Out on a Limb for City Trees: Protecting Power Lines Poses Ever-Growing Problem for Progress Energy
Published in: The News & Observer
Date: 5/31/2006
A silent army of leafy aggressors inches its way ever closer to Progress Energy’s power lines.
When overgrown tree branches are lashed by a hurricane’s stray gust or glazed by an ice storm, they can wreak havoc with the exposed lines. In neighborhoods miles away, light bulbs flicker, computer screens dim and living rooms darken.
This scenario of a power outage caused by vegetation will replay itself about 8,500 times this year for Progress Energy’s 1.4 million customers in the Carolinas. The tree is the bane of the electric utility, the biggest single cause of power outages.
As another tree-toppling hurricane season begins, Progress Energy’s crews are out in force: snipping, lopping, pruning, cutting, chopping and sawing. The Raleigh-based utility spends $40 million a year to control vegetation in the Carolinas and Florida. It’s a never-ending chore.
“We have to trim year-round, and we still can’t keep up with our schedule,” said Mack Jones, general foreman for Asplundh Tree Expert Co., one of three contractors Progress Energy uses in this state. “This is last year’s work we’re doing now. And we’re halfway into the year already.”
Bureaucracy makes the job even harder. In dealing with local governments in three states, Progress Energy navigates a thicket of inconsistent rules that govern how to prune the trees — Raleigh’s are among the most restrictive.
Many cities let utilities clear-cut 15 feet to either side of a power line. Raleigh, however, grants a side clearance of just 7 1/2 feet. The city imposes similar clearances above and below the power line, too, forming a sky-tunnel effect. The rule forces Progress Energy to trim trees in Raleigh every two years, twice as often as in most other areas.
“They’re held to a standard that no one else is held to,” said Alex Johnson, Raleigh’s urban forester. Johnson said he demands corrective measures if the utility cuts trees improperly.
“I harass them,” he said. “I e-mail them. I schedule meetings. Basically, I divert them from their other duties and make them meet with me.”
In rural areas, tree trimming is not unlike weed-whacking — done by running power saws along the edge of a utility easement. Progress Energy this month introduced a new tool to access remote areas: a whirling blade that’s suspended from a helicopter on a 100 foot cable. The crew rides along in the sky, shredding tree branches with the aerial saw.
Urban trees are another story. Craving shade, residents let sprawling specimens grow too close to power lines, forgetting that humble acorns grow into mighty oaks. Even when a tree grows on private property, Progress Energy has the right to lop off the wanton growth when the branches encroach into a utility easement. And that utility easement right can lead to conflicts.
“We’ve had situations where a person has drawn a gun and shot at people in the bucket,” said Joe Boncek, Progress Energy’s system forester who coordinates vegetation management. “Luckily, it was an old gun, and it jammed.”
When the tree trimmers are threatened by rabid property owners, they back off. But they always come back. The police are occasionally called in to stand by as the crew completes its work.
Horticultural advances favor precision pruning instead of “hat racking” a tree down to stubs that will re-sprout like Chia pets.
“Our main goal is to manage reliability and aesthetics,” Boncek said. “There are people who don’t want you to touch those trees 364 days of the year, but on the day after an ice storm, they’ll say: ‘Do whatever it takes to turn the power back on.’ ”
Catch up with the Asplundh team in Raleigh and you’re likely to see the crews lopping tender branches with hand tools to comply with Raleigh’s restrictions. Armed with enough blades and hardware to stock a lumber yard, crews in hard hats, elevated 25 feet above ground in bucket truck extensions, gingerly snip their way along the roadside as if trimming a garden hedge.
Jones, the crew’s foreman, blames Raleigh’s strict standards on the political influence of “tree huggers.” Working a wooded area near Poole Road this week, Jones says that controlled trimming is useless to prevent a blackout if a major storm uproots entire trees and sends the behemoths crashing into power lines.
“A tree could fall from 60 feet away,” he said.
James McGraw, a Cary-based tree consultant for utilities, landscapers and municipalities, acknowledges the situation can be “very maddening.”
In the long run, said the retired N.C. State University professor of urban forestry, proper cutting protects trees from disease and and discourages weak branches from forming. He said Progress Energy and Duke Power are considered industry leaders for botanically correct pruning.
In the final analysis, allowing trees to grow into power lines is hardly compassionate: It singes tender new growth and fries branches charcoal-black.
“And people are happier when the lights don’t go out,” McGraw said.