By kristen moulton

| The Salt Lake Tribune

Of all the damage caused by the huge wind storm in Davis and Weber counties late last year, there is one sort that will not easily be fixed: the replacement of tens of thousands of stately, old trees.

In Centerville, where gusts were clocked at 102 mph, residents in the days after the Dec. 1 storm put enough uprooted tree stumps on their curbs to fill 120 snowplow-sized trucks, city manager Steve Thacker said.

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"Thousands of trees is a big long-term loss," he said.

Bountiful has long called itself "the city of beautiful homes and gardens." The slogan is a bit less apt, now, with the estimated loss of 4,000 to 5,000 trees to the storm.

"That was a big deal to our residents," said Tom Hardy, city manager.

"Most all the trees that went were old trees, but they were trees that provided privacy and shade and a nice, landscaped look," Hardy said. "You can plant new trees but most of the people won’t be there when the trees get that large."

The longtime city manager recalls high winds in the 1970s or 1980s also uprooted trees, but the loss amounted to 700 or 800, not thousands of trees.

What wood was left after the trees were harvested was taken to green waste facilities.

"We’re still grinding them," said Hardy, whose city has its own landfill and adjacent green-waste facility. "We’ll have enough compost for years instead of just next year."

In Ogden, the city collected enough trees for 600 cubic yards of "green waste."

Amy Collins, executive director of the nonprofit Tree Utah, said the loss of the trees is disheartening.

"Trees are the lungs of our cities, so they provide us a lot of benefits to our lives," she said. "When you lose the trees you lose your landmarks, your sense of place."

The cities and Davis County, meanwhile, are waiting for Gov. Gary Herbert to seek a disaster declaration from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to recoup some of the public losses and labor costs.

Centerville figures its residents and businesses sustained $8 million in damage, not counting trees. A federal declaration would not help them, but the city could get up to three-quarters of the $200,000 storm cost, mostly for cleanup.

The two Davis cities with their own electrical systems, Bountiful and Kaysville, sustained much higher costs, and some pockets of both cities were out of power for four days.

The storm cost Bountiful $2.1 million, most of it due to downed power poles and lines. Kaysville’s storm damage was $500,000, with half of that incurred by the electrical system, said Dean Storey, the city’s finance director.

Both cities brought in workers and equipment from as far away as St. George and Jackson, Wyo., to help restore electricity and repair damage.