Facedown due on who pays for beetles; Local, state officials ponder if feds should shoulder cost.

Byline: Lee Hammel

As the number of trees in Worcester infested with Asian longhorned beetles continues to grow, U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern has arranged a meeting this week with the undersecretary of agriculture to discuss how much of the battle against the beetle should be borne by the federal government and just how far the government should take that battle.

By Friday, the wood-boring invader was found in 1,000 trees, the U.S Department of Agriculture announced. The eight two-person surveying teams had inspected 8,100 trees as of two days ago in the 33-square-mile quarantined area including parts of Worcester, Shrewsbury, Holden, West Boylston and Boylston..

That means at least 12.3 percent of the inspected trees so far will have to be cut down and shredded because there is no approved chemical that can kill the beetles, which are native to China and Korea.

The numbers increased from those announced a week earlier: roughly 700 infested trees out of 5,600 checked over the first three weeks of the inspection program. That is about a 12.5 percent infestation rate.

Mr. McGovern, D-Worcester, said he expects U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry and a representative of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to attend the meeting this week with Undersecretary Bruce Knight. Officials of Worcester and of the state, who would have to pay for whatever the federal government does not pay for, also will be invited to attend the meeting in the congressman's office in Washington.

The stakes are high. The USDA gave a preliminary estimate of the cost of fighting the tree-destroying beetle at $17 million to $24 million in the first year alone in what is expected to be a multi-year battle, according to a letter to Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer signed by the congressman and the state's two senators.

The department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service proposes the city and state pick up 50 percent of the costs, according to the federal legislators.

APHIS figures show it has paid anywhere from 59 percent to 90 percent of the cost of battling the large black beetle with white markings in New York and New Jersey over the past two years and 90 percent of the $70 million spent over 10 years in Illinois

But APHIS has never proposed funding the beetle fight in Massachusetts at 50 percent but rather "encourages 50 percent cost shares as a goal," according to Suzanne Bond, an APHIS spokeswoman. "In recent years, cost shares in states with existing ALB eradication programs have averaged 63 percent APHIS funding," she said.

City Manager Michael V. O'Brien raised the specter of having to lay off teachers, police and others if the federal government does not assume more of the cost.

Mr. McGovern said he does not expect the meeting with Mr. Knight to be adversarial, although the letter from the federal legislators asked why APHIS expects the city and state to pick up "even 1 percent" of the cost of a fight to keep a pest it did not ask for from destroying the country's lumber, maple syrup and other industries.

Ms. Bond said "USDA APHIS believes when outbreaks such as the one detected in Massachusetts are uncovered, everyone - state, federal and local cooperators - should bring their resources to the table to fight the pest. When we work in partnership, we all take ownership of the situation and share in bringing about solutions."

Mr. McGovern also referred to the intensive preferred method proposed by APHIS to fight the beetle as a "scorched earth" policy. The policy employed to fight the beetle in New Jersey, one of three other states invaded by the wood-chewing beetle, involves removal of any of the insects' preferred trees within a quarter-mile of an infested tree, while injecting chemicals into potential host trees between a quarter-mile and half-mile from an infested tree.

The congressmen had suggested removing only infested trees while chemically injecting all potential host trees within a half-mile to reduce the impact on the quality of life and property values. That is in line with the program followed in Chicago, where officials declared the beetle eradicated in April after battling it since 1998.

In fact, on Friday the city announced that is what it would do. It said it finally arrived at the decision to inoculate non-infested host trees within a half- mile of infested trees in cooperation with both state and federal officials.

Richard K. Sullivan Jr., commissioner of the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, said whether to inoculate or remove uninfested potential host trees will be determined by how heavy the infestation is in a given area. Where the infestation is particularly heavy, all of the beetles' favorite targets may have to be removed within a quarter-mile.

In areas where there are only a few infested trees, then uninfested maples and other favorite meals of the beetle within a half-mile can be injected with the chemical imidacloprid, not removed. Given the intensity of the infestation here - 700 infested trees were found in the first three weeks of surveying - Mr. Sullivan said it is probable tree removals of uninfested trees in a quarter-mile radius will occur is some places.

With agreement on how to proceed, negotiations will continue on how much of it the federal government will pay for.

"We will obviously be working closely with the legislative delegation and the lieutenant governor and the governor in crafting an emergency response from the state," Mr. Sullivan said. "It would certainly require some sort of supplemental appropriation."

Asked whether the state might pay for all of the costs not picked up by the federal government, the commissioner said, "That's a discussion we'll have.

"Certainly I don't believe any city or town should be picking between teachers, police and fire or treatment of the Asian longhorned beetle. We have to do the eradication. Everyone agrees on that," he said.

Ironically, one of the considerations in pursuing such an aggressive course of treatment of the Asian longhorned beetle in New Jersey, was consideration of the beauty and economic impact of the hardwood forests of New England. "We didn't want the Asian longhorned beetle from New Jersey making its way to the forests of New England," said Carl P. Schulze, director of that state's division of plant industry."

"When we talked to residents in our (community) meetings, we talked of maple trees in New England for tourist value and the sugar industry, and they were willing to sacrifice their trees to keep that out of New England."

Removing all potential host trees within a quarter-mile of an infested tree is a more sure solution by removing trees where inspectors missed the signs that they contained eggs, larvae or beetles, Mr. Schulze said. "It's a bitter pill. There's no denying that."

In April of this year the state and the federal government declared the Asian longhorned beetle eradicated in Hudson County, which had been invaded in Jersey City in October 2002. Additionally, no more beetles have been found in Middlesex County in the Garden State since 2006, which had been discovered infested two years earlier, but four years of finding no beetles is required before victory is declared.

In Illinois, eradication was declared complete earlier this year after a 10-year battle with the beetle in which chemical inoculation rather than removal was used in most cases for uninfested trees.

But last month, a single beetle found on a car in a shopping mall parking lot in Deerfield, just north of Chicago, set off an intense search for more of them. Warren Goetsch, bureau chief of environmental programs at the Illinois Department of Agriculture, said that inspectors have been unable to find a second beetle or the source of this one, so the significance is unknown.

Stanley E. Smith, who had been in charge of quarantines for the Illinois Department of Agriculture until his retirement six years ago, echoes other officials: One of the most important contributions to the battle of the beetle is the U.S. Forest Service climbers brought in by the federal government when they were not battling forest fires out West. He said their ability to spot beetle exit holes in the trees was uncanny, and thorough inspections are the key to beating the Asian longhorned beetle.

Mr. Smith said there was not always good cheer and harmony between state and federal officials and he warned "Don't let them push you around. They'll try to get you to do a lot of stuff you don't want to do. But you've got to work with them."

Is inoculation of uninfested host trees sufficient? "It appears to have worked in Illinois, so yes that would seem to be the case," said Phil L. Nixon, extension entomologist at the University of Illinois.

But Mr. Smith, the state official most closely involved in Illinois, said "in core areas we took no prisoners."

However, regarding the cutting of uninfested trees within a quarter-mile of infested trees in Central Massachusetts, he said "It sounds to me it wouldn't be a bad idea. If you've got 700 trees already and you just found it, you`ve got big time problems."

Mr. Nixon said it's difficult to overestimate how attached people can become to their trees. When it was thought that uninfested trees were going to be removed, some people in Ravenswood, a leafy section of Chicago, offered to personally pay to have their trees inoculated instead, in some cases with city-owned trees in front of their homes.

Contact Lee Hammel by e-mail at [e-mail].

ART: CHART

CUTLINE: Cost of Asian longhorned beetle eradication (New Yor, New Jersey and Illinois)

PHOTOG: T&G Staff/VILAYPHET KRUOCH