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In Lincoln’s fight with ash borer, 3,000 trees removed, nearly 2,000 treated | Local

In Lincoln’s fight with ash borer, 3,000 trees removed, nearly 2,000 treated | Local

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Four years after the emerald ash borer was found near Lincoln, the city’s battle with the tree-killing bug wages on.

Here’s an update from the front lines:

Tree removal: The city has removed about 3,000 of the 14,000 public ash trees that line Lincoln’s streets and are scattered throughout its parks and golf courses — including 360 so far this fiscal year.

It’s fallen more than 100 trees short of its goal of removing 800 public ash trees annually the past couple of years, but its forestry crew was still busy.

For instance, in 2020, it faced a half-dozen back-to-back storms that did significant damage to all types of city trees, not just ash.

“And we spent a lot of time doing cleanup that year,” said Lynn Johnson, director of the city Parks and Recreation Department. “When that happens, it’s all hands on deck.”

The city normally removes 800 non-ash trees per year; in 2020, it removed nearly 1,800.

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Treatment: The city saw the Asian insect coming. After it was detected in North America in the early 2000s, it started marching west, killing tens of millions of ash trees.

Lincoln drew a hard line at first, planning to remove every public ash tree in its city limits.

But it added a second strategy a couple of years ago, and began treating its trees with a chemical that can prolong their lives.


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It set a goal of treating 1,700 eligible trees a year. Those getting stays of executions must be viable — relatively young but big and strong — or in significant locations, like the five towering trees that shade Witherbee Park near 46th and O streets, or the autumn purple ash that line a stretch of Goodhue Boulevard south of the Capitol.

The city plans to treat the trees every three years, allowing it eventually to extend the life of about 5,000 trees that otherwise would have been cut down.

During its first-year pilot program, it treated about 350. Last fiscal year, it treated 1,349.

The city is also continuing its Adopt-An-Ash Program, which allows homeowners to privately treat eligible public trees along the street in front of their homes. But it wants to know who’s helping so it doesn’t inadvertently cut down a treated tree. Learn more by going to trees.lincoln.ne.gov and clicking on Adopt-An-Ash Program.

The replacements: The city plans to replace each ash it takes out, and offers vouchers to homeowners to pick out and plant an approved species.

It worked two years ago, when more than 800 replacement trees were planted. But last fiscal year, just 237 were replaced.

And they’re learning that number hinges on the socioeconomic status of a neighborhood. Higher-rental and lower-income areas have been less likely to replace the ash trees the city removes, he said.


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“Landlords don’t tend to use the vouchers, and if someone’s working two to three jobs, they’ve already got their plate full.”

To change that, his department recently hired a new community forestry planner, who will work with landlords and neighborhood associations — but also coordinate the contracting of the planting where it’s not done voluntarily.

Time taking its toll: And finally, ash borers take some time to kill their hosts, and now that they’ve been busy for a few years, city crews are starting to see more signs and symptoms of damage.

“We’re getting to that point on the curve where we’ll probably see a significant uptick in the number of trees dying.”

Every ash on the map: Finally, the city has plotted every public ash on a searchable map, including those under treatment, and those already removed. To find out if the tree in front of your house is an ash, go to trees.lincoln.ne.gov, click Adopt-An-Ash Program, and then click Public Ash Trees.


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Reach the writer at 402-473-7254 or psalter@journalstar.com.

On Twitter @LJSPeterSalter

Demand for pickleball courts convinces city it needs a master plan | Local

Demand for pickleball courts convinces city it needs a master plan | Local

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Pickleball is booming, tennis players are looking for open courts and the city has decided it needs a plan.

Pickleball’s popularity — and demand for courts to play on — has convinced Lincoln Parks and Recreation Department officials to create a master plan to determine how many tennis courts and pickleball courts the city needs and where it needs them.

“Pickleball is one of the fastest-growing sports in America,” said Joel Houston, a board member of Pickleball Lincoln, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to the game. “Our club is very vibrant for the size of our city.”

The club began six years ago and the three founders worked with the city to convert two tennis courts in Peterson Park near South 27th Street and Nebraska 2 into six pickleball courts, Houston said.

The club began small, as the popularity of the game began to make its way from the coasts to the Midwest, but its membership has exploded, growing by 50% in each of the past few years. At last look, Houston said, Pickleball Lincoln had 818 members.

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Lincoln is not unique. Since it was invented in 1965 — a combination of badminton, pingpong and tennis played with a wiffle ball — the game has become one of the nation’s fastest-growing sports. More than 4 million people play, and what started as a game played by older Americans has piqued the interest of the younger set.

Today, more than 35% of the players in the country are under 30, Houston said, and there are two professional pickleball circuits.


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All of that convinced Parks and Rec Director Lynn Johnson that the city needs to take a broad view of the existing tennis and pickleball courts, find out how much people are actually playing and come up with a plan to meet that demand.

“In communities where there is dual use of courts for tennis and pickleball, the amount of pickleball has increased and caused challenges in making sure there is adequate space for both,” Johnson said. “Last year, we started to hear from tennis players struggling to find tennis courts they could play on.”

Houston said the growth of pickleball was happening when the pandemic hit. Then tennis was deemed safe to play and interest in it spiked, creating more competition for courts.

The city now has 10 dedicated pickleball courts in Peterson Park. After the city converted the two tennis courts into six pickleball courts, Pickleball Lincoln paid to build four more.

Of Lincoln’s 41 tennis courts in 17 of its neighborhood and community parks, 28 courts in eight of those parks are dual-striped for tennis or pickleball, in addition to the 10 dedicated courts in Peterson Park, said Sara Hartzell, park planning assistant with Parks and Rec.

Houston said Pickleball Lincoln has offered to pay for more dedicated courts, but so far, the city hasn’t approved them.

Johnson said it’s interested in working with Pickleball Lincoln but because of the expense — it cost about $200,000 to build the dedicated courts in Peterson Park — the city decided it should go through a more thorough planning process first.


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The city went through a similar process with Wilderness Park and inclusive playgrounds, coming up with master plans for both.

“We go through the master planning process to do a better job of trying to make sure we distribute all these opportunities throughout the community rather than accidentally getting more in one part of the city,” he said.

Among the issues Johnson said officials want to look at: the condition of the existing courts, where they are and how many courts per 10,000 people is the right amount to meet demand.

This week, the city hopes to release a community survey to find out, among other things, how often and where residents play, what time of day, and whether they’d play more if more courts were available.

Pickleball Lincoln has an agreement with Parks and Rec to use courts at five parks for pickleball four days a week, said Houston, a pickleball teaching pro at Genesis Health, a USA Pickleball ambassador and a sponsored player for Engage Pickleball.

And those courts are well-used.

“The appeal of pickleball is it’s fun to play at any age and every skill level,” he said. “We’re always looking for more courts.”


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Reach the writer at 402-473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.

On Twitter @LJSreist

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