LIVONIA, Mich. — James Gisner, who lives on Sunset just north of Seven Mile, spent $800 this spring to take down a rotting back yard tree he believes was infected with the emerald ash borer.
Residents like Gisner are on their own when it comes to paying for damage caused by the pest.
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But 15 western Wayne County communities are among 47 in Metro Detroit to receive federal grants recently through the state Department of Agriculture to help pay to take down the dead and dying trees in public right of ways. About $1.2 million was doled out all together.
“It was starting to show signs of rot — it started about 10 feet off the ground where it separated into three small trunks,” Gisner said of his tree, which ended up splitting during a storm. Sunset is one of Livonia’s most infested streets, according to officials.
“I remember Dutch elm disease when I was living in Detroit, and they ended up taking all of the elms in Detroit down,” Gisner added. “That was a real calamity — it kind of sounds like that’s what’s going to happen with the ash.”
Paul Peters, who lives on Sunset, has nothing left of his ash but a pile of logs.
“The tree had to be 80 or 90 years old,” Peters said. “I was just astounded at how fast that tree died. When it fell down the bark just fell off the tree.”
The city of Livonia, with 1,202 ash trees to cut down this year, is one of the most infested communities in western Wayne County. The hardest hit is Westland, with 1,982 to cut down. Across the region, Westland is second only to Troy, an Oakland County city with 2,000 trees to cut down.
The Department of Agriculture doled out about $1.2 million to help pay for the damage. But for communities like Livonia, which will get $82,044, the grant will pay just part of the cost.
Livonia will spend about $250,000 this year, said Doug Moore, who’s in charge of Livonia’s tree removal program. And that doesn’t include what was spent last year and the year before, or what will be have to be spent next year.
“We started taking some down in 2002, but that was before we knew what the problem was — we just knew they were dying,” Moore said. “Since then we’ve taken down 1,600 trees.
“We figure we have one more year’s worth (to take down) in the right-of-way. We have an accurate count in the right-of-ways, but we don’t know how many there are in the parks and nature preserves — thousands.”
More than 6 million ash trees in southeast Michigan are dead or dying due to infestation with the emerald ash borer, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The insect, which was first identified in 2002, is a beetle believed to have arrived aboard ships from southeast Asia. It has since attacked and killed ash trees in southern Michigan, parts of Indiana and Ohio and adjacent Ontario.
Maryland reported emerald ash borer infested trees at a nursery in September 2003. The Michigan Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have placed a quarantine banning the transportation of ash wood on 13 counties in southeast Michigan to reduce the likelihood of transporting the beetle outside the area.
Most Metro Detroit communities are struggling to find money needed to remove the dead and dying trees and haven’t had the cash to help homeowners remove ash trees from private property, said Joe Fivas of the Michigan Municipal League.
Across the region, the state’s $900 million budget deficit has caused cutbacks in state revenue sharing with local communities, which have slashed funding for everything from summer fireworks to basic services like police and fire protection.
“Right now, there is not anything (to help homeowners),” Fivas said, adding that three bills have been introduced in the Michigan legislature that would provide various tax credits to individuals or businesses for replacing or removing ash trees.
“I don’t think the resources are there to help with cutting down private trees. Mostly they’re trying to give people information — I’m not aware of any programs out there that communities have been actively helping private land owners,” he said.
“The problem is so huge just with taking care of trees that are in the public right-of-ways.”
Ken Rauscher, of the Michigan Department of Agriculture, said communities like Livonia and Westland have been hit hard because the trees there were among the first infested with the bug.
The devastation is as great as that of Dutch elm disease, which caused the loss of millions of elm trees across the area in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, he said.
“Ash has been used heavily for ornamental purposes and grows in many different environments — so it’s become a very popular tree,” Rauscher said.
“Dutch elm was a disease, and this is an insect — but the destruction and loss is very similar to Dutch elm disease.”