The City of Mount Vernon will be exploring purchasing some trees from a local tree farm to replace some of the trees lost in the derecho.
Bob Royer was offering the city a donation for some trees.
The trees, city administrator Chris Nosbisch noted, will likely not be usable for areas within the right of way, but could help replace trees that were lost in parks and other areas of the community.
The tree farm is located to the west of Mount Vernon, and would allow for some more established trees to be relocated to the City of Mount Vernon.
Trees being offered include species of oaks, Kentucky coffee trees, sycamore trees and other types of trees of different ages to help replace trees lost.
The goal with any replacement is to place some more mature trees in the areas where trees were lost.
The City would ideally wait until they had received money from the Federal Emergency Management Administration, but this opportunity would allow for the relocation of some trees this fall or spring.
Royer and Mount Vernon public works director Eldon Downs have been speaking about this possibility over the past year.
The program could cost upwards of $30,000, and the city would look to add diversity to the tree canopy with any replacement. That’s one of the fears the city has, Nosbisch said, is that the city doesn’t just replace a lost tree with a single breed of trees to avoid a plague like the Dutch Elm disease or Emerald ash borer plaguing trees in the future and further impacting the tree canopy.