Utility Co. wacked my pines!?
Question:Consumers wacked my pine trees, which I admit were growing into the power lines. They were about 40' tall, approx. 80 of them, now they look terrible. About 15 feet of the "good" growth was wacked off half of the trees and one entire side of branches wacked off the remaining trees. I no longer have the privacy, and I honestly don't think they'll recover - at least no to my satisfaction. The first ice storm we get and they'll snap. A person from Consumers came out this morning, I told him they need to work with me in a solution. He said no, I said that was not good enough. His boss will contact me, blah, blah, blah. At the very least, I want them to cut down the really bad trees, chip them, and remove the stumps so I can plant something else (of course, a much lower growing hedge). So, has anyone been in a similar situation? What did you do?
Answers:
nearly all utility companies have the power of imminent domain where their power lines are concerned and it has been my observance through the years that there is nothing you can do to stop them from removing trees or branches that endanger the power lines or poles...
he did not tell you you were not good enough, that's just what you inferred from it. your trees are gone, just deal with it.
Your pines are in their right of way - you have no case. If we lived next to each other, and your pine limbs grew over my fence, I could cut them off at my fence line.
You should thank them for keeping the limbs off of the power lines so you don't suffer a power outage from the limbs falling on the lines.
The answers above mine are all correct. The utility company has the right to do this no matter how sad and ugly it makes the trees.
People please, before you plant a tree look up. If there are utility lines above do not plant it there. It is that simple.
My suggestion is to be nice to the tree people and maybe they will work with you to remove the trees entirely so they will not have to deal with the trees again and you can plant something more appropriate.
It is probably going to cost you some money, but maybe they will do it cheaper than getting someone else to do it, just to avoid hassles from you and to avoid future problems.
Good luck. It is so sad to see this happen to beautiful evergreens.
They have the right to do this since you didn't trim them yourself and they were growing into lines. Any cleanup will be your problem.
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