Preserving urban canopy and utility services

On a different thread about street trees, the plausibility of utility line moving/removal was addressed. Here are some ruminations from me, in the Ohio River valley region. Discussion points from employees of utility companies, power/civil engineers, arborists, etc. as well as from tree and community advocates can only help move toward better solutions (at least better than whacking mature trees and only replanting little ones).

The comments included that the suggestion to remove and bury powerlines was cost- prohibitive; borne by the homeowner; more than house/property is worth. And, that buried lines make (economic) sense only in brand new developments or for the wealthy.

The utility companies count on you buying into that reasoning, and then never changing anything. It's the way of most all large institutions: inertia. I recognize that; I work for a governmental institution that has glacial tendencies regarding change. I invite some folks from Madison WI to speak to forethought in burying power lines, dating back to at least the '70s if I recall from my youth. And ask anyone near a rapidly expanding metro area if they'd like to be back on their old septic system (with all their neighbors, new and old) instead of connected to a modern sanitary sewer hookup because it costs a lot.

There are some electrical engineering principles involved, to be sure, as well as economic/time amortization of costs. There could even be employment consequences. Some very high voltage/watt/energy lines are more difficult to deal with, but most service can be provided underground (which is why new developments can and do so). The approach should be incremental: add a bit to monthly bills (or to the kilowatt), build up an account to a sufficient level, and start going about the business of eliminating the problem. Obviously, mind the store about keeping company feet to the fire and actually doing the work! Also demand a plan of attack by which the order of priorities are approached and dealt with. Maybe even synchronizing schedules with parallel public improvements like sidewalk replacement, sewer work, street repaving.....perish the thought.

The same argument has been made for years about using directional boring (tunneling) techniques for utility installation around mature trees, instead of trenching. IT COSTS TOO MUCH. It all revolves around the assumed value of what is being impacted. Many/most engineers and utility companies place no value or nearly none on trees. Imagine if they placed none or near none on your house (or garage, or pool), and decided to trench right through it. Unacceptable to most! What has evolved is, that as directional boring has been insisted upon and used, THE COST COMES DOWN. Supply and demand, amazing how that works. Fifteen miles of 80-year-old parkway trees in Louisville KY (roughly 6600 trees) are enjoying longer lives based on this application of technology to water line and gas line work.

Utility companies also are loudly mum on the sweet deal they have with easements. Most pay NOTHING for use of the public domain to make their way through the landscape, but vociferously admonish against any expense to reduce this visual and physical impact. Yet, ask about whether the original utility makes anything on the continuous add-on of subsequent services (cable, fiber optic, cell service, etc.). All necessary and needing a home. Hmmm.

The link between tree losses due to utility work usually are not made, because the tree doesn't usually die right away. Another huge impact is loss of tree canopy (shade) in cities, and exacerbation of the heat island effect and acceleration of stormwater runoff. Utility companies don't accept any responsibility here, though they may sell you more product when you are hotter in the warm months and build more featureless detention basins to capture the floodwaters.

I have no illusion that this situation will change soon; like most problems, incremental change is as much as one might expect in the near term. I'm not interested in being an apologist, though, or excusing away continued damaging practices. To continue to create maintenance problems and costs by keeping most/all utility lines up in the air (subject to tree and climatic hazards) doesn't strike me as very forward-thinking, but it IS awfully easy.

Plus, overhead utility lines are always messing up my pictures!

Plus, overhead utility lines are always messing up my pictures!

Move to Europe!

Nearly all our service lines are underground, and always have been

Resin

Ok ViburnumValley,

My friend has highpower lines over his yard & small backyard nursery. They are going to upgrade it by digging up his yard. He has a timber bamboo clump the size of a house & a banana grove and a few small greenhouses. They have maybe given him 1/30 - 1/50th the value on assessment. They refuse to run the lines away from residential along a highway because it would go through First Nations land and that's "too political". Check out his yard and let me know if you have some thoughts.
http://www.tropic.ca/About%20Us.htm

An interesting link of people not infavour for overhead lines on Vancouver Island.
http://www.irahvol.org/links.htm

They want to run the lines underground through residential but refuse overhead along a highway. Makes no sense.

Yes, I just saw those laughing comments about burial costing $1000/foot, etc.

I can speak from two perspectives on this. First, we have our own residential distribution line buried for a distance of about 700 feet from the road to the transformer near the house, and the service line is buried from there to the house. That cost us about $1700 more than it would have to run overhead lines. Expensive, perhaps, but certainly not $1000/foot, and definitely worth it.

Second, I managed utility rights of way for the Illinois state park system for about 15 years before I retired. [B]No one[/B] got a free ROW on my watch. We developed a rate formula copied by several other states, based upon impacts and land area and rewarding the company's willingness to spend some extra bucks to work with us on more sensitive (and more costly) alignments and construction techniques. We always required burial for service lines, and often for distribution lines. Transmission (high voltage) lines are another story, and do cost megabucks to bury due to potential distruption of the electromagnetic corolla unless the conduit is designed properly.

We also worked with several progressive line clearance supervisors to green up their companies' clearance practices. That included things like:

Sleaving (enclosing) conductors near important tree limbs to avoid excessive pruning,

Modifying herbicide recipes and applications as needed around trees,

Avoiding brown-out chemicals and heavy mechanized clearing in sensitive or view landscapes,

In-kind donatons from the companies to mitigate unavoidable problems,

Realignment around significant trees,

Directional bores where needed,

And rewarding the companies with good PR for jobs well done.

Guy S.

I'd like to see a push away from the constant recommendation of 'small' trees under utility lines. While I recognize the reasons, wee trees in streetscapes resemble lollypops, and the benefits they provide to the city environment are much less than the benefits of larger trees. And small trees necessarily branch low, and often wide, making pruning for pedestrian and car clearance near impossible without destroying their form.

Planting larger species with an open/decurrent crown form like honeylocust, and London planetree beneath utility lines could work, the crown form retained with more precise pruning.

City's should hold utility companies to a finer standard. After all, street trees are 'our' trees. Reduced utility pruning cycles could translate to reduced clearance requirements. Better training of utility line clearance crews would help, too.

The cries of "it would cost too much" don't hold weight. Street trees are a very valuable part of a city's infrastructure and it's time they were treated as such. I know I'm speaking to the choir!

Here's a great newsletter on large tree vs small tree from the Center for Urban Forest Research:
http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/programs/cufr/products/cufr_419.pdf

Sorry, I don't know how to do the 'hyperlink thing'. But I do feel better just getting that rant off my chest.

-Sander

The other advantage to underground lines, and this is one the utility company's would also benefit from, is that they would not have to pay companies to come along bi-annually and hack to pieces any trees that are approaching their overhead lines. This must be a weighty expense that must be paid every year forever, unless and until lines are buried.

This is a pet peave of mine. Drive along any piece of rural road and for miles and miles all you can see are chopped off trunks and a crazed afro of watersprouts. It's an absolute eye-sore, if we are not too familiarized by the scene to actually see it.

Worse, and this is a big worry for me, with certain pathogens such as oak wilt and sudden oak death looming on the horizon, what better way to vector these things than to have tree service companies hack away at already stressed trees along miles and miles of highways? Going along, day after day, mile after mile, from one tree to the next, and do you think these companies ever sterilized their equipment?

Scott

I have seen my power company replacing the old wood poles with new cement ones so I dont think they are planning on burying power lines anytime soon. The new poles are much taller than the old ones, so I dont know if the goal is to get the wires higher above the trees or just to prevent breakage.

Starhill,
I concede that in new development out here in the West, buried utility lines are the norm. I am wondering about established cities which have miles and miles of overhead lines. Seattle is quite hilly, and most houses use large boulders as retaining walls. I know if I wanted natural gas to come to my house from the middle of the street, it would cost me $10k. That's because I don't just need a backhoe to dig a trench, but I also need a crane (or other large machine) to lift out the boulders and to replace them when the work is finished.

My question is, what is the cost to completely switch an entire neighborhood (say 4 blocks, 14 houses per square block, no alleys) from existing poles. It looks like I got power, cable, and phone. There are no sidewalks but some fairly large cedars here and there. The utility is City of Seattle. My property taxes are about $4000 per year already. The median income is $59,718 in King County (which includes all those MSFT millionaires). I'll post the picture of my corner utility pole in a minute.

My second question is who pays for the switchover? Maybe it's subsidized, maybe it's not, maybe you have to get a property tax levy. Right now, the fact I have to pay $500 a year for a non-existent monorail which would never have served my neighborhood is pretty infuriating and I'll still have to pay $500/yr for the next 3 years, even though we voted to discontinue the project.

Now I came from Irvine, CA, a master planned city with curvy streets, and parks, and strip malls, and monotony. There were no overhead lines anywhere and it was great. The city is 30yrs old and growing rapidly. I appreciated no lines in the sky, but did not appreciate the light pollution from street lights every 100 ft. Sure it supposedly made everyone safer but my kids wondered what stars looked like.

I am leaving the asthetic (and real) value of treescapes out of this argument because I think we are probably a little biased in the plants favor, being DGers and all!

Here's my pole for reference:

I did a google search on this topic and came up with these references. My general take on it is: you are already probably paying into a fund to convert existing overhead power lines, and in California, almost all new development is underground. The most likely areas to switch are affluent communities, or if views are involved. Heck, if I had a view, I'd pay $10K to remove overhead lines, because I'd recoup that cost when I sold my house. Would I pay on my rental house? No way.

"FPL said to replace the existing overhead lines with new overhead lines would cost $250,000. However, to bury the lines would cost $1.3 million. So FPL has agreed to charge the Port Royal residents on those two streets alone $1 million or about $10,000 per home."
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2006/jan/12/naples_considers_going_underground_utility_lines/?local_news

Granted, this study comes from a Power company, and the costs seem reasonable, if everyone (1.7 million customers) bears the cost… I know I don’t have a spare $5k lying around (otherwise I’d finish remodeling my bathroom!)
http://www.lipower.org/newscenter/pr/2005/mar8.underground.html

City of Palo Alto is switching (http://www.cpau.com/docs/rules/rulespdf/RU17-070198.pdf), homeowners will pay 50% of the cost. Of course the average cost of a home in Palo Alto is..., well, high: “…both halves of the city contain homes that now cost anywhere from $700,000 to well in excess of $1 million, giving the entire city a somewhat-deserved reputation as a wealthy enclave …” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Alto,_California

The point is, homeowners must bear some of the cost to convert the overhead lines. $500 may not seem expensive to you, but for young family or first time homeowner, that's day care for 2 weeks. That's barely a month of food. That's 2.5 months of gas if you commute over 60 miles a day. (Not unusual in So. Calif.) And since you can't opt out by being the only one on your block to not get it, you would be forced to pay by the majority. Even if you couldn't.

I'll petition the city council for removal of my overhead lines... just send my paypal account $5000.... as a good neighbor!

Well, what's so bad about being biased toward trees and scenery and quality of life?
;-)

I realize that some new families get in over their heads and can't afford to bury utility lines. They also might not be able to afford to live in anything more than a trailer or a burned out milk truck carcass, but that doesn't make it desireable. I'm just saying that it can be done, in some locations admittedly more easily than others, and not to go down without a fight. I'm also trying to suggest that the idea is not laughable, just difficult.

Guy S.

Then we agree... but I can still (sadly) laugh, and enjoy a brief glimpse of blue sky through my power lines. I'll look down and await the impending explosion of color that is about to come forth from my buried treasure (aka I planted bulbs!)
Cheers!

Yeah, your own pole is certainly a prime candidate.

Just be glad you don't live in Kansas, where the State Tree is the Telephone Pole! Of course, the State Tree of Oklahoma is the Oil Derrick; in Texas it's the Gallows; in Iowa it's the Corn Stalk; and in Florida it's the Chad-Bush . . . anybody got any more?

Guy S.

In Maryland, it's the blown-down oak . . .

Thank you all for the thoughtful commentary. There are interesting experiences from around the world presented here. Thanks for the invite, Resin. I well aware of many European standards (esp. Germany), and these are applied hand-in-hand with maintaining some very old and historic conditions that are lived in everyday, without destruction. Hmmm....maybe some folks are due for a European vacation?

jermainiac wrote:

Thanks for the research; that supports my original point in the rant about an incremental approach to solving problems. Accumulating small amounts on all utility bills, monthly, annually, whatever, gradually amasses the funds to begin/continue this work. The utility companies that just don't want to change, they use the scare tactic of a lump sum billing, knowing that most consumers will balk at that (leaving you and others with the opinion of only the wealthy can do this; ye olde classe warfare at its finest).

Putting the lines underground (especially the service and lower energy transport lines in cities), even at a slow rate, will go a long way toward reducing/eliminating the tree destruction and permanent canopy loss in urban areas.

Guy: glad IL state park system has/had a policy, procedure, and staff to support this positive endeavor to provide utility service AND a quality landscape/environment experience. That's how it should be, and how it isn't, or appears not to be, in most places.

1. The policy/procedure is either missing (What IS that? Why do we need one?) or written to "give away the store" to the utility.

2. If p/p exists, it's not supported. Statements like "do you want to deny my voters their utility service?" Or "that job is not getting me additional votes; it'll be the first type of job cut in budget-belt tightening."

3. Finally, personnel assigned to implement the p/p have no training/background in land management, arboriculture, or construction (merely a person filling the post, and often assist the utility in the worst kind of implementation -- no restrictions) or are not allowed to perform the job to protect the public resource (see #2 above). This "easement" type work often falls to planners. Some are good at it; others are merely going through the motions amidst the avalanche of everything else they do. Utilities will "shop" till they find a crevice, and then pry open the cookie jar for what they want.

escambiaguy: utilities are going higher, as the technology improves and allows it. If canopy trees are allowed to be grown beneath them, that's somewhat better. I doubt that will be the case though. The utilities usually demand free and unfettered access to their facilities.

Incumbent: in addition to destruction and disease pressure (as well as acceptance of the blighted condition), poor management of utility corridors creates highways for many of the worst invasive species across the countryside by introducing a lot of new "edge" conditions. Conversely, regular disturbance creates niches for pioneer species, a fact picked up on by some regional utilities here in KY. They are trying to implement a novel (for KY) program of working with various institutions on establishing prairies/meadows under the powerlines (or above the gas/oil transmission pipes). This is enriching the environment with diverse species and some additional habitat, but can be resource-draining and costly to maintain. BUT, at least it's a stab at trying something different.

There is a lot of land in this condition. I think it can be a laboratory to try new things, and create some novel partnerships to collaborate on solving some of the problems.

growin: your friend has some classy images of some curvaceous beauties on that link, and some mighty fine plant pics too. I can't make out much about the property or situation you are describing, so I'm not much help there. If he has created his place of business under existing utility lines, with existing easements allowing the utility to pretty much do what they want, then he's probably in the classic "threaded fastener" position.

Another concern is underground pipelines. Most pipeline companies try to insist upon open-sky rights of way to facilitate aetial inspections for leaks and other problems. But in sensitive areas or places where we (Illinois DNR) needed to maintain a closed forest canopy, they agreed to allow tree canopy closure and to do their inspections on the ground as long as they had an open ground layer to permit maintenance access. Their incentive once again was a price break on ROW fees and some good PR.

The bad news is that our current leader, Governor Moron-ovich, has made IDNR the target of massive cutbacks. I don't know if anyone is continuing the programs we built over the time I was there. I'm afraid to go back and see . . .

One more aside: Several of the finest trees in our arboretum were exceptional seedlings rescued (with permission) from utility rights of way, just days ahead of the herbicide crews!

Guy S.

Exactly Guy. Those ROW can be exceptional seedbeds and burgeoning nurseries, with a little forethought and collaboration.

OUr county seat, a small city is undergoing a lot of improvement. Some of the money came from state sources and some from Federal sources.
Well, one of the objective was to moved as much of the tangled web of wires above the streets in an otherwise scenic, historic town.
Being installed are poles with long arms to hold the stop lights and atop the poles are the street lamps. Many, many, wires have been eliminated and it looks better although the new poles are still a bit odd looking. In other areas, where there are no traffic light, replicas of very early, attractive street lamps are being added with that wiring underground. It's not perfect, but an improvement.

Woodspirit, that's exactly the kind of thing I'm imagining. A little cooperative spirit and collaborative planning, and improvements can be reached.

Traffic lights and street lights are probably all the responsibility of the local government, so managing that shouldn't have been too much trouble. Let's see if the local utilities can start getting involved, too.

The design of the poles (or any other site amenity) is always interesting. You pick an item out of a catalog, since it's tried and true and quick. But it may have been designed for someplace else's aesthetic. Engineers are reluctant to design something new for your site, because they take on the risk of a new construct. OR, they'll charge you an arm and a leg to do so, guiding you back to the "off the shelf" item. It's a challenging prospect, but the main thing is getting the lines out from overhead. Fixtures can change in time as they wear out or additional funding comes around to buy different ones.