Tree Service in Perry, KS

Perry Lake is a Corps of Engineers reservoir on the Delaware River, its dam completed in 1966 to control flooding on both the Delaware and the Kansas. At roughly eleven thousand surface acres with more than 160 miles of shoreline, it is the third largest lake in Kansas, and Perry State Park occupies heavily forested rolling hills on the southwest side. That shoreline is where most of the work here is, and it changes the job in specific ways.

Trees on a lake lot have grown with an open fetch on one side, which means the crown has developed asymmetrically and the tree is used to loading from a direction it now gets more of. They are also usually on a slope, frequently above a structure, and reached by a drive that was built for a car and not a chip truck. The access road decides the equipment, and the equipment decides the price, which is why we walk lake properties before quoting instead of working from photographs.

During the ice storm at the end of January 2002, accumulation across eastern Kansas ran heavy enough that the roof of a marina at Lake Perry collapsed, damaging or destroying nineteen boats. That is a useful reminder of what ice actually does, which is load structures and limbs with weight nothing in the design accounted for. In December 2007 a statewide ice event caused the costliest electrical infrastructure damage in Kansas history.

Ice loads limbs in proportion to surface area rather than to strength, so the trees that fail first are the ones with the most twigs and the weakest wood. Siberian elm, silver maple, honeylocust, and Bradford pear are the usual casualties. Ice damage is also the most preventable kind we deal with. Removing accumulated deadwood and reducing overextended limbs before winter lowers both the surface that catches ice and the lever arm the added weight acts on, and it is straightforward work done in the fall.

Perry publishes its city code as a single consolidated document rather than through an online code library, so specifics on tree clearance and hazard tree procedures are best confirmed by calling City Hall on Bridge Street. We would rather tell you that than quote a section number we cannot stand behind. Most Kansas towns of this size follow the League of Kansas Municipalities model, which sets clearance over streets and puts dead and dangerous trees on the owner, but treat that as the likely shape rather than the confirmed rule.

Burning is a county matter and Jefferson County runs it in two steps. You get an annual permit from your local fire district chief, then call the county Central Burn Line on the day you intend to burn, since permission is granted only for that day. Neighboring districts honor written permits, but you still have to reach an authorized person in your own district. Emerald ash borer has been confirmed in Jefferson County since 2015, so any ash on a lake lot is on a clock whether or not it looks like it yet.