Related link • Special report: A long, dry streak

With a statewide drought deepening and bark beetles killing pines in wide swaths of some Arizona mountain towns, municipalities are starting to get tough on letting dead and dying trees hang around.

Last week, the state's most draconian law mandating tree removal took effect in Show Low.

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In effect, if anyone complains about dead trees on private property, that property owner has about two months to remove the trees or find himself or herself in municipal court. The new ordinance defines a public nuisance as all trees infected with diseases, parasites and insects like bark beetles. Bark beetles have killed an estimated 1.1 million acres of forest statewide during the past two years.

That follows on the heels of another ordinance passed in neighboring Pinetop-Lakeside that gives homeowners two years to remove all flammable forest materials within 10 feet of homes, followed by two years to remove such dead fuels within 30 feet and two additional years to thin land within 100 feet of homes. "This drought isn't even providing enough water for non-dense stands of trees," said Steve Campbell, a University of Arizona cooperative extension agent who is a liaison to Navajo County. "We've got 30 to 40 percent mortality of trees in the western and northern parts of Show Low. It's a very serious situation, and action has to be taken now."

Not that people in these parts didn't already know that. The state's largest wildfire ever, the "Rodeo-Chediski" fire, burned to within one-quarter mile of western Show Low in the summer of 2002.

But many people in Show Low are complaining about how quickly they must remove their dead and dying trees and the high price tag involved. Even just one tree near a structure can cost $800 and up to remove.

"No one is denying that these trees need to be removed. But for them to demand this to happen so quickly and the cost that's involved really affects our personal liberty," said Show Low businessman Dennis Owens, whose family owns about 150 acres in the city limits. "A few years ago, they enacted an ordinance that you couldn't cut down trees over 6 inches in diameter, which really made the problem we have now a lot worse."

Owens' mother, Joy Owens, said she thinks Show Low should get its own house in order and do its own thinning on land it owns before coming down on private landowners.

"It's too bad they can't do like other cities and help the people who live here," Joy Owens said, referring to a tree-removal project in Prescott during the past year.

Jeremy Brinkerhoff, a Prescott Fire Department official, said that fire crews cut down more than 10,000 trees within the city limits in the heavily beetle-infested area and charged homeowners $50 a tree for removal.

"That program has been phenomenally successful, but we still have a lot of problems with dead trees in the (Yavapai) county areas near Prescott," Brinkerhoff said.

Campbell acknowledged that there was a price-gouging problem on the part of some of the 20 contractors removing trees in the Show Low area. Campbell said that he is putting on a one-week program in March about the forest crisis and will include a section on ethics and "not taking advantage of people."

Campbell said that the Show Low area has received $700,000 in federal money to do necessary cutting and that an additional $1 million has been approved for southern Navajo County from the recently passed Forest Health Initiative in Congress.

"This problem is so big that it's going to take 30 years to fix it," Campbell said. "I take the position that the private property owner has a responsibility to invest something in this process."



Reach the reporter at mark.shaffer@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8057.