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Health & Fitness

Ash Trees - how many does your Association own?

Emerald Ash Borer is here

The emerald ash borer is here. There is a confirmed infected tree in Ramsey County, about 8 miles from my townhome association. The experts say that any tree within 15 miles is at risk. In all likelihood, all of the ash trees in our Association property will not survive another 4 to 8 years without some attention.

A map of the quarantined tree can be found here:
    http://gis.mda.state.mn.us/maps/eab.htm

Information Articles
A recent publication for townhomes has a nice summary article on the disease in MN, and the options.  You can find that here:
   http://www.cai-mn.com/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=374
If that disappears, drop me a note - I have a copy of it.

The definitive source on this disease or pest is here:
    http://www.emeraldashborer.info/

There is a fine brochure in this last reference about the treatment options, and the decision factors. Suffice it to say, this is NOT a simple problem, especially if you have more than one tree to worry about.

What To Do?
The simple fact is, it is not a question of whether, but of when your trees will be infected. The first thing to understand is the potential damage.

Inventory - how many?
How many trees do you own, and how old are they?  How valuable are they?  It may be that it would be simpler to simply plan to replace all or most of them as they die.

Treatment Cost?
The second thing to learn is - how expensive would the treatment be? At the moment, most treatments must be repeated annually for the life of the tree. We should determine how great an expense that might be, as opposed to replacing the trees.

Reserves for Replacement
Thirdly, assuming some or all of the trees are going to die, it would be good planning to begin to reserve dollars now to replace those trees in the future. Most Associations are not going to be able to support a one time assessment to replace hundreds of trees!  

What Tree Is Next?
I am not a horticulturalist - I don't even know one! But I am quite sure that the next trees we put in will be of a wide variety of different species. This is certain to happen again, and we want to minimize our risk by diversifying the stock.

Conclusion
The good thing is, we have some time to prepare. And, since we are in an Association, we share the burden. On my little piece of dirt here, we have one ash tree that gives our house a bit of summer shade. Throughout our association property we have at least one per home, if not more. Since "we are all in this together", we can potentially get a great deal on a purchase / installation bid. AND - we can reserve funds now so that the bite is not so great in the future. Consider it a forced savings account for you and your neighbors.

Woodbury Tree Program
Each spring, the city of Woodbury generally offers a deal to individual owners to purchase a young tree at a very reasonable cost. If we can persuade many of our Owners to buy one of these, and we can get a deal on the planting of the trees, that is likely our most effective way to do this over the coming years.

Remember, I'm pulling for you. We're all in this together.

If you are interested, there is a semi organized group of townhome representatives here in Woodbury who use this Google Group:
  https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!aboutgroup/watha

We share information on things like this. You would be welcome to join, if your association is not already a member.
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