Lack of foresight led to ash tree problem

They say “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Ergo, it would appear the people that run the suburbs are insane.

Back in the 30s and 40s Chicago planted Dutch Elm trees as their parkway tree of choice, across the entire city. Along came Dutch Elm disease, and it wiped out all of these trees. So what do the suburbs, such as Schaumburg, Palatine, Buffalo Grove etc., do — they plant almost all ash trees in the parkways!

Along comes the Emerald Ash borer, and we are about to lose all our parkway trees. How stupid can somebody be? What they should have done is have a rotation where they plant five different trees in the entire parkway. That way, if something happens to one type of tree, the other four will be ok.

Terry Kennedy

Schaumburg