In 1985, Hurricane Gloria made landfall in Milford, wreaking havoc and leaving more than 669,000 businesses and residents without electricity.
The No. 1 recommendation from the Gloria committee on how to avoid future disasters: Enhance tree trimming to make sure falling limbs and trees don’t knock out power lines again.
In 2011, Tropical Storm Irene and an October nor’easter wreaked havoc on Connecticut, each leaving more than 800,000 residents without electricity, some for nearly two weeks.
The No. 1 recommendation from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s two-storm committee on how to avoid future disasters: Enhance tree trimming to make sure falling limbs and trees don’t knock out power lines again.
If the recommendations sound eerily similar, despite being made 25 years apart, you’re right, yet state policymakers failed to heed warnings from the past. As a result, history repeated itself.
Over the next 25 years, as increasingly severe storms strain the state’s electricity infrastructure, Connecticut must learn from its past mistakes and allow utility companies to implement more aggressive tree-trimming policies enacted since 2011.
It appears those efforts, however, could be stalled as the voices of the state’s tree lovers are getting louder. In recent months, tree-trimming efforts around the state have been put on hold, as residents, utility customers, and others raise concerns about too many trees being pruned and the character of neighborhoods being destroyed.
The United Illuminating Co., for example, has stalled its proposed tree-trimming plan in southwestern Connecticut, which included pruning vegetation within eight feet of power lines.
Meanwhile, state and local lawmakers have fielded petitions signed by thousands of residents who oppose trees being cut down in their back yard. That’s led politicians like Hamden Mayor Scott Jackson to call for a tree-trimming moratorium in his town.
To be clear, one of the many things that makes Connecticut great is its natural features, including its foliage, but this tree trimming needs to happen. And it needs to continue for generations, not just when the pain from large-scale power outages is fresh in everyone’s mind.
Such power outages not only serve as a public health and safety threat, but they also negatively impact Connecticut’s economic competitiveness.
During and immediately after the 2011 power outages, everyone’s favorite scapegoat was CL&P, especially its then president Jeffrey Butler. CL&P and UI were both criticized, in part, for cutting their tree-trimming budgets in the years prior to the two storms. Butler paid with his job, and CL&P paid $40 million in penalties for its inadequate storm response, with possibly more to come.
The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority is now reviewing utilities’ tree-trimming plans, but we suggest the state adopt a more comprehensive policy governing how to protect power lines from unwieldy vegetation.
We aren’t often advocates for more state regulation, but if cities and towns are able to unilaterally block utilities from tree trimming, no progress will ever be made.
There needs to be some flexibility in the regulations, but a common set of guidelines outlining what vegetation can or can’t be trimmed, and how close trees must hover near power lines to be on the chopping block makes sense.
The future of a reliable electricity infrastructure depends on it.
