The City recently came around and trimmed trees in our neighborhood (Angus
Valley). They trim away all branches within X-number of feet of the city
power lines. They don't care about the lower cable TV and telephone lines.
Also, they do not care about lines running to street lights, that sort of
thing. Just the main power lines. They trim more from fast-growing trees
than from slow-growers, like oaks.

The result, for a large tree directly under a power line, is often a
V-shaped tree. Kind of ugly but, given what happens during storms
otherwise, it's hard to fault them. And they did a pretty good job. They
trim branches back to the larger trunk, paint the stumps, and seem to work
with the homeowner as much as they can.

For us, they completely took out a hackberry tree directly under the lines
that we were very happy to get rid of without having to pay someone to do
it. And they trimmed back a small cedar elm, almost right under the lines,
only on the line side, so that the trimming did not look bad at all. I was
actually pleased with the final results. The guys who did the work seemed
to respond positively to my being polite and talking a little Espanol with
them.

In theory, they do this every 7 years or so, but who knows what will happen
as the city sinks into its massive indebtedness problems over the next few
years? We may never see them again, at least until after a storm knocks all
the lines down again.

gary
austin


B.Server wrote in message
news
On Sat, 11 Jan 2003 17:27:40 -0600, J Kolenovsky
wrote:

When that happens in our part of Houston (Bellaire), we get a note on
the door saying they are coming next week and to leave notes on the
trees.

Outside of birds depositing seeds, no one should plant a tree that will
get near the height of power lines.

That's going to make it a little difficult to enjoy the often extolled
benefits of a shaded house isn't it? Or did you mean planted near a
utility easement?