Drive along Route 169 in Canterbury, and there is no shortage of cut-up trees piled up along the roadway.
The state Department of Transportation said crews are cutting down some of the dead trees affected by the Emerald Ash Borer as well as the Gypsy Moth caterpillars which plagued the eastern part of the state.
“We have a pool and even that they floating all over the place it was kind of gross,” said JoAnn Barry of nearby Brooklyn.
She has a front yard full of dead trees thanks to the leaf-eating caterpillars which hit about a third of the trees in Brooklyn.
“We have eight in the front here that need to come down because of the gypsies two years in a row,” said Barry.
That will cost her thousands of dollars while the town is taking care of the dead trees along the road.
Rick Ives, the first selectman in Brooklyn, told News 8 how much the town has had to pay a private tree contractor.
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“About $73,000 so far,” said Ives.
He expects it will cost another $73,000 to take care of the rest of the dead trees in town. The money was taken from road repairs, which they ended up needing because of all of the recent rain.
“So now, all of a sudden, we got a lot more patching and a lot more paving to do, so we’re going to have to be a lot more inventive as we go forward for the next two years,” said Ives.
Both the towns and state take down the trees on the opposite side of the road from the power lines and let Eversource take care of those near them.
Ives said all the dead trees they have identified will be taken down despite the cost.
“It’s purely a safety thing too,” said Ives.
A spokesperson for the DOT told News 8 the work being done now is really just a drop in the bucket of what needs to be done.
Kevin Nursick said there are more than 35,000 trees which have been killed by the insects, and it will cost tens of millions of dollars to take them down.