$10 Million Granted in Beetle Money; McGovern to Request $30 Million more
BEETLES
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Jessica Leving
Boston University Washington News Service
9/23/09
WASHINGTON—Massachusetts will receive $10 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to combat the tree-destroying Asian longhorned beetle in the next 12 months, and Rep. James P. McGovern, D-Worcester, said he plans to ask for approximately $30 million more in emergency funds.
“We want to go in there with an ideal number,” Mr. McGovern said in an interview Wednesday. “$40 million [total] sounds like a good number to me.”
The white-flecked black insect bores into hardwood trees and feeds on the tree’s nutrients. Ultimately the tree dies, denuding wide swaths of infected neighborhoods.
Agriculture Department spokeswoman Rhonda J. Santos confirmed Wednesday that $10 million of federal funds will “definitely” go toward the beetle eradication effort in Massachusetts in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, but added, “We cannot speculate on whether the congressman will get additional funds or not.”
Massachusetts, she said, received a sizable amount of federal aid in the current year “because it was an emergency program to start the effort.”
The invasive beetle species has led to the removal of some 25,000 trees in the Worcester area since their arrival in 2008.
Mr. McGovern said he is working on a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture and that more resources are needed.
Rick K. Sullivan, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, said of the battle to defeat the beetle in Worcester, “It is a robust program. It does need to be aggressive in terms of survey work and inoculation work, and there’s still significant tree removal that needs to happen over the next season.”
Mr. Sullivan praised Mr. McGovern’s efforts to obtain additional funds, and said if the money is not granted, the program will have to focus mainly on tree removal and survey work at the expense of chemical treatment and other preventive efforts.
“You have to make the budgets work with the numbers you ultimately are given,” he said, noting that “$40 million would allow us to do the tree removal and continue the aggressive surveying work not only on the ground but by climbing into the trees, which is much more effective [in preventing the spread of the beetle.] We could also do the chemical treatment and the awareness and education efforts. If you’ve got money, you can do all those things.”
Mr. McGovern said that most of the money would probably go to removing trees infested with the pest.
“Some money will go to replanting,” he said. “The urgent thing is to get rid of infested trees.”
Gary Rosen, chairman of the city council’s Public Health and Human Services Committee, agreed that cutting down infested trees was a major priority, but said that he hoped money would be appropriated for preventive chemical treatment of potential host trees that are not currently infested.
“I think the money will probably be used for taking down the infested trees, and we want to continue that process,” he said in an interview Wednesday.
“We also want to start a program in the spring where we use the pesticide imidacloprid in hardwood trees that are not infested to protect them from the beetles. I hope money would be used for that too. It’s an expensive chemical and an expensive process.”
Though Mr. Rosen called the money that Mr. McGovern hopes to attain “a good start,” he said the city is going to need a lot more than that to sufficiently protect all of the trees in the Worcester area.
“It’s never going to be enough,” he said. “The problem is so widespread. It’s beyond Worcester…. There will probably be several thousand more [infested] trees over the next year or two.”
District 1 Councilor Joffrey A. Smith added that the money “would definitely be a great help” and said that he hoped some of the funds would go toward rebuilding forests and replanting trees.
The city council Tuesday night unanimously voted to apply all future doses of imidacloprid through direct injection into the tree trunks, not by drenching soil near the tree. The injection process is costlier but more effective, Mr. Smith said.
“While it may take a little longer to do and require a little more manpower, it’s a more effective way,” he said.
Mr. Rosen said the injections are also less hazardous to the environment. He noted, however, that they require annual application, and said that “there has to be follow-up” in terms of additional federal funds over the next few years.
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