Q: I’ve noticed a large amount of dead trees both on privately held land and on city property.
I’m wondering if the city has an employee who should be monitoring, ticketing or scheduling the removal of the dead trees.
A: The reader isn’t alone in noticing that trees are dying in huge numbers in the Mankato area now that the emerald ash borer infestation has arrived in force. It was hard to miss by last summer, when many huge ash trees were completely bare of leaves and thousands more were in the process of succumbing to the invasive species that had previously decimated urban forests in states east of Minnesota as well as the Twin Cities area.
In 2026, it will only be worse.
Local governments are busy dealing with ash trees on city boulevards, in parks and on other landscaped public lands, but the approach varies when it comes to dead trees in private yards. Among area cities, St. Peter might have one of the most comprehensive approaches.
“The city of St. Peter has been very proactive with trees not only in the right-of-way but on private property,” said Public Works Director Pete Moulton. “The City Council approved a program where trees that are deemed hazardous on private property can have the cost of the removal assessed to their property and paid back over a period of years.”
City officials will even handle the hiring of a tree service to take down the tree or trees.
“St. Peter citizens just need to contact Public Works and meet with our staff to determine a scope of work,” Moulton said. “City staff will then solicit quotes and get the work done for the customer. So far in 2025, there have been eight properties using the program funds.”
While that assistance is being offered to St. Peter residents in instances where a tree is hazardous, area cities are not planning to step in and force the removal of a dead tree simply because it is unsightly or even if its eventual collapse would damage the home or other property of the tree’s owner.
“One of the key points is that the tree has to be a hazard to a neighbor’s property,” said North Mankato Parks Supt. Jason Lobitz. “If the tree is going to fall on the owner’s house or property, that is not a hazard tree.”
But if the dead tree looms menacingly over a neighboring house or yard, here’s what will happen:
First, North Mankato will officially condemn the dead or dying tree as a hazard, Lobitz said. A letter will be sent to the owner of the property, ordering the tree’s removal.
“If the owner does not remove the tree in 90 days, the city will hire a contractor to remove the tree and bill the owner for the cost of removal,” he said.
Eagle Lake, too, has an ordinance that allows staff to force a property owner to abate a nuisance that threatens public safety.
“This can include dead or structurally unsound trees that pose a risk to public streets, sidewalks or neighboring properties,” said Eagle Lake City Administrator Jennifer Bromeland.
In general, Eagle Lake will rely on residents to inform them about a potentially hazardous tree rather than sending an employee out on citywide tree inspections.
“When the city receives a complaint, staff will try and inspect the tree in question and, if necessary, issue a notice directing the property owner to remove it within a specified timeframe,” Bromeland said.
The better course is for property owners to be proactive with their ash trees, which are doomed to die unless they’re chemically treated because larvae of the emerald ash borer decimate the tree’s circulatory system.
“Once an ash tree dies from EAB, it becomes brittle and increasingly unsafe to remove, often leading to higher removal costs and greater risk of failure,” she said. “Early action helps protect nearby homes and infrastructure and reduces the likelihood of sudden, dangerous tree failures.”
Mankato also has an ordinance allowing a “dangerous tree or limb” to be declared a nuisance and the owner to be forced to cover the cost of its removal, but city officials didn’t respond to questions about whether the ordinance is being enforced now or if they anticipate actively enforcing it in coming years.
Local governments might not be overly eager to tackle removal of private ash trees considering how much work they face with public trees. Minnesota is believed to have nearly 1 billion ash trees in all. In Mankato, as many as one of every six trees is an ash, or least that was the case before the infestation hit.
North Mankato began cutting down public ash trees four years ago even before it had completed a comprehensive inventory of the total number, Lobitz said. He figures 600 or so, maybe a few more, have come down so far.
And he knows exactly how much work remains for the chainsaw crews.
“The city of North Mankato has around 870 ash trees on boulevards and in parks left to remove,” Lobitz said. “The total diameter of the 870 is about 15,400 inches or 1,284 feet.”
To put that in context, if all of the public ash tree trunks yet to be sawed through in North Mankato were placed side by side, they’d stretch the length of the main corridor of River Hills Mall from the entrance to Target to the entrance to the old Herberger’s store on the opposite end of the shopping center.
And that’s not counting all of the public ash trees in North Mankato ravines that don’t pose a danger to the public and that will be left to collapse and decay in place.
The only public ash trees in North Mankato that are being saved are 30 or so around Caswell Park, which provide the only shade for the softball complex, and those on boulevards that homeowners have chosen to treat at their own expense. The treatments must be repeated every two or three years to keep the ash borers at bay.
“A tag must be placed on the tree with information on when it was treated,” Lobitz said of the boulevard program. “If the treatment is more than 3 years old, we would consider it for removal.”
Since the insect’s arrival locally was confirmed in 2022, Mankato has set a target of removing 200-250 ash trees each year from boulevards, parks and other groomed public spaces, said Justin Lundborg, a Mankato natural resources specialist who oversees the city’s urban forest.
In St. Peter, the Public Works Department has removed more than 300 ash trees along boulevards and in parks, planting more than 450 trees as replacements, Moulton said. Over the next two years, the goal is to remove another 250 and plant at least 500.
(Moulton’s estimates were made before St. Peter announced on Thursday it had received a $300,000 state grant to help finance tree removal and replacement.)
And in Eagle Lake, with its smaller municipal workforce, the target is the removal of about 10 trees annually with replacements going in as funding allows, Bromeland said. A tree inventory identified about 100 ash trees on city-owned land.
That inventory, along with a plan for Eagle Lake’s future urban forest, was completed largely by a community forester who served Eagle Lake for several years through the federal AmeriCorps program.
“However, due to federal funding cuts, this resource is no longer available,” she said.
Nonetheless, the city is committed to diversifying Eagle Lake’s tree canopy and continues to pursue grant funding while also setting aside local funds for tree removal and replacement.
Contact Ask Us at The Free Press, 418 S. Second St., Mankato, MN 56001. Call Mark Fischenich at 344-6321 or email your question to mfischenich@mankatofreepress.com; put Ask Us in the subject line.