While passing through Cincinnati last week I picked up on a hot little story playing out there. Utility crews for Duke Energy Corp. are trimming trees along 1,600 miles of power lines in Ohio and Kentucky. But residents call it a "scorched earth" campaign and say the crews are hacking away branches that should not be cut.
Boy, if you want to see people get hot, just mess with their trees. I could only imagine,
reading this story in The (Cincinnati) Enquirer, that this battle plays out wherever crews are cutting trees. It would be interesting to find out more about the battles between homeowners and trimming crews. I wonder who, in your area, handles complaints between the two groups. We have an arbor office in our county that handles tree-cutting permits.
The utility company probably also has a complaint office. If it is a publicly-owned utility, I would think those records would be open. If they aren't, I darn sure would report that, too.
Here is something I learned from the
Enquirer story. The power company has pressure on it to comply with tree trimming standards:
When limbs get too close to power lines, they can trigger power failures. The problem is particularly acute in the hot summer months, when power lines carrying electricity can sag as much as 15 feet, Duke (Energy Corp.) forester John Milam said. So trees not near a power line in cooler weather can become a threat to maintaining service in summer's heat, said Milam, who spends much of his time cruising about 100 feet off the ground in one of two Duke helicopters checking vegetation along rights of way. This year's wet weather also has fueled tree growth along the rights of way, he said.
After an August 2003 Northeast power failure left 50 million without electricity, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said it would impose fines of up to $1 million a day on utilities that don't comply with the previously voluntary tree-trimming standards from the North American Electric Reliability Corp.
The group is an industry organization that implements the commission's rules.
