How to Grow Your Municipal Urban Wood Program

As a former governmental affairs specialist and sociological researcher in natural resource conservation, I love being a part of the Urban Wood Network to explore questions like these:

How does a municipality establish an urban wood program?
What strategy works for small communities versus large municipalities?
How can we streamline the process of harvesting a diseased or storm-damaged tree, sorting it for processing, marketing its lumber to woodworkers, and selling the finished product to consumers?
What incentives are needed to engage arborist companies in the process of upcycling urban wood?
How can we inform property owners that they have a choice regarding how their urban wood is treated after the wood is hauled off their land?

There is no one pathway to address this suite of questions. Each municipality has its own unique set of challenges and available resources that will lead to a myriad of solutions for our urban wood utilization problems. For this newsletter article, I decided to explore my questions through an Internet search. I have summarized and provided links to examples from the City of Harrisonburg, Virginia, the State of Minnesota, and the District of Columbia.

What I welcome from you is your community’s story for urban wood management. Does it have an urban wood program? If so, what challenges have you had to overcome and which challenges remain unresolved? What is the model of your urban wood program? And if your municipality lacks an urban wood program, why do you think that is? Send me your reflections and thoughts at kbreis@mac.com. I will coalesce your messages into a future news article.

Small town perspective: City of Harrisonburg, Virginia

Jeremy Harold works as the Greenspace Manager for the City of Harrisonburg’s Public Works Department in Virginia. It has taken him years to establish his community’s urban wood program. You can learn about his story by reading the news article and watching the news report at the website for Channel WHSV 3. Additional information is presented at the Virginia Department of Forestry website (text and video). The agency’s report shines a light on the partnerships that Harold had to pursue when repurposing the City of Harrisonburg’s urban wood.

Keep learning how the emerald ash borer problem jumpstarted Harold’s urban wood repurposing efforts by viewing a string of videos posted on YouTube. As an environmental educator, I am enamored with the partnership between the Public Works Department and the City of Harrisonburg’s school system. Click here to jump straight to the story segment about the Keister Outdoor Learning Center. You will discover there is no shortage of uses for urban wood when connecting children to nature, and in a magical way, too.

State and large city perspective: Minnesota and Washington, D.C.

For another look at how to establish an urban wood program, view the presentation recording for “Transforming Wood Waste into a Valuable Resource: Urban Wood Utilization.” The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) collaborated with the Minnesota Shade Tree Advisory Committee (MNSTAC) to host this presentation at the University of Minnesota on October 10. 2025. Jon Klapperich, a Wood Waste Specialist with MPCA, moderated the panel discussion on how urban wood can be converted into a “valuable, upcycled resource.” The following six panelists discussed their employer’s nexus to urban wood and explored current and future challenges to urban wood management as well as policies that community leaders must implement to promote urban wood upcycling at a larger scale.

Jim Doten – Carbon Sequestration Program Manager, City of Minneapolis
Hannibal Hayes – City Forester, City of Minnetonka
Valerie McClannahan – Cooperative Forest Management Assistant Supervisor, MNDNR
Ken Smith – Senior Advisor, Ever-Green Energy
Samuel Doan – Urban Forester, Washington DC
Shaun McKim – Urban Forester, Washington DC

Challenges	Policy needs
1. Lack of time and staff to process urban logs and the request of urban wood for public works projects (business scalability issue). 2. Gaining access to land for storing, sorting, and milling urban wood. 3. Cost of equipment for processing urban wood. 4. Traditional mill operators eschew urban wood processing, due to the wood’s varying quality and consequent effect on the expensive equipment. 5. Lack of buyers for the processed wood (speaker’s municipality forbids donations). 6. Lack of standards and methods for biochar production and use because biochar has multiple purposes (USDA currently addressing this need). 7. Current system for urban wood waste management is under stress as a municipality shifts to urban wood upcycling (e.g., lack of storage space). How do we establish a long-term urban wood management system that meets shifting goals? 8. Societal use of timber materials is much lower than it used to be, plus our standard market for lumber acquisition is not yet open to urban wood. 9. The mechanics of urban wood harvesting is much different from the mechanics of harvesting wood in a forest. 10. Public relations – public members disgruntled by the harvesting of urban trees yet not seeing how urban forest management can yield quality wood like public and private forests do. 11. Residential property owners lack funds to remove their dying trees, and not all residential trees have enough quality wood to invest the time and money in its felling for milling.	1. Collaboration among all necessary players (public and private). 2. Streamlining the multi-pronged policy needs with multiple agency participation – who is responsible for what and where? 3. Funding to implement urban wood storage, sorting, and milling needs. 4. Adaptable guidance to address shifting needs for urban wood “waste” management. 5. Inventory analysis to aid the facilitation of a sustainable market. 6. Air permitting standards for biochar production. 7. Development of incentives that can grow with the private industry. 8. Requirements that allow Public Works staff to use urban wood waste (mulch, biochar) as a soil amendment on municipal grounds.

Challenges

Policy needs

1. Lack of time and staff to process urban logs and the request of urban wood for public works projects (business scalability issue).
2. Gaining access to land for storing, sorting, and milling urban wood.
3. Cost of equipment for processing urban wood.
4. Traditional mill operators eschew urban wood processing, due to the wood’s varying quality and consequent effect on the expensive equipment.
5. Lack of buyers for the processed wood (speaker’s municipality forbids donations).
6. Lack of standards and methods for biochar production and use because biochar has multiple purposes (USDA currently addressing this need).
7. Current system for urban wood waste management is under stress as a municipality shifts to urban wood upcycling (e.g., lack of storage space). How do we establish a long-term urban wood management system that meets shifting goals?
8. Societal use of timber materials is much lower than it used to be, plus our standard market for lumber acquisition is not yet open to urban wood.
9. The mechanics of urban wood harvesting is much different from the mechanics of harvesting wood in a forest.
10. Public relations – public members disgruntled by the harvesting of urban trees yet not seeing how urban forest management can yield quality wood like public and private forests do.
11. Residential property owners lack funds to remove their dying trees, and not all residential trees have enough quality wood to invest the time and money in its felling for milling.

1. Collaboration among all necessary players (public and private).
2. Streamlining the multi-pronged policy needs with multiple agency participation – who is responsible for what and where?
3. Funding to implement urban wood storage, sorting, and milling needs.
4. Adaptable guidance to address shifting needs for urban wood “waste” management.
5. Inventory analysis to aid the facilitation of a sustainable market.
6. Air permitting standards for biochar production.
7. Development of incentives that can grow with the private industry.
8. Requirements that allow Public Works staff to use urban wood waste (mulch, biochar) as a soil amendment on municipal grounds.

One District of Columbia speaker emphasized the importance of codifying the municipality’s needs for processed urban wood into their service contracts. Whether it is for a school or park project, such needs are stipulated in the urban forester’s contracts with municipal and private arborists. This same speaker pointed out that in the District of Columbia, private contractors already have a business model to address urban wood sorting by species and quality because the city government will not allow urban wood to be disposed at a landfill. Moreover, these private contractors have working relationships with wood buyers. Thus, the District of Columbia is fortunate enough to not worry significantly about how its urban wood gets transferred to artisans, builders, etc.

One audience member, who is trained as a nurse but also engages in wood milling, drew a parallel between the challenges of the environment and health care. He urged the panel of experts to include community members, like himself, when developing and implementing solutions to urban wood “waste” management.

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