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A loader drops assorted wood waste into a shredder at a quarantine yard in Macomb County set up by the state to grind ash trees.Exclusive Report: Ash Borer Battle
Flaws riddle ash borer fight
Spread: Quarantine, grinding fail to contain beetles in Michigan
Abuse: Companies dump non-ash wood at state expense
David L. Roberts of Michigan State University holds large pieces of freshly shredded wood, which could allow beetles to survive and escape.
Roberts, a tree pathologist, found dead ash trees up to 100 yards from the Flint plant. Most were likely killed by beetles from the plant, he said.
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A $36.5 million state program to wipe out an exotic beetle that has killed more than 7 million ash trees in Michigan is prone to abuse and is failing to contain the insect.
Unchecked, the emerald ash borer could decimate the population of the shade trees that are popular in Michigan yards and forests.
A three-month Detroit News investigation of the state’s eradication program found flaws and abuses:
* Some experts say the emerald ash borer has too much of a head start on state efforts. So far, 13 counties in southeast Michigan have been quarantined with infected and dying trees. Hot spots of infected trees have been found in another 16 outstate counties. The latest were found last week in Emmett, Alcona and Presque Isle counties, just south of the Mackinac Bridge.
* The centerpiece of the plan, grinding infected wood into 1-inch chips to kill the beetle, is not consistently happening. Piles of chips The News examined in four of six quarantine grinding yards were much larger than an inch, which would allow beetles to survive and escape as the chips are trucked to a plant in Flint.
* Taxpayers are picking up the tab for neighborhood tree trimmers, lawn services and commercial contractors to dump and grind wood that is not ash and poses no threat. Wood waste of various types is being accepted, inflating the tonnage the state is paying for disposing of infected ash trees.
* The state’s plan to truck ash wood chips to the Genesee Power Station for incineration isn’t recouping any costs and threatens to spread the beetle along trucking routes. The state rejected early suggestions to keep the ash chips within the primary area of infestation by sending them to landfills that typically pay for ground cover.
Instead, the power plant, owned by a subsidiary of Consumers Energy and which normally pays up to $14 per ton for wood, gets all the chips it can burn for free to produce electricity.
Last fall, the state awarded a $20 million contract to grind ash trees to Asplundh Tree Expert Co., a Philadelphia-based national tree-trimming company, and to LaMont Brothers Tree Service of Waterford.
The Michigan Department of Agriculture has received $36.5 million so far from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for eradication efforts, the first push of a 13-year program that will cost an estimated $368 million in federal, state and other funds.
Asplundh and LaMont have received $4.8 million for grinding so far.
Contested strategy
The emerald ash borer, which first was identified in Michigan in 2002, is believed to have entered Detroit by ship from southeast Asia. It began assaulting trees in southern Michigan, parts of Indiana and Ohio and adjacent Ontario.
The Michigan Department of Agriculture’s 2002 battle plan depended on containing the beetle in the original core infection zone in six counties — Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Monroe, Washtenaw and Livingston. In the core zone — the most infested area — officials believed the insects would die out after they killed off ash trees, thus destroying their food and breeding habitat. The dead trees would then be ground up and burned.
The state originally planned to cut a fire zone to encircle the entire infested area in southeast Michigan, but the project was too big to undertake.
In outstate areas where the insect has been identified, the state is cutting healthy ash trees within a half-mile radius of infected trees to prevent its spread. The infected ash trees are then removed, chipped and burned.
Other components of the eradication plan are a quarantine on moving firewood and ash nursery stock from infected areas. Violators are subject to a $100 fine, which critics say is too low. The corresponding fine in Ohio is up to $4,000.
Chris E. Smith, an arborist for 24 years in Lansing, said the state’s plan is shortsighted and doesn’t account for the possible spread of the beetle from the fringe of the core zone.
“The idea that you can contain the infections to the core counties and let it burn itself out by destroying all the ash trees doesn’t account for the edges where the beetles migrate outward,” Smith said.
Spreading problem
In August 2003, the state expanded the quarantine to Genesee, Ingham, Jackson, Lapeer, Lenawee, Shiawassee and St. Clair counties. The core zone of infection also moved out into nearly half of Jackson, Genesee, Lapeer and Ingham counties.
“At first blush it would seem to be spreading, but the emerald ash borer has not spread as significantly as it appears,” said Ken Rauscher, the Department of Agriculture official in charge of the program.
Rauscher said the original quarantine was based on a preliminary survey of dead trees, primarily around Metro Detroit. More detailed surveys showed a larger core area of infestation.
Rauscher admitted, however, that after studying data next month, his department will consider a “slight” expansion of the quarantine area.
Rauscher said Michigan State University scientists suggested grinding the ash trees into chips of 1 inch or less, determining the beetles could not survive such chipping.
He said the state periodically checks the quarantine yards to make sure the chips are the proper size. He added that from fall to March, when the beetle is not active, contractors are allowed to leave the chips larger than an inch.
However, The News inspected the yards in August when the beetle was still active, and piles of processed chips awaiting transport to the power plant contained pieces as large as 6 inches.
Larry Mullins of Environmental Wood Solutions of Orion Township, the largest wood-grinding operation in Michigan, said it is not possible to grind the trees into 1-inch chips, and he doubts that any company could achieve such a goal.
Rauscher insists, however, the state’s contractors achieve the right size by grinding the chips twice.
Ray Seaman, a supervisor in the Asplundh office in Mount Pleasant, said the company follows the specifications of the contract that calls for using a horizontal grinder to reduce the wood to pieces measuring 1 inch or less.
“The inspection of the chips is done by the Department of Agriculture and USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture),” he said. “The state and federal government work very closely with us. They have people checking it. Normally, we grind it once or twice, depending on the grinder.”
Free disposal
Environmental Solutions and tree companies such as Timbermen Tree Service of Rochester and Clarkston said they have lost as much as 40 percent of their customer base because of the free wood disposal in state yards.
“Every kid with a chainsaw and a pickup truck, who has no insurance and pays no overhead, is running around telling homeowners they can cut their trees down for $300,” Jeff Timbermen said. “All that money goes into their pockets because they have no costs, and they don’t pay disposal fees at the state yards.”
A News inspection in August of four of the state’s ash quarantine yards found the yards open to the public under an honor system with no one checking material being dumped by a steady stream of trucks and vans.
Tim Flint, an Agriculture Department official who oversees the grinding, said the state program allows up to 15 percent of non-ash material to be mixed in with the infected wood.
“We ran a pilot process to determine the amount of ash material coming into the yards, and to give us an idea of the volume we might expect for expansion and the long-term operation,” Flint said. “Based on that, we made a determination that the yards were bringing in approximately 85 percent ash, 15 percent non-ash.”
State officials acknowledge that some companies are taking advantage of the ability to dump other kinds of wood besides ash, he said.
Seaman of Asplundh, which runs a yard in Plymouth, and Charles LaMont, who operates LaMont Brothers Tree Service in Waterford, said their companies have gatemen checking trucks as they come into the yards, and they separate ash from non-ash.
“We do turn down some loads that are not ash,” Seaman said.
On the days The News visited the yards in a pickup carrying old hickory logs, there was no one checking the logs.
David L. Roberts, a Michigan State University tree pathologist, and Mullins, who accompanied The News on one of two tours of the four largest marshaling yards, estimated that there was significantly more than 15 percent of non-ash material in each facility.
The Genesee plant
Behind the Genesee plant, a steady stream of trucks hauling ash and other wood chips has created a pile 40 feet high that covers half a football field.
A second, smaller pile contains chips rejected by screens at the power plant because the pieces are too large to be processed in the power plant’s boiler. Periodically, a grinder is brought in to regrind it.
The News asked Roberts to inspect trees in the area around the plant.
Roberts found dead ash trees up to 100 yards from the plant. Most were likely killed by beetles from the plant, he said.
“Every ash tree I found was either dead or so heavily riddled with infestations or died so quickly it had to come from the plant,” he said.
The power plant is three miles north of the state’s line marking the core infection zone, which means the infection is spreading outside of the primary infected area.
Roberts said trees he inspected farther away, at freeway ramps and along major highways around Flint leading to the plant, showed no visible sign of infestation, another sign, he said, that the trees around the plant were attacked by beetles from the plant.
Rauscher said he was surprised by Roberts’ findings and that he would have the area checked.
Jack and Victoria Porath of Sterling Heights said they feel grateful they dodged the emerald ash borer this summer. They have the only ash tree left standing on their street after the city cut all the untreated ash trees down this summer in their subdivision.
“It was devastating,” Victoria Porath said. “The trees were here for 27 years we’ve lived here, and they were all gone in an afternoon. It broke my heart.”
You can reach Norman Sinclair at (313) 222-2034 or nsinclair@detnews.com.
Two trucks dump loads of possibly infected wood chips at the Genesee Power Station in Flint.
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The Detroit News.
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