Residents are stepping up efforts to persuade the city to launch a preventative injection program that they hope will slow the loss of the city's elm trees from Dutch elm disease.
Members of the group To Rescue Evanston Elms, as well as other residents, are expected to turn out at the City Council's Administration and Public Works Committee meeting, scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday in the Civic Center, 2100 Ridge Ave. City officials are scheduled to release a report Monday on the feasibility of an injection program.
For the past few weeks, some residents have been placing notes with green ribbons attached to trees throughout Evanston, calling attention to the issue.
Officials announced earlier this year they were considering switching from their current efforts to an injection program because of the high number of elms that were being lost to Dutch elm disease this summer. Officials estimated that as many as 800 trees would have to be removed based on figures in June - nearly double the number lost over previous summers.
Members of TREE have been calling for an injection program since 2001, citing the added protection it affords over the city's program, which depends on the identification and removal of diseased trees.
Under an inoculation program, a fungicide is injected into healthy trees in an effort to protect them for three years.
TREE officials say injection costs about $312 per tree compared to the $2,400 cost the city estimates for the removal of a diseased tree and its replacement.
"I mean, the economics are so obvious, not to the mention that it is the right thing to do for the character of our community, our property values and our enkvironment," said Virginia Mann, TREE's president.
"If the city had embarked on this program four years ago when we first made the proposal," she said, "we'd have 1,600 mature elm trees today."
City officials are still working out the figures and want to provide the details first to aldermen for Monday night's discussion, said Douglas Gaynor, the city's director of Parks, Recreation and Forestry.
Officials maintained that city efforts had proved effective prior to this year's Dutch elm outbreak. City crews depended on scouting for diseased trees and quickly removing them, holding down losses to about 3.3 percent of parkway elms per year - an average below other communities.
They have said in previous memos that an injection program can be expensive, depending on its scope, and not necessarily clear-cut in its protection. Only healthy trees are injected under the program, because the fungicide will not protect a tree once it has become infected.
Furthermore, the treatment program only protects from disease transmitted by the elm bark beetle and not if it is carried via the root system of another diseased tree.
Officials have said that for such a program to be effective, the city also would need to treat trees on private property.
Mann said, however, that the program does not have to be carried out on an all-or-nothing basis.
"We should save as many trees as we possibly can," she said. "While there may be instances where it doesn't make sense to inject some trees, I believe the majority can be treated."
Some residents already have banded together on their own to obtain private injections. Residents living near Bent Park, off of Central Street in northwest Evanston, held a "Beetle Bash" earlier this year in conjunction with TREE. The event raised enough money to treat six elms, said Pete Mattox, a nine-year resident of Evanston, who now would like to see the city step forward.
"It really takes a crisis mode to get anyone to talk about it," he said about the present situation.
Mann said if the city does rely on residents treating trees, it can result in "a haphazard approach, which leaves some communities with beautiful mature elms and others without. And it does not maintain the character of the entire city of Evanston."
