Western Springs, IL Tree Service

Here the size of the tree sets the price of taking it down, which makes tree removal Western Springs unusual to budget for. Section 5-5-10 states the reasoning in the ordinance itself: “larger trees provide larger benefits and, as such, tree removal fees and fines are based on species and diameter.” A mature bur oak and a spindly volunteer are not treated as the same transaction. Before you agree a removal price with anybody, find out what the village is going to charge on top, because that figure moves with the trunk.

Request An Estimate

Title 5, Chapter 5 — And A Bond Held Five Years

The chapter runs from 5-5-5 to 5-5-16 and is one of the more elaborate tree codes in Lyons Township, with separate sections for planting, legacy tree preservation, removal, conservancy areas, removal plans, nuisance trees and restricted acts.

Section 5-5-5(A) bars any person from planting, spraying, trimming, removing or otherwise interfering with the health or growth of a tree in a park, parkway or other Village property without a permit from the Community Development Department. The Director of Municipal Services decides within ten business days, the application must detail “the variety, size and precise location of each tree,” and a cash bond may be required which “may be held for up to 60 months to ensure tree survival.” Five years is a long memory for a planting.

Section 5-5-10 also requires utility location before stump removal, while sensibly exempting invasive woody plants such as buckthorn from the permit requirement altogether. Section 5-5-12 goes further inside conservancy or preservation areas, demanding a cash bond of “One hundred dollars ($100.00) per caliper inch for each living significant surveyed tree” before construction. Section 5-5-14 defines a nuisance tree as one dead or declining with the potential to damage other trees, people or structures, naming emerald ash borer and Dutch elm disease, and leaves the owner responsible.

Clearances at 5-5-16: two feet of earth clearance around trunks, ten feet of branch clearance above sidewalks, fourteen feet above roads, and parkway shrubs capped at 24 inches. The caliper thresholds and the fine schedule are not published in anything we can cite — the code defers to the Urban Forest Management Plan, and the village site does not serve it. Ring Municipal Services before you assume a number.

Four Annexations, Four Planting Eras

Western Springs incorporated in 1886 by a public vote of 34 to 25, built its own waterworks after 1890 and an electric plant in 1898, and now holds 13,629 people on 2.79 square miles, all land. It grew by annexation in distinct bites: Forest Hills in 1927, Springdale in 1955, Ridgewood in 1973 and the Timber Trails golf course in 2005.

Those dates are a planting calendar: Forest Hills carries interwar stock, Springdale a 1950s cohort, Ridgewood trees put in around the 1970s. The Morton Arboretum in Lisle is the best reference on how those species age in this soil. A crew that treats the whole village as one age class will misjudge which streets are due. Tree removal Western Springs actually needs runs street by street rather than village-wide.

Water comes from Flagg Creek and the upper reaches of Salt Creek. The 100-year floodplain covers 51.19 acres and the 500-year 118.82, and one property carries repetitive-loss status. The village records that the south-west part — specifically Ridgewood and Forest Hills residents — is vulnerable to flooding: an early annexation and a later one sharing the same wet ground.

Wolf Road is the main north–south street, designated a Blue Star Memorial Highway. The 112-foot water tower is the landmark, and the 2013 wind event took down a six-inch diameter tree at 55th Street and La Grange Road. Western Springs was recorded at 29 years of Tree City USA standing as of April 2013.

Western Springs Tree Services

• Removals priced with the village’s diameter-based fee in the conversation from the start
• Trimming to the fourteen-foot road and ten-foot sidewalk clearances at 5-5-16
• Stump grinding after utility location, as 5-5-10 requires
• Emergency and storm work in Ridgewood and Forest Hills when the creeks come up

Arranging A Tree Removal Western Springs Estimate

Tell us the annexation or the nearest cross street — it tells us roughly what age of tree we are coming to look at. We measure diameter properly on site, because in this village that number matters twice. No charge to look.

Call 708-424-5885. See our Cook County coverage, or read about La Grange and Hinsdale.