The Fresno Ave Elm Tree Page

Fresno Avenue is a three-block street in North Berkeley at the East end of Solano Avenue. Our modest, middle-class neighborhood is distinguished by a single feature--a beautiful canopy of towering 70-year-old elms. In fact, Fresno is famous for its elms.

In late August of 1997, we learned that the elm trees on all three blocks of Fresno Avenue are sick. City forester Jerry Koch reports that our trees are infected with Dutch Elm Disease (DED) and that they all will die over the next 3-5 years. Trees scheduled for immediate removal have red targets painted on the street-facing sides of their trunks. One tree has already been removed.

On September 4, 1997, the neighborhood held a meeting where the City explained its policy for replacing trees. More than 50 neighbors representing 44 of the 59 neighborhood households attended this meeting. Jerry Koch made the presentation, and Mayor Shirley Dean, Councilmember Diane Wooley, and Parks & Waterfront Dir. Lisa Caronna were also present.

The City bears the expense of removing the trees and digging out their stumps to a depth of 18 inches. The City also provides potted saplings in 15-gallon containers. The home owner is responsible for planting and nurturing the trees.

The City offers a list of species to choose from, grouped according to the width of the planting area (reveiws of many of these trees are given elsewhere on this page). Most of the planting strips on Fresno are about 6 feet, with the exception of the east side of the 1100 block, whose strip is just slightly less than 5 feet. In general, the trees suitable for our planting strips reach mature heights of about 30-40 feet. Those that reach greater heights (such as the oaks) require decades to do so. None will ever achieve the majestic canopy effect that characterizes Fresno today.

The City's response to the loss of our trees can best be summarized by this exchange from the meeting:

[AUDIENCE] "Basically, you seem to be telling us we will never have
the canopy on this street like the one we have now because you're
saying that you will not plant trees that reach 60-70 feet here again."

[CITY] "I think that if we're going to perpetuate all the damage that
planting a tree that really does not fit in that space, no, then we would 
not want to do that. But we would still be able to have shade trees, but 
not the trees that get 60-70 feet tall."

The City claims that the planting of large trees in small planting areas has caused massive sidewalk damage, and that the City spends almost as much money on sidwalk repair as on forestry. There are, in fact, hundreds of large London Plane trees--the species that line both Marin and Monterey--planted in very narrow planting strips throughout the City that have caused little or no sidewalk damage. Even today, these trees are being planted by the City in much smaller spaces, such as those on Fourth Street and on Milvia one block away from City Hall. The inconsistency of this policy was pointed out to the City.

It's hard to claim that the City was insensitive to our situation, but everyone feels that the City is taking a business-as-usual attitude toward a manifest ecological and financial disaster. The neighborhood resoundingly rejects the City's "smaller-is-better" policy toward replacement trees on Fresno. We also reject the City's offer to supply infant trees. Consider these facts: the wholesale cost of a 25-foot tree (4-inch trunk) is only about $250 when purchased in lots of 10. The site preparation and planting of the larger trees may cost another $250. Assuming that our elms will be lost at the rate of about 10 per year, only about $5,000 per year over the next five years is required to replace our elms with suitably larger trees. Certainly there are engineering problems involved in planting and staking trees of this stature, but they are trivial in comparison to the reduction in the quality of our lives as well as our aesthetic and financial losses.

Did PG&E Cause This Plague?

Although many of us had suspected PG&E's pruning operations to be the proximal cause of the DED infection, we were nevertheless shocked to learn that the City also believes that the wildfire spread of this disease was probably caused by PG&E's untimely and unhygienic pruning practices. (Click here for a verbatim transcription of City Forester Jerry Koch's remarks on this subject.) In his 1991 study of Berkeley's elms (commissioned by the City) arborsit John Britton noted his and the California Department of Forestry's concerns about PG&E's pruning practices.

Despite PG&E's categorical denials, the circumstantial evidence that their ham-fisted pruning spread this disease is overwhelming.

  1. The infected trees on the east side of Fresno have only one thing in common--pruning by PG&E.

  2. The flagged branches (dead portions of the tree) all occur at pruning points. This means that the infection was spread either by untimely pruning or by failure to sterilize pruning tools.
  3. While spread by root grafting is inexorable, it is also relatively slow, typically progressing at the rate of one or two trees per year. Therefore, root-grafting can't account for the disease's simultaneous presence in most of the trees on the east side of the street.
  4. Pruning produces wounds that attract the elm bark beetles (the carriers of the disease). Professional arborists have known for decades that elm trees must not be pruned in the spring or fall when the elm bark beetles are flying. According to John Hawkridge, Senior Consulting Forester for PG&E, the Fresno elms were pruned from April 10-April 18--the worst possible time.
  5. That the City itself believes was that PG&E spread the disease is itself important evidence. What led them to think that PG&E had spread the disease? Most important, after talking with PG&E's foresters, why did the City remain "unconvinced?"

  6. In other neighborhoods where elms are infected with DED, the trees inevitably lie under PG&E power lines.

Is there a smoking gun here? No, and barring a public confession from PG&E or a whistle-blower from their contractor (Davey Tree), there probably never will be. But we believe that the circumstantial evidence, backed by the opinions of world-famous plant pathologists and arborists, is overwhelmingly persuasive. Furthermore, we are confident that a jury of reasonable persons will quickly reach the same conclusion.

What Do We Want?

We believe that PG&E's negligence caused this environmental catastrophe. PG&E, however, has denied involvement, and, adding a Catch-22, insists that the neighbors have no standing with them because we do not own the trees. This means that the City of Berkeley must sue PG&E on our behalf.

We do not seek to enrichen ourselves by this tragedy, but merely to repair the damange and move on with our lives. In other words, we want only that our neighborhood be made whole again--at no cost to us. Specifically, we demand that PG&E pay the entire cost of:

The City of Berkeley has an opportunity to do the right thing--we hope for everyone's sake that it seizes that opportunity.

Important Links

Learn about Dutch Elm Disease

Email and Phones