Housing Authority Apologizes for Raingarden Bulldozing

A quick note to readers that on August 19, after a week of tense exchanges with the Housing Authority, I received an email from the Housing Authority's executive director stating the following:

"First and foremost, I, along with my staff and Board of Commissioners want to offer our sincere apology to you and the community at large for destroying an ecologically friendly community gift. The Princeton Housing Authority and the board certainly appreciate your hard work and dedication in donating your time and effort in the landscaping project. " 

The email goes on to express a desire to move forward in correcting the situation. The email was an important step towards healing, and I look forward to working with Housing staff and board members towards making something positive out of this unfortunate event. I will be posting more on this as time goes on.

"Open Raingarden" Event Tomorrow

It's like an open house, except outside the house. The raingardens here at our urban oasis (by "urban" I mean a busy street in Princeton) are in full bloom, and I'd like people to have a chance to see them. Come by this Sunday, Aug. 17, 3-5pm. I know it's short notice, so email me if you'd like to stop by some other time. The address is 139 N. Harrison St in Princeton. Best to park on Ewing Street or Franklin Ave. if driving. Much of our backyard is fed by runoff from uphill neighbors, which feeds gardens full of native wildflowers, sedges and rushes.

Of the two raingardens in the front yard, one catches water from the neighbor's driveway. The other receives water from one of the front downspouts. The backyard is a reconstructed streambed--what once was a small tributary of Harry's Brook, visible on old maps--with a series of miniponds enveloped in all the native plant growth evidenced in the photo. The ponds vary from full to empty, depending on the rains.

You may also encounter a few charismatic chickens and ducks, and a "fillable/spillable" rainwater duck pond (patent pending). Included is a small "yard" sale, consisting of native wildflowers from the yard that have been potted up. Nearly all are local genotypes. 

And please bring any empty plastic flower pots you don't need. There are native volunteer plants sprouting out all over, and I've run out of pots.

Searching for Monarchs in Princeton

The monarch butterfly, as most people know, is in trouble, due in part to a radical decimation of milkweed on more than one hundred million acres of farmland in the U.S. in recent years. Thus far this summer, I had seen a grand total of two monarchs, one having visited the raingarden in my front yard on Harrison Street. Another raingarden on Harrison Street, at the Spruce Circle senior housing, had just been bulldozed while in full flower.

With that traumatic step backwards in mind, I set out yesterday on my bike to check out a few spots elsewhere in Princeton. If a monarch were to travel around town at about the speed of a bike, wings warmed by the sun after a recent rain, would it find any prospective mates?

First stop was the meadow at the corner of Mountain Ave and the Great Road. The Joe-Pye-Weed was blooming as it does every year, but no monarchs to be seen.

Then a ride up the Great Road to Farmview Fields, where I had hooked the town up with Partners for Fish and Wildlife--a federal agency--to plant a meadow of warm-season native grasses in a stormwater detention basin that had previously been mowed as turf. More habitat, less mowing. Everyone was happy. I had added some native wildflowers, and others had seeded in. When I checked last year it was doing great. Yesterday, however, I was surprised to find the grasses stunted and the wildflowers gone. It hadn't been bulldozed, but something's wrong with the mowing regime, which should be just once a year during the dormant season.

Again, there's a sign that should signal that this is a special area, requiring a different management.

The heavy equipment had left some patches of ground scarred and bare. Mowing crews are so used to mowing these detention basins elsewhere that they may have started regularly mowing this one, out of habit. I had a job mowing a golf course one summer. It's not the kind of work that encourages thinking outside the box.

An unmowed area nearby showed what the basin should have looked like, with the "turkey feet" of big bluestem rising to the sky.

There was a swallowtail butterfly sampling the basin's meagre offerings, but still no monarchs.

Back down the Great Road to the opening in the fence, near Pretty Brook Rd, to take the boardwalk across the bottom of Coventry Farm over to Mountain Lakes. Lots of common milkweed in the field, but no signs of their being munched on by monarch caterpillars.

Finally, along the boardwalk near a big wet meadow of ironweed (the hydrologic conditions a raingarden imitates), I saw a lone monarch, flying about but not landing. As the monarch numbers have dwindled since the 1990's, the question arises, how do they find each other? They start each year in a small enclave in the mountains of Mexico, then spread out across vast areas of the U.S. and Canada. This migration, with one generation succeeding another as they move northward, is predicated on having sufficient numbers for individuals to find each other and mate. The lone monarch and the uneaten milkweeds offered little reason for optimism.

At Mountain Lakes House, a popular place for weddings and other gatherings, and also home base for Friends of Princeton Open Space, the raingarden I designed was prospering.

Lots of color there,

and in another rain garden in the driveway, but no monarchs to be seen.

There was still one spot to look, though, in the fields of Tusculum, preserved by Friends of Princeton Open Space and others, and packed with milkweed. To get there meant maneuvering through the now tattered evergreen forest of Community Park North. High winds in recent years have knocked down most of the pines and spruce, which really aren't natural to this area but had provided a deep forest feel that was enjoyable to walk through. Now, fallen trees have opened up the canopy, energizing an understory of invasive stiltgrass and honeysuckle.

Some trails are lined by young ash trees that will likely be attacked by the emerald ash borer when it reaches Princeton. This strangest of woods was not feeding optimism either.

The fields of Tusculum also looked different than in past years, perhaps again due to a mowing regime that might not be the best for wildlife habitat. Mountain mint, once a common wildflower there, was nowhere to be seen. And no monarchs.

But then, near Cherry Hill Road, next to a purple patch of tick trefoil and Indian grass,

monarchs, a pair, mating!

They flew over into the meadow to continue. Part naturalist, part voyeur, I lingered, wishing to document how long such pivotal acts take. It became clear that this was no brief rendezvous, so I moved on,

to the next field over, where common milkweed sprawled over more than an acre.  And there, another monarch, showing off its brilliant, speedy flight, ducking in and out among the milkweeds, as if in a hurry yet undecided as to where to land. It did land a few times, briefly, perhaps to lay an egg? I checked the undersides of leaves, but it was hard to tell from a distance where it had landed.

I biked home more hopeful than two hours prior. Those monarchs were starting the last generation of the year, the one that will fly all the way back to Mexico. On the way back, I passed the Princeton High School's detention basin just north of the performing arts center on Walnut Street. Now wouldn't that be a fine gesture, an act of generosity and belief in the future, if the school were to turn that empty, unused basin into a monarch meadow.

A Raingarden's Quiet Riot of Wildflowers

Half of my backyard is raingarden, and this is what it looks like right now. it could not be mistaken for evergreen shrubs trimmed to look like cannonballs. It's a celebration of life, and the party's in full swing right now. Most of these grow wild along the canal and a few other spots in town.

Joe-Pye-Weed is the tall one with the pompom blooms. Rose Mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos) is the large white flower.

Cutleaf coneflower (you can see why it used to be called green-headed coneflower)

The rose mallow hibiscus is variable--sometimes white with a rose center, sometimes pink.

If you kayak up the Millstone River from Carnegie Lake, you'll see these lining the banks.

A bit of an optical illusion here. Cardinal flower isn't that big. Green bullrush is the sedge in the foreground, just to the right of the cardinal flower, with hibiscus in the background and boneset on the back right. Boneset is the king of pollinator attractors. To the left of the huge-looking cardinal flower is purple loosestrife (a non-native that seeded in and can be invasive, but which I'm leaving in for now).

Ironweed has clusters of small flowers at the top of a tall stalk.

There are lots of different yellow flowers. This one is cup-plant, which can grow ten feet high. I found it growing next to the dumpster at Mark Twain's house in Hartford, CT. It doesn't grow wild in the Princeton area, but is a native. The small white flowers are late-flowering boneset.

Though they do fine in regular garden soil, these native wildflowers also thrive in parts of the garden that are scooped out a bit and have runoff directed to them, from downspouts, driveways, or patios. That's basically what a raingarden is.

Public Raingarden Bulldozed

(See followup post for an update.)

You know, it's been a beautiful summer, and I really don't feel like being upset. But this past Thursday, on August 7, the raingarden at the Princeton Housing Authority's Spruce Circle on Harrison Street was bulldozed. Just like that. Gone. For six years it provided beauty to passersby, and food and habitat for wildlife. This time of year is peak flowering, with Joe-Pye-Weed, cutleaf coneflower, boneset and swamp milkweed providing color and feeding pollinators that find precious little to feed on elsewhere. In an urban landscape dominated by trees and turf, the raingarden offered an oasis for the dwindling numbers of monarch butterflies that come our way each year.

When I discovered the destruction, the sign was still there. It would have been thoughtful if the head of maintenance, whoever that may be, had read the sign first, to find out what the garden's function was, and who planted it. The next day, the sign too had been ripped out.

I called the Housing Authority, and was told by an assistant administrator, who could not have been more indifferent, that anything planted on their property is under their control, and can be destroyed at will. I explained that it had been planted and maintained for six years by volunteers, and asked if she might feel any regret? She said she would be lying if she were to say she did. Since I had called a few minutes after the office closed, she said she was doing me a favor by answering the phone.

It's true the housing authority has control over its property, but not completely true. That land is public land. It's not owned by the recently hired maintenance supervisor. The raingarden was approved in 2008 by the executive director, Scott Parsons, and the Princeton Housing Authority board. It was faithfully maintained by volunteers. Such decisions can't be reversed on someone's whim, or so you would think.

Having planted a lot of raingardens on public land, in three different towns, I've developed a thick skin. The first time one was accidentally mowed by a new and uninformed employee, in Durham, NC, it felt like a punch to the gut. I discovered, however, that gardens are resilient. They grow back from a mowing. So two years ago when I came upon a man trimming the Harrison St. raingarden with a chainsaw, I calmly explained that the wildflowers are not a hedge, and we joked about it later. But bulldozing represents a new level of ignorance and indifference.

One of the ironies is that I had just received an invitation from Princeton's mayor to a Volunteer Thank You Party. Well, the raingarden was a volunteer of sorts, doing everything right. In addition to the interest, beauty and habitat it provided, it also capturing runoff from the roofs to reduce downstream flooding. What a nice thank you it received, from a bulldozer. 

And here, flashing back to 2008, is an example of community volunteers doing everything right. When Curtis Helm told me about his idea of planting a demonstration raingarden at Spruce Circle, I helped choose the spot and facilitated the permission process. Curtis carefully regraded the soil to hold just the right amount of runoff, so the water would seep into the ground after a day or two, feeding the plants but killing any hapless mosquito larvae before they could mature. By tempting mosquitoes to lay their eggs in ephemeral water, a raingarden actually reduces the urban mosquito population.

Surrounded by buildings and streets whose imperviousness displaces nature and contributes to downstream flooding, and whose emissions contribute to destabilizing climate, the raingarden acts as a buffer, welcoming nature and slowing the water down. In a time of increasing extremes, we need more raingardening, not less.

Curtis arranged a generous donation of plants from Pinelands Nursery, and paid for the sign with his own money. The raingarden was part of a Green Home and Garden Tour that year. Photos of the garden were used in presentations at conferences, and also appear in the Rain Garden Manual of New Jersey (pp. 14 and 50), which is accessible on websites in NJ, Connecticut, Maine and elsewhere. When Curtis left town to take a position with Philadelphia's parks department, I weeded the garden each year and made sure the roof downspouts were still feeding it water.

It takes a certain breed of person to keep a garden going, year after year. So many distractions in life, so many demands, and the weeds take advantage. There are some successes in Princeton. The gardens that serve as an attractive entryway to the town pool and the recreation building thrive because of the volunteer t.l.c. of Vikki Caines, a rec. dept. employee, and the Dogwood Garden Club. But other gardens have recently lost their longtime stewards. The splendid gardens at Riverside Elementary are losing Dorothy Mullen after so many years of devotion. The Barbara Sigmund memorial park on Hamilton Ave. lost Polly Burlingham's stewardship, in part due to a lack of volunteer help. Other plantings have gone for years without adequate attention. The memorial dogwoods at Princeton Battlefield languish beneath a tyranny of freeloading vines while acres of ahistoric lawn get mowed. The Harrison Street Park plantings got a burst of volunteer attention their first year, but then most of those gardens were left to the weeds and the unskilled grounds crew.

The lack of botanical training for employees charged with caring for our public spaces has always been hard to fathom. Princeton has an arborist, but no one versed in plants that happen to lack cellulose. Usually, the lack of training expresses itself through the steady decline of any planting other than trees and turf. But now we find that this lack of knowledge and training has expressed itself as a willingness to destroy even those gardens well cared for by volunteers.

What we end up with is "greenery", for example this mound of invasive Japanese honeysuckle vine that suffocated whatever shrub was planted there long ago, and now survives by being sufficiently boring and mindless.

The Princeton Housing Authority has been incommunicado this week as it moves into new offices. Their executive director only works one day a week, and has yet to reply to requests for information. All indications, however, suggest that this was a pointless act of destruction.

So, really, what does Princeton value? Does it value the time, passion, knowledge, and energy its volunteers give to the community? Does it value the stream--Harry's Brook--that this raingarden was aiding by holding back runoff? Whoever destroyed this garden thought no one would care, that the Housing Authority Board and town council would simply make excuses or look the other way. We'll find out soon whether the town rebuilds this raingarden, or if public spiritedness is to be turned into a slurry of mud headed towards Harry's Brook.

Update, 8/14: The Housing Authority's executive director, Scott Parsons, responded soon after this post was written. He explained that there was a misunderstanding with his maintenance staff, but that there wasn't much that could be done. He apologized for the misunderstanding.

Peregrine Falcon Watching Over Princeton

Fine Hall, the newer math building not to be confused with Old Fine Hall, has perhaps the finest view of all in Princeton. I've never been up there to confirm, but a Peregrine falcon has, and was spotted twice this weekend by local birders Lee and Melinda Varian.

This photo, with the falcon's favorite ledges circled, was taken a couple years ago by Ben Schweinhart.

Not clear if it has a favorite side of the building to perch on, but these two photos taken by Lee are on the east and south-facing sides.

Though the bird has been spotted thus far between 7:30 and 9:30 in the morning, it may be there other times as well.

First Monarch Seen

The raingarden in the front yard yesterday, next to busy Harrison Street, was where I saw my first monarch of the season in Princeton.

I had been concerned that the cool summer, pleasant as it is for us, could reduce the reproduction of the monarchs as they build their population from one generation to the next through the summer. But I see no mention of that as a factor in a detailed update on the monarch's status by Chip Taylor, at http://monarchwatch.org/blog/. The website also provides a means to report sightings of monarchs, and there's an email discussion group one can also sign up for. Taylor is predicting somewhat larger numbers than last year, but a fuller recovery will require restoring milkweed to the landscape, particularly to farmland in the midwest, where it has been decimated by Roundup Ready corn and soybeans.

From a slightly different angle, the monarch's wings look pretty beaten up. Hopefully it hasn't had to work too hard to find other monarchs.

Feel free to enter your sightings in the comment section below.

NJ Open Space Funding On the Line

Info below is from a NJ Conservation Foundation email just received. The state assembly has resisted supporting open space funding, and needs to hear from supporters. The vote is this Thursday, July 31.

Last chance to bring open space funding over the finish line!

  

Tomorrow, July 31, is the last chance for the New Jersey Assembly to pass legislation to replenish open space, parks, farmland and historic preservation funding this year. Please help ensure the measure is approved before it's too late!

Please call and email your Assembly representatives today! Urge them to attend the Assembly session tomorrow and support ACR130.

Funds from the last bond referendum in 2009 are all spent or allocated. Without passage by the Assembly tomorrow, the measure won't make it onto the November ballot. 

FIND YOUR REPRESENTATIVES' TELEPHONE NUMBERS >> 

This link may allow you to send an email.

Details: 

ACR130 would dedicate 4% of existing Corporate Business Tax revenues to critical open space preservation and environmental protection programs through Fiscal Year 2019, and dedicate an additional 2% of existing CBT revenues from FY2020 going forward. This would provide a long-term, dedicated source of funding for land, water and farmland protection efforts without any fiscal impact until FY2020, when an additional 2% of CBT revenues (approximately $50 million) would be allocated for these purposes.

Talking points:             

• All Green Acres, Blue Acres, Farmland and Historic Preservation funds from the 2009 $400 million bond act are now fully allocated. Without action, these critical efforts will come to a standstill while tens of thousands of acres of natural lands and farmland are in need of protection.
• The New Jersey Senate has already passed this legislation by a landslide vote.
• This legislation provides a long-term, dedicated source of funding for park and preservation efforts without any fiscal impact until FY2020.
• Preserving open space and farmland is critical to the future of our state's quality of life and economy.

  

Thank you in advance for your help! Please forward this email to others who may be interested in helping, and share on your social networks.

Botanical Tributes at Princeton Battlefield Threatened

If the plaque commemorating those who died in the Battle of Princeton got overgrown by vines, people would understandably be upset. But how about botanical tributes at the Battlefield? Mercer Oak The Second is doing well, carefully protected by fencing and no doubt periodically checked for health.

But there are other trees planted in memory of the battle that have been abandoned to whatever fate may come their way. Not far from the Ionic Colonade pillars are flowering dogwoods that were planted all along the perimeter of the north field. Those to the right of the pillars are doing fine. Those on the left are being smothered by vines--mostly porcelain berry and wild grape.

Some are so badly blanketed that you can't tell a dogwood is there until you peak under the mass of vines and see the venerable trunk of the dogwood holding up the free-loading foliage.

In this photo, porcelain berry leaves are on top, grabbing the sunlight from the flowering dogwood leaves below. I liberated a few of the dogwoods from the smothering vines some years back, but they really won't be saved until their protection becomes hard-wired into the Battlefield's maintenance. Here, again, the focus on lawn mowing to the exclusion of all other aspects of grounds maintenance has allowed an attractive and meaningful planting to be badly neglected.

It's really very simple for a crew to go in, cut the vines at the ground, maybe spray a dab of 20% glyphosate on the cut stem, and preserve these historically important plantings. It might add a couple hours a year of maintenance time.

The dogwoods also provide nutritious berries well timed with fall migrations, that is, if they get enough sunlight to power the production of the berries.

There are other plantings at the battlefield that are threatened, but not by lack of maintenance. We had high hopes for this 15/16th native American chestnut, planted in front of the Clark House. It's nearly 30 feet high now,

but I was recently told by Bill Sachs that the canker on its trunk--caused by the chestnut blight that nearly wiped out chestnuts a century ago--is not healing, suggesting that the tree will eventually succumb. Though this particular tree came out of a breeding program meant to generate blight-resistant native chestnuts, only about half of the trees will actually show resistance. Of the four chestnuts planted at the battlefield, two have succumbed, and this one may as well.

The fourth, however, is doing fine,

and Bill has already planted two replacements for the ones that died.

A larger question is whether the Battlefield wants to look anything like it did at the time of the battle. There were no lawnmowers back then, unless you count livestock, and these turfgrasses are not native to America. It's great to have a nice surface to walk on, have picnics, fly a kite, re-enact. Keep some turf, but should the landscaping really have nothing to do with historic accuracy?

Many battlefields around the country have made an effort to restore their landscapes to better reflect the era in which a battle took place. Mowing is very time-intensive, and most of the turf here is never walked on. The open feel is nice, but that could be maintained by reducing somewhat the mowed expanse, and restoring native grassland in unused areas, with broad trails through them kept mowed so that people can have the experience of walking through an authentic 18th century meadow. An orchard, too, would add some authenticity. But again, this means that an institution must go beyond lawnmowing in its conception of what constitutes caring for a landscape.

Begin, at least, with the dogwoods.

Princeton Expected to Lose Its Ash Trees

This is a towering white ash tree, one of thousands in Princeton, and for as long as anyone can remember, it has grown "real good for free", as Joni Mitchell might say. As with the clarinet player in her song, playing for free on a street corner, people pass it by without a thought, while it quietly supplies beauty and abundant ecological services--shade, cooling, habitat, oxygen, carbon sequestration--all rendered at no cost.

That's about to change. Four years ago, I wrote on this blog:

"In Princeton, we will over the next decade likely witness a dieoff approaching the scale of the chestnut and elm dieoffs of the 20th century, as the emerald ash borer, which hitch-hiked to Michigan from Asia in wooden packing crates, continues its spread eastward." 

It doesn't take any great clairvoyance on my part to see the future. I had once lived in Ann Arbor, MI, which had to cut down 10,000 ash trees at a cost of $5.8 million.

Living in Princeton, then, is like having traveled back in time. Knowing what's in store, what's been sweeping eastward from the midwest, makes me appreciate more what we still have. I pause more than I might otherwise at the sight of an ash, particularly in the fall when they change color. The halcyon moment for me with ash trees will always be the time, long before the emerald ash borer came on the scene, when I drove north in Michigan to play for a wedding that was perfectly timed with the fall colors. Sugar maples dominated with their radiant orange and gold. Sumac made horizontal strokes of brilliant red. And the uncanny mix of yellow and purple in the ash trees was so strong it seemed to vibrate. We were paid for our time, but they let us play the jazz tunes we love, outdoors, overlooking a glorious valley of color. Our singer's rendition of Make Someone Happy was so full of buoyancy and conviction we knew we had found the meaning of life. If a composer like Scriabin can see color in music, then surely there was music in the colors of the north woods that day, the trees playing an ancient symphony freely given, filling us with enough color to last us through the long Michigan winter

This spring, the emerald ash borer, known unaffectionately by its acronym, EAB, was finally found in NJ, 25 miles north of Princeton, in a parking lot next to Patriot Stadium in Bridgewater. Though those of us who knew it was coming have a head start on grief, the official announcement on May 21st still had an emotional impact. This link used to show New Jersey as free of EAB, but essentially surrounded by infestations in bordering states. Now NJ has been added to those with EAB. It may have flown in on its own, from NY or Pennsylvania, or it may have been transported in firewood. None have shown up in traps set in Princeton, but the traps are an imperfect test of their presence.

Princeton's battle with the beetle will be expensive. The strategy cannot realistically be to win, but to cushion the blow to canopy and pocketbook. Any view more optimistic than that veers into wishful thinking. In the twelve years since it was first identified in Michigan, neither white nor green ash has shown resistance to the insect, and no controls are poised to save the day. We may save some of our ash trees with systemic insecticides, at considerable expense, but far more will be lost to a diminutive beetle that no one noticed in Michigan until it had become to entrenched to eradicate. And Princeton has a lot of ash to lose, it being our most numerous tree. Arborist Bob Wells' recent inventory identified 2200 white and green ash trees along the streets, plus the uncounted thousands in our parks and woodlands. 

The strategy for dealing with the invasion, which could arrive in Princeton in a year or two, or could already be here but undetected, will likely involve chemical treatment to protect the finest specimens, and beginning to cut down other ash even before they show symptoms.

There are chemicals that can be used to save individual trees. As a proactive measure, Princeton University began treating its most valuable ash trees two years ago. Choosing which insecticide to use involves tradeoffs. Imidicloprid is less expensive, but is injected into the soil around it rather than directly into the tree. Because the compound is toxic to pollinators, it should not be injected where flowers are growing beneath the tree. The herbaceous plants will absorb the chemical and transfer it to the pollen in their flowers, where the pollinators will be exposed. Other options can be found in the extensive notes below.

Two things are particularly upsetting about the arrival of the emerald ash borer. Of course first and foremost is the loss of a tree species and all the beauty and services it has been providing for free. The other is New Jersey's incredible lack of preparedness. Composting centers are already overwhelmed. Trees make an excellent fuel--one of the few ethical forms of energy we currently have available to us, since wood's carbon comes from the air rather than from underground sources. The technology is available to cleanly run cogeneration plants with wood for fuel. If the state actually is preparing for what one arborist called "ten years of mayhem", it's being done very quietly. Chances are, New Jersey will only start reacting once the devastation begins, even though it had ten years to prepare.

The recurring lesson is of the abundant services and beauty nature gives, every day, none of which are entered into our economic calculations, and the increasing vigilance and stewardship required to guard those gifts as global trade increases the pace of change. Below are my collected notes on the coming invasion, including an extensive phone conversation with Donald Eggen, division chief for Forest Pest Management in Pennsylvania. 

Notes from a conversation with Donald A. Eggen, Division Chief of Forest Pest Management Division. (These notes were rapidly written, but are my best rendering of what Eggen said.)

EAB attacks trees as small as 1" in diameter.
The insects start at the top of the tree and work down.

Expansion of EAB into new areas
In 2013, PA documented EAB in 16 new counties without even looking very hard
The Louisville Slugger baseball bats are made out of ash harvested in northern PA. EAB is now moving into that area.
Traps for detecting EAB in an area don't work very well. Their odor imitates a stressed tree.

In a given area:
EAB doubles each year. If 16% of trees affected, the next year there will be 32, then 64, then all. It can sweep through a town in five years. (sources on web suggest more like ten years--perhaps it takes a few years to get to 16%, and then a couple years to kill those that are last to be attacked).

Assessment of a tree
Take DBH (DBH (diameter at breast height) is a poor measure. Bigger trees need more juice.)
If 70% of crown looks good, then tree could be saved
If it dies, it becomes a hazard tree
Don't treat if more than 30% in decline. Insect damage can't be repaired. Most ash in decline, even without EAB, due to winter storms, wet weather, all of which, if it's a street tree, brings out root ball problems left over from improper planting. Kill the roots, kill the tree.

Strategies
Options are to treat, to remove, or to remove and replace.
Don't delay on treatment. Do most critical trees in first year. Spread the cost out.

He mentioned Chris Sadoff at Purdue, and I later found this, which is one of many such documents on the web to help with decision making: http://extension.entm.purdue.edu/EAB/PDF/NABB_DecisionGuide.pdf

Treatment: Recommends Tree-age (Emamectin Benzoate), a play on the word "triage". Not available to homeowners, it's restricted use, and must be applied by professionals. It's more expensive than another treatment with various names such as Merit, but has advantages in that it is injected directly into the tree. The injection point is at the base of the tree, where it flares out just above the ground. This is where the sapwood is thickest. The product is made by Arbor Jet, and applicators should undergo training through Arbor Jet. There is reason to believe that it will last longer than two years, possible 4 or more.

Merit, as with other similar products whose active ingredient is imidicloprid, is injected into the soil around the tree. If the soil is compacted, the uptake could be slower. Something called Safari is sucked up faster by the tree than Merit, but doesn't last as long (?). Both Merit and Safari protect the leaves well. A product called Xytec has to be applied every year.

Timing
With Tree-age, treat late May through June. A cloudy day with a little breeze is best. (presumably when a tree is translocating upward most effectively).

Cost
Ash can be more costly to remove than to treat. If they die, they become brittle very quickly, which makes them more dangerous to work on. Some arborists refuse to go up in the trees if they have become brittle. An increase in accidents has been documented. The trees can also become weak at the roots and topple over at the base.

Chicago is treating tens of thousands of ash, at a cost of $1.4 million/year.
The plan is on the website. Westchester, PA has a 10 year plan that includes cost.

Other insects/diseases
Asian Longhorned Beetle (ALB) in Wooster, MA, big infestation. ALB has gotten into the woods, which is bad because it doesn't kill trees in the woods and therefore is hard to find. Not as good a flyer as EAB, so slower to expand territory.

Black walnut disease found in Bucks County, contained apparently.

(End of Eggen notes)

__________________________________________________

SYMPTOMS OF EMERALD ASH BORER (taken from the web)

1. D-shaped exit holes – 1/8” inch holes left after adults exit the tree

2. Bark splits – vertical splits in the bark

3. S-shaped feeding galleries – can only be seen when bark is scraped or in bark splits

4. Woodpecker damage – missing or discolored bark beginning at the top of the tree

5. Crown Dieback – foliage at the top of the tree may thin or discolor

6. Epicormic sprouting - shoots of leaves growing from the trunk

The New York Times ran an article on emerald ash borer, featured in a talk in Princeton by the Times science editor that same day.

Here's an article that claims that woodpeckers can play a role in controlling EAB. I'm skeptical.

I also found on the web a city that was paying $90/tree for treatment using Tree-age

Interestingly, ash continue to sprout in the woodlands in Ann Arbor, and can grow to 6 inch diameter, but the chances of their growing to maturity are slim.

Some sources on the web suggest that once EAB  passes through and attacks all the trees there are to attack, then ongoing treatment costs for those trees saved will come down somewhat.

Update: A short video on a parasitic wasp being introduced in Maryland to help control the EAB. Sounds like it could potentially help in the longterm, but is described as "a drop in the ocean", given the vast numbers of EAB compared to the few parasitic wasps released.