Once home to expansive forests of pecan, ash, live oak and hackberry trees, this region along the Texas Gulf Coast is now a huge megalopolis of densely packed skyscrapers and sprawling suburbs, all connected by a network of smog-choked highways that today rank near the top of the most polluted in America.
Those trees that once naturally purified the coastal air coming in from the Gulf of Mexico are no more, wiped out by Houston's early settlers in a rush to clear land and build communities. Now one of the nation's largest chemical companies and one of its oldest conservation groups have forged an unlikely partnership that seeks to recreate some of that forest to curb pollution.
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