Tree Removal and Trimming in Worth, IL

Twenty feet is a long way up. That is the clear space section 7-10-5 requires above the street and pavement. It applies wherever a private tree overhangs the public way. It is also more than double what most codes in this part of Cook County ask for. So a mature silver maple on a corner lot almost certainly is not compliant. The village has no removal permit for private trees. It has this instead. Because the clearance has to hold year after year, it is a lift-and-thin job every few years rather than a one-off. That makes it standing work for any tree service Worth residents keep on file.

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Six Sections, One Big Number

Title 7, Chapter 10, “Trees And Shrubs,” runs to only six sections. Still, it is worth knowing which way each one points. Section 7-10-2 requires a written permit from the building commissioner to plant on any public highway or municipal property. The application must name location, species and method. No fee appears in the chapter, and no removal permit for private ground appears anywhere in it.

Section 7-10-5 does the heavy lifting. Beyond the twenty-foot clearance, it requires that branches not obscure streetlamps or intersection sight lines. It also makes owners remove “dead, diseased or dangerous” trees and “broken or decayed limbs.” Meanwhile section 7-10-3 puts planting, maintenance and removal on the public highways in the building commissioner’s hands. It also lets him remove anything he judges beneficial to public peace, health and safety. The chapter sets out no notice procedure and no diseased-tree procedure at all.

Section 7-10-6 catches contractors rather than homeowners: “No person shall excavate any ditches, tunnels or trenches, within a radius of ten feet (10′) from any tree, shrub or plant…without first obtaining a written permit from the building commissioner.” So fence posts, drainage runs and service trenches near a tree are permit work in Worth. One definitional oddity is worth carrying too. Section 7-10-1 says “The word ‘trees’ shall not be construed to include shrubs which do not grow higher than fifteen feet.”

Registering A Tree Service In Worth

Squeezed Between Stony Creek And The Cal-Sag

Worth is 2.37 square miles with water on two sides. Stony Creek runs along the north, and the village’s hazard record calls it “a 14,000-year-old waterway.” The Calumet Sag Channel forms the southern boundary. Work on the canal began in 1911 and finished in 1922. Harlem Avenue splits the village between two townships, Worth Township east of it and Palos Township west.

John Crandall put up the first house in 1858, and the train station arrived in 1880. However, the tree stock that concerns us dates from the village’s incorporation in 1914 and the build-out that followed. Worth carries no repetitive-loss properties, which is unusual for a village pinned between a creek and a canal. Even so, it has a specific list of streets that take water. They are 114th Street east of Harlem Avenue and New England Avenue between 113th and 114th. Add the Worthwoods area at 109th and Oketo/Beloit, plus 76th Avenue at Autullo Drive. Roots in ground that saturates on that schedule do not anchor the way the same species would three streets away. Therefore those blocks account for more of the tree service Worth needs than the rest of the village.

For wind, the village’s own record is blunt. In 2003 “a two-foot diameter tree limb was blown down and destroyed a camper because of Severe Winds.” Worth is not a Tree City USA participant. So no municipal pruning cycle takes limbs like that down before the weather does. Trees Are Good, the ISA’s consumer site, explains how often someone should inspect a mature tree.

Tree Service Worth Homeowners Ask For

• Trimming to the twenty-foot clearance 7-10-5 asks of you, documented so you can show it
• Removals of dead, diseased or dangerous trees the same section makes your responsibility
• Stump grinding without trenching inside the ten-foot radius 7-10-6 protects
• Emergency and storm work on the flood streets off Harlem and along the Cal-Sag

A Price For Your Worth Property

Give us the street and what the tree is doing over the pavement. If the answer is a clearance prune rather than a removal, we will say so. It is the cheaper job and usually the right one. Estimates are free.

Call 708-424-5885. Browse our Cook County coverage, or nearby: Alsip, Palos.