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Thanks to Stubby Warmbold, dead street trees find new life as a green source of lumber.
By Tess Taylor
The Metropolis Observed
April 2002
Street trees, backyard trees, and park trees all comprise the urban forest.
They shade houses, beautify streets, and provide leafy homes for urban birds.
But because city life is hard on them (poor soil, human abuse, underwatering,
and pollutants all make them susceptible to disease), they have a high mortality
rate. About 7,000 are cut down annually in New York alone. At the end of
their lives, most urban (and suburban) trees go on to a chipper and become
mulch or landfill. Until now very few people had thought of using them
as lumber.
Enter Stubby Warmbold, perhaps the country's first urban logger. After
regulations protecting the spotted owl were passed in the early 1990s, his
West Coast telephone-pole business folded. Out of a job, Warmbold--who grew
up in a Canadian milltown--moved east to New Jersey. He was wondering what
to do next until a pile of firewood left over from a tree removal caught
his eye. Mixing logging expertise with ecological thinking, he began collecting
logs from local tree surgeons. "The benefit to the tree guys was
that they didn't have to pay dump fees," he says. Now his log yard
in Irvington, New Jersey, is stacked with red cherry, hard maple, white
ash, honey locust, and beech logs from the cities of Trenton, Irvington,
and Philadelphia. "Look at this white oak, it's perfect--a real beautiful
saw log," Warmbold says, patting a felled trunk. Recently certified
by the Rain Forest Alliance, Warmbold now collects 180 trees--or two railroad
cars of logs--a week.
As Warmbold is quick to note, his brand of metropolitan logging has its
quirks. "Urban trees aren't like commercial lumber," he says.
"They're nontraditional logs." Each tree has unique mottles and
scars. Some are crooked, some are sick, and some have metal in them. "A
commercial mill won't touch these," he says. Fortunately Warmbold has
found a place where skilled sawyers are willing to engage the labor-intensive
process of treating each tree: Amish country. In an act of symbiosis between
rural craftsmen and the modern urban environment, Warmbold ships his salvaged
logs by rail to Lewistown, Pennsylvania, to be treated by Amish laborers.
Different Amish mill men treat different types (and species) of trees, Warmbold
explains: "Noah Holtstetler cuts pallet lumber, and the Peachey brothers
make flooring and molding." The hardy but pulpy linden is converted
into railroad ties or pallet lumber; finer grades of Appalachian hardwood
like cherry and oak become custom flooring, tables, and moldings.
Despite the labor-intensive process, Warmbold sells his wood products at
market rates. "I get my wood for free, and I'm not paying for land
or water," he says. And because of his different grades of production,
Warmbold is able to reuse most of the wood he collects. Meanwhile, he's
found a wide range of clients eager for recycled wood. He sold lumber to
architect Bill McDonough for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts,
and he's now working with DuPont Industries and the federal government.
In the meantime, Warmbold admits he's developed new enthusiasm for environmentalism.
"There are more and more mandates to divert wood from the waste stream
and for companies to use reused products," he says. "I told the
folks back home, you know, that I'm running a logging business in sight
of the skyline of New York City, and they said, 'What?'"
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