Residents of Prince George who have had to have mountain pine beetle killed trees removed from their property can still take advantage of the Beetle tree debris clean up program.

The assistance program has crews come on to the property to clean up the debris left behind by professional tree removal companies.   The crews take down the fences so the professional tree removal crews can remove the trees.  The property owner pays for the tree removal.  Once the trees have been taken off site, the crews come back to clean up the debris, and put the fences back in place.

This second year of the program has seen the addition of a chipper, a chipper truck and disposal bins. The City says initially this spring the program was in high demand as the heavy infestation left more red trees than ever.

In the early spring, some residents had to wait as long as 6 weeks for the service.  The wait time was reduced to two weeks by June, and is now down to less than a week.

From March through June this year, the prep and clean up service was provided for 320 residential properties.  That compares to 531 residential properties serviced for the whole year March of 2005 to the end of February 2006.

Anyone interested in taking advantage of the program, or in getting more information can contact Industrial Forestry Services  (564-4115 x237) .