more of an investment,” Baker says.

Baker’s orders have steadily risen. While most initial buyers were fellow Vermonters, the company now receives orders from across the United States, including such places as Tennessee, Texas, and Arkansas.

Over in New Hampshire, clothesline activists have asked for legislative advice from Project Laundry List – the first US clothesline activist group – according to the group’s founder, Alexander Lee. And North Carolina recently passed a law invalidating city or county limitations on “energy devices based on the use of renewable resources.” In addition, the clothesline movement there is hoping to find a “test case” to legally establish clothesline rights in North Carolina, Mr. Lee says.

“We get e-mails and calls every day from people wanting to know where they can get the materials to hang out their clothes or how to deal with homeowners’ association rules,” says Bryan Wentzell, the group’s chairman of the board. “[The Right to Dry movement] could take off all across the country,” he says, noting that independent states like Vermont will be the first to jump on the bandwagon.”

Maybe. In June, Vermont’s Gov. Jim Douglas (R) vetoed an energy bill with Right to Dry language – though not because of the clothesline clause, according to state Sen. Dick McCormack (D). Proponents are now revising a bill to be introduced in January, one similar to legislation in Florida and Utah that prohibits “state or local laws or regulations or private contracts from limiting the ability of dwellers to erect and use clotheslines for the drying of clothes.”

Dryer data

At last count, in 2005, there were 88 million dryers in the US, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. Annually, these dryers consume 1,079 kilowatt hours of energy per household, creating 2,224 pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions.

Besides the global-warming and cost-saving aspects of clotheslines, proponents say hanging out clothes requires exercise and time outside – elements that are missing from many Americans’ lives. “So much of our lives have become automated,” Mr. Wentzell says. Plus, using a clothesline makes “your clothes last longer and smell better.”

Despite clotheslines’ purported benefits – and a scent that can rival dryer sheets’ “fresh rain” fragrance – “the overwhelming majority” of community associations regulate or ban them, says Frank Rathbun, vice president of communications for the Community Associations Institute in Virginia. Sixty million Americans belong to one of 300,000 homeowners’ associations, according to the institute, a national organization of community association leaders and management firms.

The rules exist for aesthetics, residents’ expectations, and property values, Mr. Rathbun says: Environmental leanings have to be balanced against the desires of those who find their neighbors’ blue jeans, khakis, and the occasional flannel nightgown to be unseemly, unsightly, or both.

Senator McCormack dismisses such concerns. Amid growing concern about global warming, he says, governments have a responsibility to protect people’s right to voluntarily conserve, if not actively support energy conservation.

Protesters and quilters

On Sept. 14, Project Laundry List will participate in an event at the energy company Hydro-Québec, protesting the diverting and damming of the Rupert River. Such damming would not have to occur, Lee says, if people adopted energy-saving methods like clotheslines. The group will display messages on T-shirts and sheets hung from – what else? – a 400-foot clothesline.

The group is getting the word out through other art forms, too. Several painters and quilters who specialize in depictions of clotheslines have donated work to Project Laundry List to be auctioned off, with proceeds going to the cause.

And, hoping for more, Wentzell is thinking outside the box and beyond the laundry room: “Hey, maybe we’ll get some celebrities taking up the cause by hanging out their laundry behind their mansions!”

Inspired by environmentalism, rising water bills, and her husband’s support before he died, Ms. Tubbs hired a landscape architect to design her new drought-resistant yard. The homeowner’s association in the country club where she lives – a community of manufactured homes in suburban Orlando – resisted her save-water-and-the-planet attitude but eventually granted permission for her to tear out all her St. Augustine grass. Immediately, there was backlash from her neighbors; one even called the fire department.

In Florida, there seems to be little awareness of water as a limited resource, and why should there be? The state is mostly a lush, tropical landscape with lakes, rivers, and springs. Surrounded by ocean water, it gets pounded by hurricanes and tropical storms that, with other rainfall, dump up to 50 inches annually.

But some warn Florida’s groundwater is nearing its limits. And people like Tubbs who uproot lush sod for less thirsty landscaping often don’t get much support from their neighbors.

This summer’s drought – the worst in the Southeast since record-keeping began in 1895 – has laid bare parts of Lake Okeechobee, the second-largest freshwater lake in the continental US behind Lake Michigan. It has also exposed permanent water problems in the eastern part of the nation, says Cynthia Barnett, a longtime Florida journalist and author of “Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S.”

She and others warn that the state may soon face water wars once unique to the arid West, a situation that eventually could reach well beyond Florida as populations grow across the eastern United States and climate changes affect water availability.

“Florida will never be arid like Arizona, but it’s certainly going to have the same water problems as Arizona has,” says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, an independent nonprofit research group based in Oakland, Calif. “Florida is reaching the limits of its natural water availability. The population is growing rapidly, and it’s outstripping the natural endowment.”

The average Floridian household consumes 174 gallons of water daily, using up to 75 percent of it to irrigate sod and landscaping. The sod of choice is St. Augustine – grass that dies without water. In this state of golf courses and country clubs, many homeowner’s associations require that a certain percentage of a homeowner’s yard is sod with St. Augustine, maintained to a specific shade of green, Ms. Barnett says.

Xeriscaping – landscaping using drought-resistant and usually native plants and flowers – is catching on thanks to trailblazers like Tubbs. But it’s still not mainstream in Florida. Proponents avoid using the term, because they say it’s misconstrued as zero landscaping or landscaping with rocks and gravel.

Striking a balance between attractive, drought-resistant landscaping and landscaping that is unkempt is tricky, says Teresa Watkins, Central Florida yards and neighborhoods coordinator for the University of Florida. A dirt yard saves water, but it sure isn’t pretty.

Very few Florida yards – perhaps fewer than 1 percent – are “Florida-friendly,” says Ms. Watkins.

“We still see lawns everywhere,” says Mr. Gleick. “It doesn’t matter if you think you’re in a state that gets a lot of water if you use it all.”

In 2005, the Florida Legislature passed two laws, one requiring local governments to ensure water sources are available before approving new development and another allocating $60 million to localities to develop new water sources. Gleick warns that any real progress will have to come from local governments, because local agencies distribute water.

That’s starting to happen in Florida. In Sarasota, the average household has reduced its number of gallons used daily to 90 through measures that limit the amount of sod allowed in a yard. Some residents, conscious of shortages, have asked for restrictions on water use to go even further, says Pat Haire, a Sarasota County spokeswoman.

Other municipalities are exploring ways to remove salt from sea water. In Orange County, home to Orlando, water managers are pushing for an attitude shift – starting with children, says Jacqueline Torbert of the Orange County Utilities’ Water Division. They are visiting schools and promoting conservation on Radio Disney in programs broadcast throughout Central Florida. And they’re encouraging home builders and homeowner’s associations to landscape with less St. Augustine grass. Orange County is also developing water and landscaping ordinances.

Most golf courses in the Orlando area already use reclaimed water or reused waste water. And only about half of an average household’s water is used outside, Ms. Torbert says. Though the issue gained urgency for the agency only about five years ago, time is of the essence: The agency expects the region’s groundwater to reach a critical level by 2013.

Florida is unique because it is so dependent on its groundwater, says Gleick, but other parts of the country also over-pump their aquifers. He cites the Ogallala aquifer that spans Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas as one example.

Nationwide it’s hard to know how much water landscaping like Tubbs’s saves. Landscaping in different regions requires vastly different amounts of water. But Tubbs sees a difference in her water bill – down $10 to $20 a month since her new yard went in.

“I’m willing to be the first one,” she says. “I can handle [the neighbors.]“

Still, that noxious cloud may well be gone by next August, along with the crush of cars that clog the city’s roads. Olympics teams have been reassured that China has contingency plans to clear the air and ensure a cobalt-blue backdrop when the TV cameras pan skyward. Among the possible measures are restrictions on private cars, factory closures, and a building ban during the runup to the games.

The inexorable rise in China’s car culture, spurred by massive government and private investment in the auto industry, presents a challenge to any clean-air campaign, as well as to ambitious targets to improve energy efficiency by 20 percent within three years. Long after the Olympics crowds leave, many of Beijing’s 15 million-plus residents will aspire to own a car.

But having promised to stage a “Green Olympics,” Beijing has invested heavily in new subway lines and other mass transit projects that could yield long-term benefits, as well as river cleanups and tree plantings. China is now rethinking its urban transit policies, says Liang Benfan, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an adviser on transport to the Beijing municipal government.

Officials from BOCOG, the Beijing organizing committee, say that, despite setbacks, these efforts are paying off: The number of “blue skies” days rose from 100 in 1998 to 241 in 2006.

“Good air quality and blue skies in Beijing are not only important for the opening ceremony, but also for the health of the athletes, the spectators, and the people of the city,” Executive Vice-President Wang Wei told a press conference Monday in an upbeat assessment of Beijing’s preparedness.

Last year, Beijing ordered a half-million cars off the streets during a six-day summit held with African heads of states. Seen as a dry run for an Olympics shutdown, it cut auto emissions by 40 percent and yielded blue skies and traffic-free streets.

Still, says Gilbert Van Kerckhove, a consultant to BOCOG, “I see very little progress [on air pollution]. The situation is very ugly.” But, he adds, “during the Olympics, no problem. They’ll stop everything for three months, the sky will clear up, and there will be no pollution.”

While predictions of clear skies may seem at odds with reality, Beijing and other cities are beginning to turn the corner on air pollution, argues David Dollar, country director of the World Bank, which is funding a slew of environmental projects in China. Sulfur emissions, which used to darken the air during much of the year, have fallen sharply over the past decade as urban households have switched from coal to gas for heating and cooking.

At the same time, though, auto emissions have climbed as more Chinese take to the roads. Beijing has 3 million registered cars, a number expected to reach 3.3 million by next August.

Mr. Dollar says that surveys indicate that urban residents are increasingly willing to bear the cost of tackling pollution amid rising concern over its impact. A joint study by the World Bank and China’s Environmental Protection Agency recently estimated that the health costs associated with air pollution were equivalent to 3.8 percent of China’s GDP, or $76 billion.

“The Olympics is a one-time event, and it’s important. But air and water issues are much bigger than the Olympics,” he says.

Some of Beijing’s summer smog is seasonal, say experts, stoked by southerly winds and tamped down by fog. Emissions from nearby provinces with heavy industry and coal mines add to the problem. The Olympics construction boom, which should wind down by the end of the year, is also adding dust and grit to the mix. Nearly 10,000 construction sites dot the city, according to state media.

Still, the drive by Beijing’s urban planners to promote mass transit over private vehicles is yielding some success, claims Mr. Liang.

One example is a fleet of new buses run on cleaner fuel that cut through traffic along dedicated lanes. Adding fast buses should encourage commuters to leave their cars at home, particularly when the cost of driving is on the rise because of higher gas prices and parking charges. “I don’t drive much now. I take the bus. It’s cheaper,” he says.

Then there’s the electric bicycle, a zippier version of the sturdy two-wheeler that once defined mobility in China. “If families go by electric bike, they can travel fast, and they won’t buy a car,” says Liang.

Hidden on a country road that winds through rural Meadowview, Va., is a 93-acre plot of ground that holds the future of the American chestnut: about 120 hybrid saplings. The trees – going on two years old and four feet tall – are considered “fully blight resistant” and are thriving.

At this rate, by 2010 there should be enough “holy grail” nuts to begin planting in selected test sites in national forests. By 2015, production from such plots is expected to grow exponentially – yielding enough nuts to allow for full-blown replanting – if everything goes well.

Cross-breeding American chestnut trees is a challenge because they do not produce fruit until their sixth year. Researchers have spent 25 years breeding resistant Chinese varieties of chestnut with nonresistant American versions – then “back-crossing” or breeding resistant American chestnuts with one another. It’s a difficult project that the US government attempted but dropped long ago.

Restoring the species to its former glory has been the life’s work of Fred Hebard, whom some regard as the American chestnut tree’s Johnny Appleseed. What he’s growing on his research farm in Meadowview is a tree now 15/16ths American chestnut that will grow tall and true, with 1/16 Chinese chestnut resistance.

“We’re starting to produce the critical generation of fully resistant chestnut, the one we intend to release into the woods,” he says. “Within three to five years we hope to begin putting out large numbers of trees, maybe 10,000 of them.”

Known as the “sequoia of the East,” the American chestnut was once dominant in forests from Maine to Florida, a majestic giant that easily grew four feet across, 120 feet high and lived for centuries. Its nuts were an important source of food for animals and humans and its rot-resistant wood prized by timber and furniture companies.

It’s taken Dr. Hebard 18 years of painstaking hybridization to get to this point of having several hundred fully blight-resistant trees. Before him, predecessor Charles Burnham began the work in 1983.

Earlier this year, about 2,000 partially blight-resistant American chestnuts were planted on reclaimed mine land. Those trees may not survive beyond about six or seven years because they are not blight resistant. Even so, the effort will enable researchers to better understand growing conditions on such land.

Trials of the fully resistant American chestnut are expected within three years, when the ACF and the US Forest Service expect to plant thousands of the best of the “holy grail” seeds in two forests – in Kentucky and West Virginia – the heart of the chestnut’s domain. About that same time, members of the ACF will also begin receiving seeds for planting.

Indeed, 13 state ACF chapters, whose orchards maintain about 40,000 partially resistant chestnut trees, will play a vital role in the chestnut restoration. Smith’s Massachusetts chapter, like the others, is growing small orchards of the trees, slowly doing their own hybridization programs. Pollen from the best trees will be sent from Virginia to ACF chapters to accelerate development of varieties well-suited to regional weather and soil.

One new problem the foundation is facing isn’t blight, but keeping the seeds from being sold on eBay for fat profits.

“Everybody and his cousin wants these seeds, but we’ve got to be real careful about naming it and what we’re going to claim about [the trees' capabilities],” says Paul Sisco, a co-architect of the recovery plan with Hebard. “We won’t really know how good it’s going to be until about five years from now.”

In fact, a tree labeled “fully blight resistant” may still contract the blight, but it should be able to ward off the fungus altogether.

Other groups, such as the American Chestnut Cooperators Foundation, are taking different approaches to breeding. Some hold out hope for a direct genetic-engineering fix, although that task is daunting because the tree’s genes have not been sequenced.

“We are planting the hope, and making a commitment, that this noble hardwood will be restored to the American landscape and its vital ecological role in our nation’s forests,” Dirk Kempthorne, US Secretary of the Interior, said on July 26.

Today when consumers buy chestnuts for “roasting by an open fire” during the holiday season, they come from the Asian chestnut and other varieties that resist blight. But now it looks as if the American version could return one day. “I’m looking forward to growing a really big one in my backyard,” Smith says.