Eucalyptus groves to be culled on 8th Street East

Some eucalyptus trees around Eighth Street East have been marked for removal as part of a multi-agency project to install a long-awaited multi-use path as well as improve the safety of the area, officials said. In the future the project promises to tell a grand tale of property rights and railroad ties.

The trees will be removed as part of the Sonoma Schellville Trail, a project adopted into the County General Plan by the Board of Supervisors in 1989. There’s been no procrastination or delays in the project; the tortoise-pace is due to difficulty in acquiring the land along the route, said Steve Ehret, project manager for Sonoma County Regional Parks Planning Division.

“This is the longest running acquisition of the department,” Ehret said.

The hold-up is largely due to negotiations with the railroad right of way, where parts of the trail will exist, which is now owned by Union Pacific.

“We are just on the cusp of a breakthrough point,” he said. “We’ve agreed on a purchase price, but there are many, many layers to get through.”

Property titles date back to the 1800s, “before California was part of the United States,” and are “extremely complex” and “wildly complicated,” Ehret said.

The land ownership “along this stretch of the road was confusing as the right of way moved back and forth over time,” said Sonoma County First District Supervisor Susan Gorin.

Ehret said that once land acquisition is complete, possibly in the coming six to 18 months, “Regional Parks will be able to share an awful lot more. The community deserves to know and it is genuinely interesting.”

While that history waits to be shared – there are legal reasons why he can’t say more yet – it will be “very noticeable” to the public when those trees do get marked for removal.

“The cost of the tree removal is very large — those trees are enormous and brittle. There was some question regarding land ownership and responsibility and resources for tree removal,” Gorin said.

PG&E did not include it in its tier for hazardous tree removal so they declined responsibility, and four years ago fires “came close to this location, but stopped short,” she said.

The 4-mile long multi-use path will be a Class 1 bikeway that begins at Sebastiani Winery, near where the Sonoma Bike Path ends, and continue near the intersections of Highway 121 and Eighth Street East in Schellville.

The trees that will be removed were part of request granted in the county’s last budget hearing, she said.

“The eucalyptus trees along Eighth Street East was the subject of one of my first constituent meetings/conversations,” Gorin said. “Many community members grew used to walking or jogging along this right of way, and they became increasingly concerned about their safety as eucalyptus routinely sheds bark and limbs. And a major limb came down about four years ago, cutting off electricity to a good section of Sonoma.”

Falling limbs were behind a 2011 county effort to remove eucalyptus on Lakeville Highway and other roads in the area. One tree fell in 2002 near Sonoma Raceway, killing the motorist. In 2005 a driver was injured after a limb fell on Lakeville Highway.

Johannes Hoevertsz, Sonoma County director of transportation and public works, said the Eighth Street East tree removal project will likely take place either in late 2021 or early 2022. The department is first tackling another eucalyptus tree removal in a Santa Rosa cemetery for similar safety reasons.

“Eucalyptus trees are difficult to maintain,” he said, adding that they shed quite a bit and “when they burn, they explode.”

The removal of eucalyptus trees on Lakeville Highway is part of a county-wide project “for fire fuel reduction,” said Amanda Bouillerce, customer service and grants program manager at the County of Sonoma Department of Transportation and Public Works.

Bradley Dunn, policy manager at Permit Sonoma, said “all trees are flammable, they are wood,” but added “eucalyptus do burn hot.” There is additional fear that the trees could shed limbs on the power lines that crisscross the area, sparking flames.

Eucalyptus trees were introduced in California in the 1850s from Australia in part to produce railroad ties, lumber, create wind breaks and shade. But the trees didn’t grow the same way in California as they do in Australia and the trees felled for railroad ties were so dense, they couldn’t be hammered through. Lumber production also failed. The trees soaked up nutrients and crowded out native plants. A favorite food for koalas in Australia, eucalyptus didn’t appeal to the California native animals, though some have adapted.

The species have been blamed for helping to spread fires due to their messy nature of shedding bark and leaves, which contain a flammable oil. They are generally drought tolerant and according to the California Invasive Plant Council, eucalyptus is considered “invasive” along the California coast and “it has effects on fire danger, native plants and wildlife.”

“We hate to remove healthy trees, but at the end of the day” safety concerns rule, Bouillerce said. “Eucalyptus can just explode; they are so flammable. But we are strategic about where we do this sort” of removal.