Tree Pruning Along City Streets At Issue
JCP&L: trimming done every four years as safety measure
The pruning along Third, Fourth, and Asbury avenues have city residents questioning the benefit of leaving behind trees with awkwardly shaped limbs that conjure up an Edward Scissor Hands abstract.
“These trees are 100 years old and they are shade trees, meant to provide shade on the sidewalks and streets,” said 6-year resident Brian Watkins. “These are slow growing trees and that’s where my problem comes in.”
Watkins, who enlisted the service of a professional tree company to trim the trees in front of his home on an annual basis, said he invests up to $700 a year to keep the limbs away from JCP&L power lines.
“I think what they are doing is crazy looking,” Watkins said. “You almost think that they are some sort of alien tree because they look so bizarre.”
The trimming work, currently being conducted by JCP&L contractor Asplundh, is meant to ensure safety, utility officials said.
“We trim trees around distribution lines every four years,” JCP&L spokesman Ron Marano said in a telephone interview. “We trim to allow a 15-foot clearance around wires and conductors.”
Marano said the work is conducted in conjunction with a certified arborist to help enhance the utility’s service. The trimming will continue through next week, he said.
“We have our foresters supervise the contractors,” Marano said.
In 2015 there was an 11 percent decrease in tree related outages compared to the previous year, he said. The utility company has invested $28 million to trim trees along 3,400 miles of lines in across the state.
“We notify municipalities,” Marano said. “What we are seeing are trees planted directly under our conductors. We do remove diseased limbs or those that would cause a hazard.”
City Manager Michael Capabianco said JCP&L has the legal ability to conduct vegetation management.
“Under the law, the City [any local government really] can only request an electric distribution company [EDC] suspend vegetation management if it impacts the distribution system,” Capabianco said in a written statement. “The suspension request does not apply to transmission wires so the City is powerless to stop them.”
Capabianco said such a request could prove costly to municipality.
“If we ask them to suspend the program and JCP&L is found to have been performing the work correctly, the City is responsible to reimburse JCP&L the cost of the lost work,” he said. “Also, late last year, the rules were changed to allow for wide discretion of the EDC to perform aggressive vegetative management in lieu of what happened with Sandy.
Capabianco said moving forward it will be imperative that the city work in conjunction with the utility company in order to assemble a vegetation maintenance plan.
“Many of the trees are at the end of their life span and are a danger,” he said. “Quite simply, a danger tree is older and can fall or has limb issues, a hazard tree is one that if it falls takes out one power line and a high hazard tree is on if it falls in either direction could take out lines each way.”
Environmental and Shade Tree Committee Chair Tom Pivinski said the tree pruning issue is one they have wrestled with for years.
“At the end of the day, we have had to stand by and watch the pruning be done,” he said in a written statement. “Given that the plane and sycamore trees on many of our streets are or have approached the end of their lifespans, it seems it is time to begin seriously addressing this problem by systematically removing these trees and replanting with appropriately sized trees that will not endanger the distribution or transmission lines.”
Pivinski, whose group has planted well over 2,000 trees through donations from the NJ Tree Foundation, said it could be a costly but important endeavor.
“Tree planting removal and replanting is costly and is invariably a heated public issue but it appears the time has come for the city to bear the responsibility of dealing with this concern.”
In the meantime, Watkins has said he will continue do all he can to block the ‘butchering,’ including blocking the contractor’s path by parking in their way.
[Photos courtesy of Vic Dav and the city.]
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