Marshall city crews worked to remove trees along West Saratoga and Sixth Streets on Wednesday morning. This winter, the city has been cutting down ash trees in the city right-of-way that were affected by emerald ash borer.

MARSHALL — The fight against the emerald ash borer is changing the landscape in parts of Marshall. In recent weeks, a growing number of tree stumps could be seen along stretches of West Saratoga, Lynd and Sixth Streets, as city crews removed dead or dying ash trees.

“We’ll be taking them down through March, probably,” said Marshall public ways superintendent Dean Coudron. Coudron estimated that this winter, city staff have done 25% to 50% more tree removals than in a typical year. “We’ve taken down quite a few ash trees already,” he said.

Parts of Saratoga Street and Sixth Street were temporarily closed on Wednesday morning, as crews continued to remove affected trees.

The trees being removed this winter showed signs of being infested by emerald ash borer, Coudron said. Emerald ash borers are beetles that lay their eggs on ash trees, and their larva tunnel under the tree bark. Over time, the larva tunnels end up girdling the trees and killing them.

Ash borers were confirmed to be present in Marshall last year.

Coudron said city crews have been doing ash tree removals in the winter months, while ash borers are dormant. This helps keep the insects from spreading to new hosts. “We don’t want them to fly from tree to tree,” he said.

The city will also go back to remove tree stumps later, Coudron said.

Marshall is removing ash trees with the help of state grant funding, said Marshall Parks and Recreation superintendent Preston Stensrud. Marshall has received a ReLeaf Community Forestry grant of more than $325,000 from the Minnesota department of Natural Resources. One of the tasks the grant was focused on was removing unhealthy ash trees in city right-of-ways and low-income areas of the community.

Under Marshall’s grant proposal, the city will be replacing each tree cut down with two new trees. The new trees will be from a variety of species that are less prone to disease.

Coudron said the city would be reaching out to property owners to ask about planting new trees to replace the ash trees that were cut down. If homeowners didn’t want replacement trees, the city would plant the replacements on public property like parks, he said.

Part of the plan for the city’s community forestry grant funds also includes offering reimbursements to help with the costs of tree removals on low-income property. However, that program hasn’t started up yet, Stensrud said. City staff are still working on procedures for how the reimbursements would work. The program would likely be ready for next winter, Stensrud said.