Last month, the Buena Vista Board of Trustees approved an ordinance requiring utility franchises like the Sangre de Cristo Electric Association to obtain a permit from the town before cutting or pruning any trees on town property.
The ordinance came in response to concerns from a local group about SDCEA’s planned wildfire vegetation mitigation project. However, BV’s dendrophiles remain apprehensive. As one member of the town’s Tree Advisory Board told trustees during the public comment period at its meeting earlier this month, less than five percent of the trees in the vicinity of the higher transmission lines that may be subject to pruning or removal are on public property – the rest are unprotected by the ordinance.
“This ordinance is a step, but it’s a small step, and this causes us great concern,” Sarah Kuhn said to the trustees at their Oct. 10 meeting. “We hope that the plan that Sangre has been tasked to present gives a clear explanation why this action is needed, that it is best practice and that Sangre has a more long-term plan for their higher transmission lines. It remains in question what citizens can actually do to stop trees being cut on private property.”
The five percent figure comes from research the Tree Advisory Board and Public Works department have conducted for four years to inventory every tree on Buena Vista public property. This inventory helps compile a list of hazardous trees in need of pruning or removal or impacting infrastructure.
“The BVTAB is happy the Town trustees have taken the time to expand the original ordinance,” members of the advisory board said in a statement to the Times. “The most pressing issue is how the new permit system is managed and with what detail … We are obviously not opposed to the removal of hazardous trees or trimming by a skilled arborist where needed, as that has been our primary work as a board since inception. And we are certainly not opposed to the maintenance of lines. … Our concern is that this proposed action be done in a thoughtful manner, keeping in mind the wording of the franchise agreement between Town and SDCEA.”
This summer, the BV Tree Coalition requested a one-year moratorium on SCDEA’s plans. They gathered over 500 signatures on its petition and presented at a Trustee work session where it argued that Sangre’s approach to protecting its infrastructure was outdated.
“Electric utilities around the country are stopping doing this kind of clear-cutting project in favor of long-term plans to bury lines,” Liz Morgan, a member of the Tree Coalition, told the Times, “and short-term plans to deal with hazardous trees, but most trees aren’t just tipping over and falling on the lines.”
Gary Kelly, SDCEA’s interim CEO, said, “There’s always been maintenance around cutting trees and removing vegetation around power lines. That’s nothing new, that’s part of the business.
“We were not keeping up with the growth, so we decided to take a more aggressive approach,” he said, “cutting more than what was required so that we wouldn’t have to come back in a three or four-year period.”
SCDEA’s standard has been to cut trees that could fall on its high-transmission power lines within 15 feet on either side of the line, with variations. In some heavily forested areas, the company has considered trees 40 feet away from its lines. The power line may follow a road, in which case one of those 15-foot margins has been cleared.
Kelly said SCDEA is not looking into burying its power lines as it would cost millions of dollars per mile and that the process was not as simple as digging a trench. Homes that receive power would need retrofitting to connect with the grid from underground.
“Part of it is the cost, but it’s also just being able to do it physically,” he said. “There’s communications on some of those (poles). You’ve got CenturyLink and some cable TV companies who would be affected, as well.”
When the trustees’ code changes take effect later this month, anybody seeking to do work on town-owned trees must file a plan detailing the scope of work, with the ordinance laying out six criteria that the town administrator must use when determining whether to grant the permit.
Before the board’s discussion and vote on the ordinance, Kelly asked the board to vote down the proposed code change, saying that it would require the company to apply for an additional permit to do work already approved by the town through the franchise agreement, approved in February.
“There is no mention of seeking a permit because the town has already granted approval by the terms of the franchise agreement,” Kelly told the board. “We see this as a solution in search of a problem.”
Kelly also said tree work would not begin in Buena Vista until the town had seen a removal plan.
Andrew Rice was the sole board member who voted against the ordinance. He said he didn’t like the message of mistrust that passing the ordinance might send to SDCEA, a crucial partner to the town as its longtime electricity provider.
Morgan, like Kuhn, was concerned that the ordinance would not apply to the significant majority of the trees in Sangre’s easements.
“If it stays like this and all town is worried about is trees on town property, it’s not even going to make a dent in the obliteration of the trees in our town,” she said. “It leaves homeowners out on our own. One by one, what are we supposed to do?”
The Coalition’s next goal is to get the town to include trees in Sangre easements on private property.
An ordinance requiring a town permit to work on trees on private property would be “precedent-setting,” Kelly said.
“We’ve heard that trustees are maybe worried about overreaching, overregulation on private property, but we see this as the exact opposite,” Morgan said. “Homeowners can still cut trees whenever they want and they can let Sangre cut trees if they want, but this is a really important protection. Town needs to extend this protection to private property trees, as well.”
Kelly sees the apprehension towards its mitigation plans as the result of “a lot of misinformation out there, or a lot of bad speculation – that might be a better way of looking at it.” He mentioned an upset customer who had called in, adamant that the company was about to cut trees because the trunks were marked with X’s: “It wasn’t us. It was the town. The town was coming out to cut those trees for whatever reason.
“People, they see a pole, and they think it’s automatic that it’s going to be cut around, and there’s not even a power line on it,” he said. “We’re trying to start the planning process to let people know that this is coming.”
In its statement, the BVTAB said SDCEA needs “a clear plan of action as to why and how they are going to clear their lines and to clarify their public notice process and the process by which homeowners can contest the cutting of trees.
“As far as we know, SDCEA still has no detailed plan that has been disclosed to the public as to how this endeavor will move forward regarding potential dialogue between homeowners and the contracted tree-cutting company, Integrity Tree Services,” they said.
For trees in town limits, SDCEA plans to divide the town into quadrants, assess each area and begin notifying property owners.
“We were going to do that assessment this fall,” Kelly said. “Then we’d probably start coming into town with our tree-cutter … sometime in late January or February. With the new permitting process, we haven’t been able to put that into place yet.”
Kelly was unsure how long this new permitting process would take on top of the co-op’s own planning but was confident tree cutting within town limits would not begin until “well after the first of the year.” He also said the company would make its plan available to the public before any mitigation began.
“We have a contracted tree cutter,” Kelly said. “They have … a certified arborist. … He, along with probably a Sangre representative, would break up that quadrant, and they would start ground-trooping, going in, looking, measuring. At that time, they would probably start going in and talking with residents, knocking on doors, making phone calls, saying, ‘This is what we’re looking at, this is how we’re doing it.’”
Kelly said SCDEA hasn’t received much negative feedback from homeowners impacted by the mitigation plan in places where work has already begun.
“I would say it’s been 90 percent positive. There are people who don’t want their trees cut. I’m not going to sit here and tell you otherwise,” Kelly said. “But I have received nothing but positive feedback about our tree-cutting, the professionalism and the clean-up.”
Morgan said that the Tree Coalition is planning another public outreach campaign.
“Hopefully, we’ll see this resolved sooner rather than later, but yes, we are in this for the long haul for sure,” she said. “It’s a serious issue, and it’s irreversible.”
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