Emerald Ash Borer: Destroying ash trees, creating public safety hazards, and wreaking havoc on city budgets David Bienemann City Arborist City of Bowling Green, Ohio oday’s cities across the U.S. and eastern Canada are fine-tuning budgets in order to provide excellent services to residents and businesses. Each decision made to reduce funding to departments requires risk management assessment of the cities’ infrastructure. Public safety is the number one priority for cities. Roads and sidewalks must be safe and clear. Water and sewer service must flow perfectly with no problems. This scenario is ideal under normal situations. However, the green menace also known as the emerald ash borer (EAB) has now become a major public safety concern for communities in twelve states in the midwestern, eastern and southeastern areas of the U.S. and in
the eastern provinces of Canada. EAB has created a new risk management concern for communities struggling to take care of aging infrastructure. EAB can move through a community within 4-8 years and create major safety issues as dead ash trees fail and fall on homes, cars, and potentially people. For example, the City of Midland, Mich., had to take funds from street paving, water-sewer projects, and parks just to remove standing dead ash trees over five years at a cost of $2 million for public safety concerns. The average removal cost was $621 per tree. Energy costs went up by 20% in the areas where the ash trees were removed. The water costs to maintain lawn areas went up by 33%. Previously, the tree budget was $12,000 annually.
Kent Reichert, City of Bowling Green Public Works Supervisor, checking ash trees for EAB 58 APWA Reporter
January 2012
Cities in Michigan and Ohio have made major adjustments to their operation budgets to handle EAB. For example, the City of Bowling Green is a community in northwest Ohio with a population of 30,000. Bowling Green had to create a Municipal Arborist position to handle EAB and management of the urban forest in 2004. A two-person crew was hired and materials and equipment were purchased to handle the impact of EAB. A total of $600,000 was invested and spent on removing and replacing EAB-infested ash trees over eight years. The City of Toledo has spent close to $8 million in removing and replacing 8,000 public ash trees. New risk management for EAB must be part of the planning and budgeting process of cities. The silver lining in the cloud is the research— lessons learned and data obtained from Michigan and Ohio can help communities across the U.S. that have a population of ash trees. The first part of the strategy is to incorporate a program to remove the high-risk ash trees that already have structural issues, damage from infrastructure projects, or poor form that will be an immediate safety concern. The second step is to create a treatment program to save ash canopy, ensure public safety, and give the city time to determine the assets and resources to handle an EAB infestation. One of the major concerns of new risk management is finding quality tree service supplies in the area to handle high populations of dead ash trees in the region, such as the Chicago suburbs. Once EAB population reaches
