Vegetation Management
Trees and limbs that come in contact with power lines can cause numerous problems including outages, fires and endanger children climbing trees. Storms and winds can also cause branches to rub on power lines causing blinking lights in your home or business. In fact, trees interfering with power lines are currently one of the top three reasons people experience power outages.
In an effort to help eliminate these problems and potential hazards, Linn County REC contracts with Asplundh Tree Expert Company for its right-of-way maintenance program. The program consists of a combination of tree pruning, tree removal, brush pruning, brush removal, and chemical treatment to impede future growth.
Linn County REC, at a minimum, attempts to prune trees and manage vegetation on 14% of the system annually. This allows for a general schedule of a 7-year cycle.
We quickly address “hot spots” on the electric system based on reports from line crew personnel and members. Hot spots may include a known dangerous situation involving trees or an area that has numerous momentary or occasional sustained outages resulting from tree contacts. Once completed with this task, the crew assigned to the ”hot spot” returns to the regular tree pruning cycle.
Our contracted spray program compliments the tree pruning practices of Linn County REC. The chemical treatment program includes annual substation weed control as well as vegetation treatment for rights-of-way. One fourth of the rural areas of the system are sprayed each year where appropriate in both public and private rights-of-way. All chemicals used are government approved.
Linn County REC will only trim trees that are or have the potential to interfere with Linn County REC electrical lines. The electrical lines after the Linn County REC meter to any home, outbuilding or grain bins are the member’s responsibility to maintain. If you would like to report a tree that needs trimmed, please contact our Operations Department.
Linn County Rural Electric Cooperative | PO Box 69 | 5695 REC Drive | Marion, IA 52302-0069 | 319.377.1587 or 800.332.5420
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