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.