The Department of Public Works has had its boom-flail mower out trimming brush and trees again, to the dismay of some residents and the thanks of others. All the drastic cutting, however, was already done in previous years, according to DPW Director Rich Nota. Any current or future trimming, he said, would be minimal.
The most recent trimming took place on Westcott Road, which is among Harvard’s 50 designated scenic roads. The town’s scenic road bylaw prohibits removing trees or trimming major branches except with written approval from the Planning Board after a public hearing. But the law allows “clearing of nuisance growth, routine or emergency tree maintenance … , or thinning out overcrowded trees as determined by the Tree Warden.” Both state and local laws protect stone walls as well as trees along scenic roads.
On Westcott Road, Nota said the DPW was responding to a resident’s complaint about brush that encroached on the roadway and made it difficult for two cars to pass without one of them going into the bushes. Paul Richards, who said he had told Nota of the problem, was pleased that the DPW had made the road safer. But another Westcott Road resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, was unhappy with the damage to trees nearby. “It looks like a tornado went down the road,” the resident said.
None of this trimming was connected to the article approved at last spring’s Annual Town Meeting, which appropriated $20,000 for tree work to be done by an outside contractor in consultation with Harvard’s tree warden. That money will be spent this spring, Nota said. During the discussion of that article, a number of residents complained about using the boom-flail mower for pruning trees.
The most economical way
The boom-flail mower was the only economical way to deal with brush that had grown up over the years along the town’s 130 miles of roadway edges, Nota said. But he asserted that the backlog of cutting is now finished and future trimming will be much less drastic.
In a telephone interview, Bill Calderwood, chairman of the Elm Commission, agreed that the mower is more economical than trimming trees individually. But he recommended a second pass to clean up cuts that had damaged tree branches. Good pruning should make a clean, vertical cut, Calderwood said, while ragged, chewed-looking stubs leave trees vulnerable to insect damage and fungal diseases.
