Salt Lake City’s Public Lands Department accidentally poisons 200 trees

In late May, Fairpark resident Michelle Watts saw that a stretch of large honey locust trees in her neighborhood seemed sickly.

“I had noticed that a bunch of trees along the Utah State Fairgrounds on the North Temple side looked pretty mangled,” said Watts, who is also a part of the Fairpark Community Council. “This just looks pretty grim.”

She quickly flagged the ailing trees on Salt Lake City’s mobile app to make sure someone would go and check on them. In an email exchange with City Forester Tony Gliot soon thereafter, she learned that a Parks Division maintenance worker had mistakenly applied an herbicide that’s inappropriate for use on many trees and shrubs.

An internal investigation of the accident found that approximately 200 trees and dozens of shrubs were affected and already dead or in severe decline, according to records obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune.

The mistake has heightened neighborhood concerns about air quality and heat on the west side of Utah’s capital, and comes on the heels of Mayor Erin Mendenhall making tree-planting in this part of town a priority.

Herbicide mix-up

According to a summary of the investigation, the employee was attempting to control weeds growing around the base of the trees but mistakenly selected an herbicide that’s normally used to kill unwanted trees and shrubs without affecting the grass around them. That product was then applied at the base of each tree, leading to rapid declines in tree health.

The dead and failing trees remain standing for now along North Temple from 700 West to Redwood Road. The internal investigation also found trees suffering from similar afflictions on islands in the middle of 300 West from 600 North to 900 North.

Since then, the Urban Forestry Division, under Gliot’s management, has been overwatering the affected trees in hopes of flushing out the remaining harmful chemicals, and applying an environmentally friendly fertilizer to inspire new root growth.

In a mid-July email, however, Gliot said “it seems unlikely that many of the affected trees will recover.”

Parks maintenance staff also received additional training on how to use herbicides, and disciplinary action has been taken against those responsible, according to the investigation summary provided to the City Council.

“Public Lands has instituted additional procedures to prevent future incidents,” city spokesperson Beth Mitchell said in a statement. “While only trained and licensed staff can spray certain chemicals, the new double-safe procedure ensures that all licensed staff will also engage a supervisor and trained warehouse distribution technician for approval before herbicides are checked out.”

Investigation extends beyond City Hall

State officials have opened an investigation into the accident, Gliot wrote. They’ve obtained soil samples along the road to see where herbicides remain. That data and possible future testing will help foresters decide what new greenery to plant and where.

Losing the trees is a big deal, Watts said, because North Temple is a gateway to the city for travelers. She wants the road to be a point of pride for the neighborhood and for the city to take beautification of the stretch seriously.

But it’s not just beauty that residents lament losing. Mature trees like the ones dying along North Temple can absorb pollutants like ozone and catch fine particulate matter like dust. The west side of Salt Lake City is disproportionately affected by poor air quality, including airborne dust from the exposed bed of the Great Salt Lake.

Dan Strong, president of the Westside Coalition, expressed another concern about the death of the trees.

“The west side suffers from a lot of environmental disparities and one of those is heat,” Strong said. “One of the best ways we have to combat the heat is our trees. One of the real assets to our community has been a decent number of mature trees. They’re tall. They provide a lot of shade, including these on North Temple.”

This isn’t the first time west-siders have lost cooling, air-purifying trees. Strong said the 2020 windstorm killed scores of trees in his neighborhood of Rose Park. Watts, meanwhile, recalled the loss of old, leafy London planes that were removed along 900 West for the controversial and towering Beck Street Transmission Project.

The herbicide accident comes amid Mendenhall making tree-planting on the west side a key focus of her tenure. While her administration has planted at least a thousand trees on the west side each of the past three years, residents say education around how neighbors can care for the new arrivals has been lacking, and that many trees are either unhealthy or dead.

Future is uncertain

What landscaping along North Temple will look like in the future remains to be seen.

In an email earlier this month, Gliot said the next step will be the removal of many, if not most, of the affected trees.

Depending on the results of soil testing, root removal and fresh dirt may be necessary to plant new greenery along the road. The city will also confer with herbicide experts to understand what can be planted and when.

Some ideas on the table include planting trees in aboveground planters and adding hardy shrubs and flowers to the road.

Watts and other neighbors have advocated for additional planting in Utah Transit Authority-owned park strips in the middle of North Temple and asked if there are other places in the neighborhood where more trees could be added.

For now, though, Watts said she’s devastated.

“It just looks,” she said, “like a really sad horror movie set.”