Hope grows for Milford’s ash trees
Ansonia may have the answer to saving scores of Milford’s pest- damaged Green Ash trees.
Three huge Green Ash trees in downtown Ansonia have responded to aggressive pruning of dead branches and limbs and will soon undergo a biennial injection of chemicals to kill the Emerald Ash Borer, according to Greg Martin, the director of constituent services for Ansonia Mayor David Cassetti and the man credited for saving that city’s ash tree trio.
That same treatment could save as many as 50 of the 80 Green Ash trees lining Centennial Drive in Milford slated for the ax, according to Joseph Belletti, a licensed arborist and former Seymour tree warden.
If done properly, the aggressive regimen could save tens of thousands of dollars in costs for cutting down the trees, all of which are ticketed for removal in February, Belletti said.
Martin said the effort to save Ansonia’s ash trees started about three years ago.
“The ( Ansonia) tree warden wanted to take them down,” Martin said. “But I could see the trees attempting to recoup, with many new small shoots and sprouts. I thought we should see what happens. So I convinced Public Works to do an aggressive pruning on the dead branches” of the three damaged ashes.
The trio rebounded and this summer are filled with hundreds of new branches covered with green leaves. Two of them sit in a parking lot adjacent to an eatery on Main Street and provide shade for the restaurant’s patio. The other is near the former senior center.
“They give us a full, lush canopy that covers the pruned branches and limbs and provides much needed shade,” Martin said.
In April, Chris Donnelly, employed by the forestry unit of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, inspected the Ansonia trees and said he was impressed.
“Whatever is going on with these ash trees is very interesting and worthy of additional inquiry,” Donnelly reported.
Donnelly said he plans to take another trip to see the trees this summer.
“We are all factors in the EAB ( Emerald Ash Borer) response,” Donnelly said. “It’s important we not loose any more of our ash trees. They are an important component of the ecosystem.”
Milford may have as many as 600 infested Green Ash trees, according to Steve Johnson, the city’s tree warden and assistant public works director. Saving even some of them has caught the attention of Mayor Ben Blake, who said he was “absolutely” interested in investigating what Ansonia had done.
Johnson said he “would like to discuss the proposed treatments with Joe Belletti or Greg Martin. I would certainly be in favor of exploring this treatment and funding ( it) if it has a good probability of success.
“Mayor Blake has promoted tree replacement whenever possible,” said Johnson, who also serves as acting open space and natural resource agent. “One of the things I am working on for the city and with our tree commission is an updated tree recommendation list that could be offered on a case- bycase basis.”
An infestation
The Emerald Ash Borer was first discovered near Detroit in 2002, believed to have arrived hidden in wood packing material sent from Asia. Since then, it has appeared in 35 states and destroyed millions of ash trees in the U. S. and Canada.
In Connecticut, it was first seen in Prospect in mid- July 2012.
In 2019, Claire Rutledge, an entomologist with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, predicted every one of Connecticut’s infected ash trees would be dead by the end of the decade.
At that time, she said attempts were being made to attack the borer population with three types of parasitic wasps.
Belletti said the borer attacks the trees in various ways. In late spring, the female bores under the tree’s bark and lays eggs which become larvae that feed on the area of the tree responsible for carrying nutrients. The larvae become adult insects, which bore through the bark in May and begin feeding on the leaves; the females mate and start the cycle again.
Experts say the borer could kill a small ash tree in one to two years and a larger one in three to four years.
“It’s a numbers game,” Donnelly said. “If there are too many of them, they eventually strangle the tree.”
Examining the destruction
Looking at the Centennial Drive trees last week, Belletti, who owns Belletti’s Total Tree Service in Seymour, pointed out circular damage to the leaves.
“That’s where the adult borer has been feeding to build up energy to mate,” he said.
He pointed to D- shaped holes in the bark — evidence that the borer’s larvae was inside. There also were circular holes left by woodpeckers searching for larvae and sections of bark torn away by the actions of both bird and borer.
Attacking the borer will require a twoprong approach, Belletti said.
First, he said, an arborist needs to prune off dead limbs and branches to promote growth.
Then, chemicals are injected into the tree’s base so that when larvae feed on the sap, they ingest the poison.
“You’ve got to inject the base with chemicals every other year,” he said. “You do that for three consecutive cycles, which covers six years.”
The borers are believed to be migratory and leave a geographical area after seven years, he said.
Cost of the chemicals depends on the diameter of the tree’s base. An average size tree on Centennial Drive would require about $ 100 worth of chemicals every other year, he said.
“The benefit of saving these trees can’t be overstated,” Belletti said.
Cutting down, chipping the wood, grinding the stumps and replanting trees is very expensive, he explained.
“If someone gave the city a sweetheart deal of $ 500 per tree, you are talking $ 40,000 just for the removal,” he said. “Stump grinding and planting another tree is extra.”
Pruning the trees and injecting $ 100 worth of chemicals into the 50 candidates would cost much less, he pointed out.
Nearly all of the damaged trees in Milford are close to 20 years old, planted on residential lawns near the street line when the Great River development was built.
“Their shade keeps the temperature of the lawns and the asphalt down,” Belletti said. He also said the trees provide beauty to the street.
“Studies show that neighborhoods with a wide open bare road that looks like a raceway are prone to speeders,” he said. “The benefits of treatment are so much more than removal.”