Tree Commission Chairman Sets Record Straight on West End Ave. Tree

Haddonfield's Shade Tree Commission chairman said Friday the massive tree that barricaded West End Avenue after Hurricane Irene hit Haddonfield was not in immediate danger of falling before the storm.

Bill Polise said the was leaning, but was not being held up by utility wires or pushing up the sidewalk, as neighbors there claimed. He also said he told homeowner Ralph Sitley the tree had two to three years of life. Sitley said he heard Polise say the tree had 23 years of life.

Polise, the volunteer steward of more than 9,700 trees in municipal right-of-ways, said he and other Shade Tree Commission members do the best job they can with shrinking budgets and rising responsibilities.

"I'm not omnipotent, I'm not God," said Polise, a commercial airline pilot who was out of the country when the hurricane hit on Aug. 27 and when the West End Avenue tree and 15 others fell the next day. "Obviously I was wrong about the West End Avenue tree, but made the best decision I could given the information I had."

Polise said the West End Avenue red oak had bacterial leaf scorch, a disease that rots trees. He said about 1,700 other trees in the borough have this condition and will need to be taken down in the next 10 years. The commission and borough workers have taken down the 300 most endangered trees, but many more stand. Polise said the job will now be harder because the commission's budget was slashed.

"If you look at how many trees are potentially dangerous, you'd never drive the streets of Haddonfield," Polise said. "Every tree is dangerous by nature. When it gets a lean into it, it's slightly more dangerous. Can it come down in a storm? Perhaps it will. But you know what, we can't take every tree down."

Yet it was the beauty of the trees that brought Polise to Haddonfield.

"I used to live in Lumberton, but the final approach to Philadelphia International Airport took us over Haddonfield," he said. "I'd always look down and think 'What town it that with all the trees?'"

Haddonfield is a Tree City USA, a designation from the Arbor Day Foundation for towns with a commitment to urban forestry.