Willow Tree Removal from the Murrumbidgee River for Wagga Wagga City Council

In August of 2009 Plateau Tree Service submitted a tree romoval  tender proposal to Wagga Wagga City Council for the removal of Willow and other Exotic trees on the Murrumbidgee River at Wagga Wagga. Wagga Wagga City Council contacted Plateau Tree Service in late September to advise us that we had been the successful tenderer.

Our proposal was to utilise our excavators and experienced tree fellers to fell and successively stockpile all of the Willow Trees requiring removal prior to grinding all of the material with our Diamond Z Horizontal shredder. Due to the location of the works in a riparian zone, the potential for adverse environmental impacts was high and in order to control those risks Plateau Tree Service developed a site specific Environmental Management Plan based on our Environmental Management System which is accreddited to theISO14001 Standard. As the works involved the use of excavators working in close proximity to team members felling trees,   the work was considered high risk. A  specific safety management plan was created to control the risks and ensure that all of our staff and visitors to the site remained safe.

Site Specific Environmental Control Measures included  the use of floating booms to control any material that might accidentally enter the river while works were underway and the use of a small punt to remove any material that might slip past the floating boom. In order to lessen the potential disturbance to the river banks, our excavator utilised a 20 ton winch attached to the dipper arm to pull material back from the river edge without disturbing fragile river banks.

The Plateau Tree Service team completed the project including the grinding and transport of the mulched material to nominated stockpile areas in one month without any environmental or safety incidents. Wagga Wagga City Council Project Manager, David Read was pleased with the results of the project. Theteam from Wagga Wagga City Council are now able to start the process of re-vegetating and re-meadiating the cleared areas.

All images courtesy of Wagga Wagga Council reproduced with permission.

Botham Beach Tree Removal by Barge

Following a major destructive thunderstorm affecting Bayview and Church Point Mid November 2009, Plateau Tree Service were contacted by Pittwater Council to assist in the removal of trees left in a highly hazardous state by the storm.  Plateau Tree Service provided a tree removal crew on a full time basis for well over a week just to deal with the sheer volume of material left on roadsides and all of the hazardous trees adjacent to road carriageways in the affected areas.

Pittwater Council requested further assistance to remove storm damaged and hazardous trees at Botham Beach Reserve on McCarrs Creek Road at Church Point.  Several very large trees had become unstable and were severely damaged by the storm, these trees needed to be removed to ensure the safety of the public.  Unfortunately the site was all but inaccessible from the road above the site.

In order to overcome the access issues and to ensure that all of the material could be removed from site at the time of the works Travis Hazleton (Plateau Tree Service Pittwater Council Contracts Manager) decided to utilise a large barge to act as a works platform for one of our trucks and chippers to complete the works.  Miss Piggy barges were selected as our barge contractors and on the day of the works our truck rolled onto the barge at 7am.  After a short barge trip around the point the works crew working on the beach linked up with the barge crew and operations commenced running smoothly and with much assistance from the 8ton HIAB Crane arm on the barge.  With the expertise of Plateau Tree’s experienced  arborists and tree removal crew, this logistically challenging project was completed on time and as per our quotation. The team at Pittwater Council was extremely pleased with the results.