Tree Service in Lyons, IL

Tree work in Lyons is a licensed occupation with a published price. Section 5-7-3 makes it unlawful for any person or firm “to engage in the business or occupation of pruning, treating or removing trees within the village without first applying for and procuring a license.” Section 4-1-3 sets the price: Arborist, Landscaping and Tree trimming all fall under License Fee Class C at $150.00 annually. The insurance floor is in the ordinance too: $300,000.00 for bodily injury and $300,000.00 for property damage. Any tree removal Lyons homeowners pay for runs under that class, and a crew that cannot name it does not hold one.

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Twenty Feet And Twenty-Four Inches Around

The unusual half of 5-7-3 comes at the end. Non-commercial removal of a tree exceeding twenty feet in height and twenty-four inches in circumference also triggers the insurance and license requirement. Not diameter — circumference, which works out at roughly a seven-and-a-half-inch trunk. That is a modest tree, and it means a good many weekend removals in Lyons are technically licensed work.

Title 5, Chapter 7 runs from 5-7-1 to 5-7-10. Section 5-7-2 creates a five-member Forestry Review Board of citizens and residents of the village, unpaid. That board must “study, investigate, counsel and develop and/or update annually” a written forestry plan. Section 5-7-5 requires a permit before anyone plants, sprays, trims or fastens wire or rope to a tree on village property. The planting rules are precise: at least 35 feet from street corners, 10 feet from fireplugs, and 10 lateral feet from overhead wires for large-growing species. All of it is worked against permitted and prohibited species lists.

What Tree Removal Lyons Cannot Do

Section 5-7-6 bans topping as a normal practice on street trees, park trees and other public trees. It defines topping as “the severe cutting back of limbs to stubs larger than three inches (3″) in diameter within the tree’s crown.” Section 5-7-7 requires all street and park tree stumps removed below ground level. Section 5-7-8 gives thirty days from written notice to abate an elm with Dutch elm disease or an ash with emerald ash borer. After that the village may abate, charge, lien and foreclose, with infected wood cut into lengths not exceeding five feet for village pickup. The penalty at 5-7-10 refers to 1-4-1, and the amount is not published anywhere we can cite. The ISA’s tree-owner pages cover why topping counts as damage rather than pruning.

The Portage, The Canal, And Twelve Flooded Properties

Lyons sits where the Chicago Portage connected the Chicago River and the Des Plaines River — the reason the village exists at all. The Illinois and Michigan Canal segment through here was replaced by the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, completed in 1900. A statue marks the Chicago Portage National Historic Site just north of I-55 along Harlem Avenue. Street names carry the village’s Polish heritage: Pulaski for the Revolutionary War hero Casimir Pulaski, along with Warsaw and Kraków.

Ice Dams, And Twelve Repetitive-Loss Properties

The water that made the village now works against it. The hazard plan states that flooding and ice dam flows could impact Lyons greatly along the banks of the Des Plaines River, Salt Creek and the Sanitary canal. It names Southview, Circle Drive, Ogden Avenue, 1st Avenue and 47th Street. Ice dams are the detail that separates Lyons from its neighbors — a winter flood arrives fast, in cold that has already made timber brittle. Tree removal Lyons needs after an ice event is a different job from the same tree in July.

Twelve properties carry FEMA repetitive-loss status, eight single-family and four in two-to-four-family buildings, with four severe. That is a heavy burden for 2.18 square miles holding about 10,816 people, and heavier than anywhere else along this stretch of the Des Plaines. A large quarry in the village is starting to be developed, which will change drainage on the ground around it. Lyons incorporated in 1888 and is not a Tree City USA.

Tree Removal Lyons: The Work We Do

• Removals on the riverbank streets where repeated saturation has already loosened the root plate
• Pruning as reduction and thinning, never the stub cuts 5-7-6 defines as topping
• Stump grinding below grade, as 5-7-7 requires for street and park trees
• Emergency work after ice, wind and high water, at any hour

Tree Removal Lyons Estimates

Give us the street and how close the tree is to the water. On the flood blocks we will usually want to look at the base and the soil around it before saying anything about the crown. No charge for the visit.

Call 708-424-5885. See our Cook County coverage, and nearby Riverside and Forest View.