I work for a municipality in Ontario, Canada. We had some complaints from residents about falling walnuts with regards to personal safety, car/house damage. This problem went through city council and now the decision has been made to come up with some kind of solution to saving the Walnut tree but getting rid of or providing some form of solution for nut hazard protecion. We have come up with a couple ideas like car ports or nut picking, but by making a decision on this we will problably be setting a precedence in the city for all city trees with some kind of "hazard fruit" so we do not want something that will be labour intensive or expensive because then things could get ridiculous. So if anyone has any solutions for this problem it would be greatly appreciated if you could get back to us. Thanx
Forestry Tech.
Andrew Cowell
City of Burlington

Reply to post by Andrew Cowell, on November 06, 2000 at 12:54:53:

I dont see how anything would not be labor intensive. Chemical supression would be seem out, not being socilay exceptible any more. Also the window for app'ing is small, and I've not heard of it for walnut.

The only thing i could think of is spraying with water to knock off flowers. This would be a crop thinning and risk reduction. Then put up big yellow signs FALLING NUT ZONE. If spraying water reduces the crop and the area is posted the city may have enough CYA.

BTW, does your leagal system has "reasonable person"? A reasonable person would expect to have a nut fall out of a big tree, a reasonable person would not expect the municipality to pick unripe nuts to protect the painjob an a new BMW SUV?

Reply to post by jps, on November 06, 2000 at 12:54:53:

Thanks for the response on Falling Walnuts

The yellow sign thing would be ok but then I think there would be a lot of yellow signs around.

I like the "reasonable person" idea though, we have the legal department working on it right now. Imagine that, a reasonable person would expect that nuts would fall out of a Nut bearing tree. Sounds good to me.

thanks
any more ideas out there let me know

Reply to post by Andrew Cowell, on November 07, 2000 at 19:42:31:

Common law in Great Britain says that all persons must take reasonable care. Also owners must not let dangerous articles escape
or they will be held responsible if they cause harm to others.

I am having similar problems with Horse Chestnuts dropping fruits. I now cut them back when they overhang a third parties property if they either make a claim or the situation is fairly serious. A professional arboriculturist must decide how serious each case is, maybe taking other advice on board.

What do you think?

Reply to post by Daniel Kemp, on November 08, 2000 at 08:36:40:

Maybe it would be good to have local rulings researched to find presedances (sp?).

But in the case of a municipality, they have a little more power. Then there is the differance between having a plant grow over yuor property and start to cause a neusance, and parking (yourself or your car) under a tree.

In issues of risk, a practicing arborist one is ann advisor to the property owner, who is the final desision maker and assumes all the risk. One does not want to get in the situation where both parties file suit against the practitioner.