 Okay, hi, my name is Tim Bull, I'm an ISA certified arborist with the city of Sheboygan. I've been working here about a year. One of the primary focuses of my job is to treat the ash trees. The emerald ash borer is an insect that's been in Wisconsin for over 10 years and it's working its way kind of north from southern Wisconsin. It's been found in Sheboygan for a few years now it's been around and the focus is for the city to try to save the ash trees before they all die. There's about 5,000 ash trees on the street between the street and the sidewalk and just to give you a sense there's about 20 to 23,000 trees between the street and the sidewalk so 5,000 of those are ash trees. So it's important for the city to not let all those trees die at the same time. So the emerald ash borer is an insect where it gets in the tree, it lays eggs, the eggs hatch and burrow under the bark and they basically suffocate the tree as they feed. Now it takes a number of years before you'll see an effect from the insect but the important thing is when you're trying to save an ash tree is to treat it with an insecticide before you see the tree declining because by the time you see the effects that the tree is dying it could be too late. Sometimes it's not too late but many times the damage that's done is already done and can't be repaired so it's more of a preventative measure that we're doing and I've been treating ash trees for about six years now. I've seen it work, I've seen where I've treated a tree, I came back two years later, treated the same tree again and the tree was still healthy but maybe the neighbor's trees that were untreated were almost dead so I believe in it and research backs it up it's supposed to be over 96% effective. As far as the city's plan, their plan is to treat half the ash trees and remove half the ash trees because it's expensive either way you want to look at it if you want to remove them all it's a huge expense if you want to treat them all it's very expensive so a kind of compromise is to try to save half or move half over a three year period so this year 2017 we've, I've treated between 1100 and 1200 ash trees to date and over the next year and over the next two years we'll get to that 2500 mark where we've potentially saved half the trees now the city's doing a three year treatment process where every three years we'll have to re-treat if we want the tree to continue to survive and right now the insecticide that we're using the active ingredient is Momectin benzoate there's a number of different products that contain that it's able for two years where every two years you should re-treat but a lot of research is saying you can get at least three years out of it so that's why the city's gone with the three year plan. Well first of all the process of picking which trees to save and which trees not to save really stems from is the tree in a good location to begin with so if we're only going to save half the ash trees we want to save the ones that are in a good spot versus the ones that are not an ideal spot so we look for medians grass areas between the road and the sidewalk that are at least six feet wide this one here that we're in is is probably more like eight feet and we want to look for spots where there's no overhead power lines that the trees growing into or if the trees really buckling up the sidewalk or something like that maybe that's not an ideal tree to save so once we determine which trees we want to save the process is pretty simple we drill into the tree with a small about a little smaller than a pencil size hole and a tree will take anywhere from four holes to I had one this year that I had ten holes in so average I would say six or seven drills about an inch under the bark and then those holes get filled up you put up an injection tee in each one of those holes so it's all sealed and each one of those tees is connected with a small hose which all stems back to a bottle which which has the insecticide in it now the tree the amount of the amount of insecticide that's used depends on the tree size so the rate the city uses is a five milliliters per diameter inch of the tree now diameter is measured at breast height four and a half feet above ground okay so this tree here is 18 inches in diameter so 18 times five is 90 milliliters that this tree requires so as we're going down a street I have a guy helping me he measures them he records what's going to be used he records the address where the tree is and I get to the tree and I get to work drilling setting it up measuring the chemical that's going in and once I get it all set it's just a matter of pressurizing the container the bottle with the insecticide to get that insecticide to the tree and really it's just a bike pump that I'm using to pressurize and I give it about 30 pounds of pressure and that'll get the insecticide to the tree and it's up to the tree to take it in so every tree is different some trees take it right in some trees are a little slower sometimes you don't get that uptake it the tree just refuses to suck anything up so then you that's a sure sign that the tree is too far gone and there's no point in trying to save that tree so once I have it all set up and pressurized it's up to the tree to take it in and really I could increase the pressure to 40 pounds even 50 pounds but it isn't going to make a difference how fast the tree takes it in it's really that pressure is just getting the chemical to the tree and once once the the lines the the hoses are all clear so you can see the blue the chemical is blue you can see it going in and once those lines are all emptied out then you can undo the pressure and unhook the tree and that's all it needs to be done now everything when we leave a tree that we've treated we we got a can of blue spray paint we put a dot on the street side of the tree roughly two three feet off the ground and that is a symbol that we've treated that ash tree that we plan on saving that ash tree it will also put a pesticide sign down that says keep off pesticide that's something that needs to be done it's required by the the pesticide regulations for the state so they'll those signs will leave for a day and we'll pick them up the next day but the blue dot will stay so we'll always know that that tree was treated in 2017 as far as danger to people walking by or anything like that with the with the pesticide that we're using the the caution the word is caution on the on the label of this insecticide which is the lowest toxicity really it's not much to worry about since it's all going right into the tree itself there's there's nothing gonna be on the grass or in the air or anything really to worry about as far as that goes as soon as as soon as I leave the tree and and the blue dot will stay there but nothing else will be there that tree is safe to be around