A woman whose family owns property in Improve is objecting to tree trimming along power lines, saying it damages the scenery and that burying lines would be more efficient long term.
However, the Pearl River Valley Electric Power Association says trimming is essential to safety and efficiency and that it costs about 10 times more to bury lines versus a 5-year to 7-year trimming cycle. Residents can elect to pay themselves to have underground lines installed.
Sherry Williamson Holmes brought the issue up this week after crews cut back a 50-year-old magnolia along Foot Morris Road that she said her great-grandfather gave to her mother. While she said her father was satisfied with the resolution after a PRVEPA supervisor came and looked at it, the situation got her to thinking about the overall process.
“Obviously we have to have power, and living out in the country is clearly different from living in the city, but the bottom line is, I’m sure, based on what other places do, that there’s another way to do this,” she said.
The 56-year-old grew up here but moved in her 20s to New York, where she still has a residence. She recently built a home on her family’s property and said PRVEPA buried the line because she made the home to energy efficient standards. She said, for example, that it cost her about twice as much to put in insulation as it normally would but said you have to bite the bullet with the upfront cost when you do something right.
Holmes said one of her main issues is high winds could still cause outages even when trimming has been done.
“There are no guarantees which way tree is going to fall when a line is up in the air when a tornado or hurricane comes through,” she said.
Trees also have sentimental value, she said, noting how she built a set of chairs from one of the cedars in the area that PRVEPA cut that she had played near as a child in her grandma’s front yard.
Kurt Brautigam, PRVEPA spokesman, explained the process for trimming around power lines. The utility cooperative has more than 5,000 miles of lines, and he said the No. 1 cause of outages is trees and limbs falling on lines. So PRVEPA maintains clean lines both for reliability and safety, he said.
He said it defaults to trimming because it costs about 10 times less than burying lines but that customers can opt to pay for buried lines themselves. He said that sometimes happens with contractors building new developments. He said it’s fair to have the property owner pay for the service that is of benefit to them rather than all of the cooperative members subsidizing the cost to bury one member’s lines. The utility does offer a “Comfort Advantage” program that includes an incentive of running lines underground up to 150 feet if the home is built to energy efficient standards.
PRVEPA contracts with Looks Great Services, which Brautigam said has all the necessary qualifications and adheres to professional standards.
It operates more or less continuously on a 5-year to 7-year cycle throughout the service region, which includes parts of 12 counties.
The utility has a right of way of between 30 feet and 50 feet depending on the type of line, Brautigam said, and crews also bush-hog and spray herbicides. It has door hangers that it leaves notifying residents it will be on the right of way and giving them a number to call.
If there are questions about individual situations, Brautigam said people can contact PRVEPA and it will send a supervisor out.
Pictured Above: A magnolia tree is seen this week on Foot Morris Road in Improve after being trimmed by contracted utility crews. | Photo by Sherry Williamson Holmes
