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Plant the Right
Tree in the Right Place It’s a fact. Trees and power lines can co-exist. Potential conflicts can be avoided by selecting and planting trees with size and growth characteristics, appropriate to their location. Trees falling into FEC power lines or just coming into contact with FEC lines are by far the most common cause of outages and blinks on the FEC system. The most recent round of ice storms last winter was a perfect example. While some power lines were broken by the weight of the ice, many more were broken by heavy, ice-filled branches that dropped on the lines, breaking them in two and causing the outage. When trees are not removed from the right-of-ways and ice storms or storms with high winds race through FEC’s service territory unnecessary and expensive damages occur to your cooperative’s distribution system. This is why it is so important to plant trees away from the power lines. Each year FEC crews and contractors remove miles of brush from beneath power lines in an effort to improve our service reliability to our members. “I can’t tell you how many times we see new trees planted right beneath our power lines,” said Steve Shoot, Manager of Member Services for FEC. “Unfortunately, the member forgot to look up when they planted the trees and they have to be removed.” Those owners with existing trees in
problem areas can take part in FEC’s Tree
Replacement Program (TRP). The Tree Replacement Program allows the cooperative to remove a
potentially problem tree and replace this tree with anew tree that is planted away from the
power line - all at no cost to the member. Contact Joe Timmons at the FEC office
for more information on this unique program. |
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