Photo by Karin Elton These old-growth cottonwoods fell into the Redwood River near County Road 5 in Lynd this spring.

LYND — Large cottonwood trees have been falling into the Redwood River since the spring and have been piling up near the bridge on Lyon County Road 5 in Lynd.

On Friday morning, an excavator operator from D&G Excavating was able to clear away the branches and trees.

“These trees are being removed as a ‘debris clearance’ project as part of the federal disaster declaration Lyon County received for the severe weather this past spring,” Lyon County Emergency Manager Tammy VanOverbeke said. “Justin (Korman, Lynd emergency manager) has been waiting for the river to go down to safely get this done.”

Korman has been keeping an eye on the debris pile for a couple months. The trees could have been left alone, except for their proximity to the bridge.

“The trees weren’t hurting anything except for if pressure built up and then let go we wouldn’t want them harming the bridge,” he said. “So it was a precautionary measure. We’ve been waiting for the river to go down so we weren’t fighting the force of the river.”

A hydrologist from the Department of Natural Resources was consulted. Many trees have fallen into the river this spring.

“There is a larger dam upstream, 200 yards away where hundreds of trees from DNR land fell down,” Korman said. The hydrologist said the “river does what it wants and there’s not much you can do.”

Korman said with the loss of the large cottonwood trees, there is erosion on the bank of the river, so tree stumps were placed there to shore it up as much as possible.

Korman said the nearby landowners, Floyd and Judy Sowden, weren’t able to deal with the cost of tree removal and neither was the city of Lynd, so “it worked out good that there were FEMA funds for tree removal.”

Federal Emergency Management Agency funds are also available for the “frost heaves” in the nearby Affinity Hills development, he said. That’s where the “road buckles up.”

D&G Excavating is preparing estimates for that project.