Cedar Rapids perfects Emerald Ash Borer attack plan; could cost $17 million

CEDAR RAPIDS - So restless are the city's forestry and parks officials over the arrival of the ash-tree-killing emerald ash borer that they've written the news release for the moment it arrives in the metro area.

The release states, in part, that city crews immediately will remove ash trees along city streets within two blocks of the first confirmed discovery of the emerald ash borer (EAB) in the city.

Daniel Gibbins, the city's parks superintendent, and Todd Fagan, the city's arborist, unveiled the city's new EAB attack plan and its 10 action steps to the City Council's Infrastructure Committee this week.

Gibbins told the committee that EAB, which has been identified in 21 Iowa counties, has been found at a spot within 25 miles of Cedar Rapids, and both he and Fagan have said for some time the EAB most certainly is in the metro area but has not yet been found.

'It's all around us, and it's only a matter of time when it is confirmed here,” Fagan said.

On Wednesday, he said the city's new EAB plan could come with a price tag of $16 million to $17.5 million over 18 years if the city opts for a 'slow-the-spread” approach that saves some 6,000 city-owned ash trees for a time along city streets with chemical treatments and removes the rest, which may number 9,000, and replaces them with trees of different species.

About 30 percent of the city's street trees are thought to be ashes, but Fagan said the city needs to get busy now to conduct a tree inventory at a cost of $400,000 to count trees and to identify which ash trees are the best candidates for saving.

Last week, the City Council approved a $100,000 contract to hire a treatment company for an initial round of chemical treatment for select ash trees, treatment that will begin immediately after EAB is discovered in the metro area.

However, the city anticipates that the city will need to quickly increase the funding for chemical treatment, which will cost $720,000 to treat 6,000 trees. The treatment has to be repeated, every two years or, perhaps, every three years, for the life of the tree.

Fagan said the city likely would continue to treat trees for some years, but then begin to cut down treated trees rather than retreat them after a time as replacement trees of different tree species grow to sufficient size.

'We're hoping we won't just have a totally denuded street where there is nothing there, where it was all ash and we took them all down,” Fagan said.

Since 2009, the city has been taking down between 150 and 300 ash trees in the right of way that are damaged or failing and replacing them with non-ash trees in anticipation of the arrival of EAB.

Fagan said the city will need to become more aggressive and take down 500 to 1,000 ash trees a year once EAB has been identified here.

He said that will require the city to shift six to eight employees from other departments to help the city's forestry crews during winter months, and will require the hiring of temporary workers on contract workers to help the city keep up.

The city's insecticide injection plan calls for the use of a chemical sold as TREE-age, which will cost the city about $5 a diameter inch for each tree or $120 for a tree with a 24-inch diameter.

Fagan said the city has obtained a volume price break, which will be available to the public once the city's treatment program begins.

Both he and Gibbins said the chemical treatment is 'very” effective, but with the caveat that it must be repeated over the years.

Both also said the city's plan calls to do nothing with ash trees in city parks, where they make up a smaller percentage of the tree population, they said.

The city plan states that chemical treatment is slightly more costly than removing trees over a period of 16 to 18 years.

By way of context, the city plan estimates that removing all the ash trees in the city right of way will cost $11.25 million over 10 years and $15.22 million if the trees are removed and replaced.

If all of the up to 15,000 ash trees were treated, the cost of a first treatment would be $3.15 million and the total cost over 16 years is estimated at between $20.4 million and $26.7 million depending on if treatments are needed every two years or every three years.

The middle approach, to save some and remove more and replace them, could cost $16.1 million over 18 years with chemical treatments every three years, $17.6 million with treatments every two years, according to the city figures.