Wheaton to start cutting down ash trees

Wheaton officials are trying to brace and educate residents for an ash tree extermination that will vastly change the look of the city in coming years.

The city is gearing up to remove 6,461 ash trees, nearly one third of the entire tree stock that borders city streets. The effort is a proactive attempt at staving off an Emerald Ash Borer invasion that would devastate the city landscape.

The destructive beetle is not known to exist in Wheaton. However, the pest has been spotted just north of the city in Carol Stream and Glendale Heights.

Some areas of the city will see a total facelift in their neighborhoods in the coming years. The Streams and Farnham subdivisions will see 80 percent to 90 percent of the trees that line their streets removed as the bulk of them are ash varieties.

Elm, Japanese lilac and white and red oaks will replace them. Ash trees in fair to poor condition on the north side of the city will be the first to be removed. City staff said 764 of the city's 6,461 ash trees are in fair to poor condition.

The plan doesn't come without a cost. The city council has not formally voted on how to handle the price. However, the majority of the council favored a shared-cost program when discussing options Monday.

The shared-cost option encourages residents to have their parkway ash trees removed by the city and replaced with a new tree. The cost to a resident would be between $55 and $95 depending on the type of new tree staff plants.

City staff estimate they'll replace about 200 ash trees a year as residents utilize the shared cost program.

Councilmen Phil Suess and John Prendiville, as well as some members of the city's Environmental Improvement Commission favored a more aggressive option.

That option would have the city bear the full cost of removing and replacing parkway trees and not wait for residents to opt into the shared cost program.

"We talk about being green. We talk about making an investment in the community," Suess said, in arguing for the more aggressive option. "This is something that touches the broader community."

The aggressive option is more costly than the shared cost program. Each removed and replaced tree would cost about $250. That's a city cost of about $50,000 for the first 200 ash trees to get booted from the landscape. Replacing all 764 fair-to-poor ash trees in that manner would tally a bill of $190,000. Wiping out all 6,461 ash trees in the community would cost about $1.6 million.

That's a cost burden the majority of the council said the city can't handle.

"I don't want to start a precedent that I know we can't follow through on for all 6,461 trees," said Councilman Howard Levine. "I don't want to start a precedent where we can't do the same for every one."