Overland Park is taking steps to remove more dying and dead ash trees that line city streets. The Overland Park City Council Community Development Committee on Wednesday unanimously recommended for approval a bid tabulation for a second formal round of ash tree removal. This slate of removals, anticipated to cost just shy of $865,000, will be funded entirely from federal COVID-19 relief funds. Emerald ash borers, a type of insect that is not native to the U.S., have wreaked havoc on ash trees. A type of beetle, female ash borers lay eggs in ash trees and those offspring feed on the trees, damaging and oftentimes killing them. At one point, Overland Park had more than 10,000 ash trees in its street canopy, roughly a quarter of all trees in the city. Laura Peterson, one of the city’s foresters, told the committee on Wednesday that the pest was first detected in Overland Park in 2014. Since then, it’s all but wiped out the ash tree population in the city. Over the years, the city had removed infected ash trees, mostly one by one. But last year, Overland Park embarked on its first widespread removal effort, targeting dead or dying trees in 12 neighborhoods.
Source: Johnson County Post
