Rochester

Rochester awarded $14,750 grant for tree inventory program

By Mary Beth Almond
C & G Staff Writer

ROCHESTER — Rochester is one of 12 communities across the state, and only two in Oakland County, to receive a grant for urban forestry from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

A total of $67,148 was awarded through the competitive grant program, which is federally funded through the DNR and the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service’s State and Private Forestry Program. The program funds projects that help create and sustain local urban forestry programs — such as tree planting, community tree inventories, management plans, and education/training projects that enhance and promote urban forestry in Michigan.

Mary Dettloff, DNR spokesperson, said the DNR is glad to offer the grant program because it is “very supportive” of urban forestry.

“(The program) helps Michigan communities in that trees provide aesthetic value to a community. They look nice, and they also help reduce the carbon footprint because they do absorb Co2,” she said.

Of the grant money awarded, Rochester received the second-largest amount, $14,700 — behind Birmingham, which received $20,000.

Bill Bohlen, director of public works for the city of Rochester, said his department will use the grant money to complete a community street tree inventory program.

“This project involves taking a tree inventory of all trees in the community’s right of way — so between the sidewalk and the curb at houses, parks and the cemetery as well. We will be assessing trees for size, height, species, condition, if there are any maintenance activities that need to be done to the tree, and then also putting them and plotting them on a GPS system, so that we can upload them to our (geographic information system), so we’ll have living, breathing data on each one of our trees,” Bohlen said.

DPW staff, along with Eavey Tree Service, will begin working in the project in February and must have everything wrapped up by Sept. 1, 2012, as a condition of the grant.

Bohlen said the grant money will help the city maintain its urban forestry canopy much more efficiently.

“This will be the first time we are doing this comprehensive of a tree inventory citywide,” he said. “How we’ve managed trees in the past, with the phone calls we get, was really kind of hard to manage. There was a lack of an electronic database in any way, shape or form, so it was basically, as people called, we put them on a list and serviced them in the order from the oldest call to the most recent call. Now, it will be much more efficient for our residents, (because) once it establishes a computer-based inventory, when we interact with citizens or business owners about the trees, we can bring up all the information.”

Another benefit of the project, according to Bohlen, is that it will identify how many of each species of trees the city’s tree canopy includes, so that no one species exceeds 15-20 percent.

“We don’t want to have all one species,” Bohlen said. “We planted all ash trees, after Dutch elm (disease), and then here comes another disease that takes out that whole species (emerald ash borer). Now we can manage a more diverse tree canopy, so we can make better decisions on what we are going to plant, so we don’t get exposed to such a great loss if another disease comes through,” he said.

Rochester’s community street tree inventory project will cost approximately $34,650 — which Bohlen said includes $14,700 from the MDNR grant and $19,950 in city funds. Grants require matching funds toward projects performed on non-federal, public lands or lands open to the public, he said.

You can reach C & G Staff Writer Mary Beth Almond at malmond@candgnews.com or at (586)498-1060.