Surprise removal of iconic Riverside tree stirs anger aimed at Wichita City Hall

What could be the biggest and oldest hackberry tree in Wichita was getting chopped down without warning on Monday, sparking anger and frustration directed at City Hall, including by a new member of the City Council.

While acknowledging that the tree — in the median on Museum Drive near the entrance to the Old Cowtown Museum — is “iconic,” city officials said it has significant weaknesses and has to come down to accommodate water pipe installations connecting the existing city water-treatment plant with the new plant under construction.

Maggie Ballard, sworn in as a City Council member two weeks ago, said City Hall botched it by tearing down the tree without any input from or explanation to the neighborhood.

“This is the stuff I basically ran my campaign on, transparency, responsibility, accountability and it’s lacking in all areas,” Ballard said. “That’s what I get so mad about. People who live in Riverside, that’s why we live in Riverside, we like the trees, we love the river, we love all of that.”

On Thursday, Ballard sat down with officials of the public works and forestry departments. The communications department made their discussion into a video explaining why the tree has to come down.

They didn’t release that video until late Monday morning, after the cutting was well underway and the neighbors were up in arms.

“We filmed it Thursday afternoon and we were working on it Friday, but those things take some time and we had some other city priorities come up,” said city spokeswoman Megan Lovely. “We posted it as soon as it was finished.”

In the meantime, a widely circulating post on Facebook said the hackberry and a large elm tree nearby were both slated for destruction, although city officials say they plan to save the elm.

“I’d love to tell you that there is a good reason, that they tried everything to save them and there is a good plan for re-planting, etc.,” Steve Howard wrote in his Monday morning post. “But I can’t as there has been ZERO communication to the public once again.”

In a comment on Howard’s post, Cowtown executive director Jacky Goerzen said she is “very sad” to see the tree being removed and that the museum — which is owned by the city — wasn’t given any notice the tree was targeted for removal.

“We didn’t know anything about it,” Goerzen wrote. “I got a call from a construction company telling me the road would be partially shut down for construction work, but not what the work was.”

Park Board member Chris Pumpelly wrote that the situation “underscores the need to have serious discussions about implementing a municipal tree policy,” urging residents to e-mail Park Board members.

In the city video with Ballard, Gary Farris of the city’s forestry department said it was regrettable but necessary for the big tree to come down.

“I’ve heard it called probably the largest hackberry in the county,” Farris said. “It’s a grand tree. It’s a beautiful tree. Anybody who’s driven by going west, going east, it doesn’t matter. That is an iconic tree.”

However, he added that when he inspected the tree in the lead-up to the construction project, it had “pretty significant structural weaknesses.”

He said the tree would have been unlikely to survive all the digging that’s going to be done in the area and would probably have just eventually fallen over.

He said he’d rather save the nearby elm tree that’s in better shape.

While the big hackberry tree is miles from the new water treatment plant being built near at 21st and Hoover near the Sedgwick County Zoo, it’s close to the old treatment plant that sits just across Museum Boulevard from Cowtown.

The tree wouldn’t survive the extensive digging that will be needed in the area to tie the pipes from the new water plant into the existing water system, said Bill Perkins, utilities capital program manager with public works.

The work is expected to take two years, but the city immediately needs to excavate old water mains in the street and test aging valves that weren’t designed to accommodate a second water plant, he said.

Farris estimated the hackberry tree is between 50 and 75 years old. Ballard says it’s older: “I had an arborist go by there this morning and he said it’s at least 120 years old and that’s being conservative.”

Hackberry trees are native to Kansas and commonly used as windbreaks at the edges of farm fields. It’s the most common tree species in Kansas with an estimated 119 million trees of more than an inch in diameter. But while they’re found in all 105 Kansas counties, it’s rare to find a really old one in the city.

In urban areas of Kansas, 40 years is more or less the typical life expectancy of a hackberry, according to the Kansas Forest Service at K-State University.

“While a hackberry on a suitable site in a rural area could potentially live up to 150 or 200 years, the life of a hackberry in the managed landscape is typically much shorter,” said Ryan Armbrust of the Forest Service. “Soil compaction, storm damage, improper pruning, and other stresses associated with urban trees mean that a hackberry that is several decades old is usually well-worn and could be starting to deteriorate. These trees, while still providing valuable shade, can begin to pose a hazard if not carefully managed, due to hackberry’s poor resistance to decay and susceptibility to storm damage.”

The city forestry and public works departments will cooperate on replanting after the water project is finished, Farris said.

“We can’t replace the canopy that we’re going to lose with this just by planting two or three trees,” Farris said. “We’re going to need to plant several trees. We won’t actually replace the full canopy of it, but we’ll do the best we can.”