Tree trimming keeps limbs away from power lines

WHETHER BY NATURE or by people planting them, trees always seem to grow under power lines.

In suburban areas, home builders and individual homeowners plant trees to provide privacy and limit noise in the neighborhood. However, with limited space, these trees can sometimes grow too close to power lines.

In either case, CoServ’s Vegetation Management Team works year-round to proactively keep trees trimmed properly before they can come into contact with power lines and other equipment.

CoServ oversees a dozen contractor crews who cycle through our service area. On a sunny July morning, crews from Apex Line Clearance were busy trimming hackberries and elm trees along F.M. 2264 in New Fairview.

“We’ve been doing cycle trimming of our system for about 25 years,” said Morgan Herd, CoServ’s Vegetation Management Coordinator. “We know we trimmed this three or four years ago so we ride it out and see if it needs trimming again. If it does, then we send a contractor crew to trim it.”

This massive effort is key to CoServ’s reliability – less than 5 percent of outages in 2022 were caused
by trees contacting lines. That’s a source of pride for Morgan and the contractors.

CoServ’s Vegetation Management Team also works with the cities and developers to encourage trees and vegetation that won’t interfere with power lines and ground-mounted equipment.

“We want all our Members, cities and developers to be aware of safe planting habits so that trees, bushes and other plants can grow to their full potential without interfering with power lines and related infrastructure,” Morgan said.