Ever wonder where the emerald ash borer’s victims go when they die? The “Great Beyond” for many ash trees in Minnesota, it turns out, is St. Paul, according to the Pioneer Press.
Environmental Wood Supply, a St. Paul-based tree waste processing plant, converts 260,000 tons of trees into renewable biomass energy each year for two utilities in the state, according to the report.
More than 170 cities and 750 organizations send their wood waste to the facility, which has seen a 55% increase in tractor-trailer loads of wood chips since 2015. Tornadoes have been to blame, but the company credits most of the increase to the devastation emerald ash borer larvae have caused ash tree populations, which make up one in five trees in Minnesota.
“Smaller cities throughout our county are just incapable of dealing with the amount of wood waste that this creates,” one county commissioner told Pioneer Press. “They cannot manage the larger trees that are coming in.”
