Ash Tree (EAB) Removal · Waterloo
Ash Tree Removal in Waterloo
The City of Waterloo inspects its own ash every year and marks the condemned ones with a red dot. The ash in your back yard is yours to watch, and most of them are already past watching.
Builders and homeowners in Waterloo put ash on nearly every new street from the seventies onward: it was cheap, quick to establish, indifferent to clay and road salt, and it made a neat oval crown without any help. The emerald ash borer undid all of that. Its larvae tunnel under the bark and starve the tree of water; it was first confirmed in Waterloo Region in the woodlands at Homer Watson Boulevard and the 401, and nothing stopped it on the way north to Waterloo. The City's tree page says it inspects its ash trees every year for the borer, marks those scheduled for removal with a red dot, and that private ash trees are the owner's responsibility: monitor them, consider treatment, or remove them if they are hazardous. An untreated ash in Waterloo today is either dead, dying, or one of a small number of specimens an owner has been injecting every couple of years.
Why a dead ash is a different removal
An oak can stand dead for a decade and still hold a climber. Ash cannot. Once the borer has killed it the sapwood dries out and checks, whole plates of bark slide off, and branches snap at the collar with no load on them but their own. Two or three winters after death there is no anchor point in the tree a climber should trust, so the work moves to a bucket truck if one can get close, and to a crane if it cannot. Waterloo's wide lots help here: a dead ash with a clear lane in front of it can sometimes be felled whole from the ground, which is the safest and cheapest outcome, and that is one more reason not to let it stand until the lane fills up with a new shed.
Signs the tree is on its way
- Woodpeckers working the trunk hard in winter, and pale patches where they have flaked the bark off.
- The top third of the crown thin or bare while the lower branches still leaf out.
- Small exit holes shaped like a capital D, a few millimetres across.
- Shoots sprouting straight from the trunk and around the base.
- Winding, S-shaped tunnels packed with frass where the bark has lifted.
Where the wood goes
Every part of a dead ash is a regulated article. The Regional Municipality of Waterloo is on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's list of emerald ash borer regulated areas, which means ash logs, limbs, bark and firewood stay inside the region unless the CFIA has given written consent, and yard waste is held to the same line. So the brush is chipped, the logs are either hauled to disposal inside the region or cut to stove length and stacked for you, and none of it goes on a trailer to a cottage. That trailer is how the beetle got here.
Treat or remove
Where an ash is still mostly green, trunk injection with a registered insecticide on a one- to two-year cycle can keep it alive for as long as you keep paying, and a 60-year-old ash shading a west-facing Waterloo house can justify that bill. Past roughly a third of the crown lost, the tree has already shed the structure it would need to recover and treatment is money after a lost cause. In Waterloo there is no City permit either way; the decision is yours, and the only rules that follow the job are the CFIA's on the wood and Enova Power's if the tree is near a line.
Frequently asked questions
Is it safe to leave a dead ash standing another year?
Every winter it stands adds to the price, because a tree that could be climbed this year may need a crane next year. Anywhere it could reach a house, a neighbour's yard or a sidewalk, this season is the answer. On a wide lot with only lawn underneath there is some latitude, but the tree is not improving.
Can I burn the ash in my own fireplace?
Yes, as long as it is burned at home inside Waterloo Region. What the CFIA prohibits is moving ash wood out of the regulated area, so the cottage is off the table. Ask and the logs get cut to stove length and stacked where you want them.
The City put a red dot on the ash on my boulevard. Does that mean mine is next?
The red dot marks a City tree scheduled for removal after the City's annual inspection. It tells you the borer is active on your street, and if your own ash is the same age it is almost certainly affected. The boulevard tree is the City's job; yours is your call, and we can look at it.
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