Salt Lake City pondering spraying ailing trees for bugs and fungus

SALT LAKE CITY — Trees are in trouble in Salt Lake City.

"I wouldn't go so far as to say they're dying," said city forester Bill Rutherford. "But they're all kind of gasping for breath."

Rutherford and Mayor Ralph Becker have proposed a controversial spraying program to save the trees. The fungicide and insecticide treatments would begin when leaves emerge this spring and would cost about 360,000 dollars.

Especially hard-hit by beetles and fungus are three of the city's most popular and beautiful species, honey locusts, sycamores and London planetrees. They provide shade and aesthetic value in some of Salt Lake City's most prestigious areas, including the Yalecrest neighborhood and The Avenues.

The trees have been punished by cycles of too little water, then too much.

Homeowners have become more conservative with their watering practices and are sometimes too stingy with extra water for trees, according to Rutherford.

The last two years played a cruel trick by providing weather that was too wet. Unusually cool, wet springs in 2010 and 2011 opened the door to fungus infections.

"They've had a couple of real hard seasons with insects and diseases," Rutherford said.

According to some experts, a big part of the problem is that when the trees were planted generations ago, species were chosen that are not particularly well suited to the Salt Lake Valley climate.

Horticulturist Cathy Devitt said people who moved to Utah tended to choose trees they were familiar with from other places.

"Their life-span is shortened," she said, "because they haven't been in a healthy climate for themselves. Just like it would be for human beings that weren't living a healthy lifestyle."

Rutherford thinks a bigger problem is lack of diversity in a given neighborhood. "They've served our citizens and our communities very well for years and years," Rutherford said. "So I wouldn't say it's the wrong tree. If I had it to do over again, and we were 100 years ago, I probably wouldn't plant the same, tree after tree, a whole neighborhood of the same thing at the same time."