Maintenance of Trees Near Power Lines Needed

Anyone who has taken a glance at the power lines around town may have noticed the number of tree branches hanging dangerously close to wires and some are even growing through them.  As Tropical Storm Irene has shown us recently, it is very easy for strong winds to pull these power lines down.

Shelton has seen its share of gusty days over the year, even without the help of tropical storm force winds blowing around.  If a gust of wind comes through with the right amount of force, the branches that are around the wires could cause several problems including power outages and downed wires. 

A strong gust of wind could cause these branches to fall and bring the power lines down with it; the branches could also pull wires down simply from waving around wildly in the wind.  Downed power lines are incredibly dangerous as they still conduct electricity and could cause death if someone gets too close.   

Rather than leaving tree branches to grow free around power lines, they should be maintained and cut back on a regular basis.  Unfortunately, it appears as though the utility companies are skirting around their responsibility to identify and handle areas where trees have overgrown power lines. 

Case in point: A few weeks ago, we came home to a notice on our front door stating that branches in our yard needed to be trimmed back, as did others in the neighborhood.  About a week later, the tree service hired to do the work was out trimming back some of the trees in the area. 

Instead of working up and down the streets in the area cutting back branches that were identified as problematic, they appeared to have skipped around the various streets cutting down branches here and there.  The branches in our yard were never touched, nor were many others on our street or surrounding streets. 

Calling in a service to cut down these branches but only having some branches actually cut down is not responsible maintenance.  Picking and choosing which branches to have cut might be effective in an effort to cut costs that come from paying for the services to do the work but it is not effective in protecting customers from the potential dangers that come with overgrown branches.  Giving off the illusion that proper care is being taken to ensure consumer safety while leaving the existing problem right where it was can only lead to problems in the future.