Pepco is resuming its controversial tree-cutting along its transmission lines in Potomac and warning that homeowners who try to stop its crews could be arrested by police and sued by the utility.
“We cannot forego this work,” Pepco Region President Donna M. Cooper said in a June 15 letter to homeowners who own property that abuts the utility’s transmission corridor in Potomac.
The county, however, is trying to broker a last-minute deal to limit Pepco’s tree-cutting, Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Thomas Street said Monday. Street said he telephoned Cooper Monday and “asked for them to continue to review their practices whereby they would be less aggressive on the pruning-and-cutting program. She said she would take a look at that, so I’m not sure where they are on that.”
In a sometimes contentious town hall meeting June 2, Cooper fielded complaints from homeowners who accused the utility of deforesting Montgomery County, bullying homeowners who object and violating private property rights. At that meeting, which Leggett arranged, Cooper told nearly 100 homeowners that she would temporarily halt cutting along Pepco’s transmission corridor in Potomac while she reviewed options.
In her letter to homeowners, however, Cooper said that Pepco would resume cutting because “[v]egetation management is a critical part” of meeting its “obligation and commitment to provide safe and reliable electric service to our customers.”
Meanwhile, Pepco Deputy General Counsel Jack Strausman sent a “cease and desist” letter June 19 to the homeowners association of Fallsreach, a neighborhood that is home to key activists who have organized resistance along Pepco’s transmission lines. Activists have, until now, managed to save many trees just by standing under them when Pepco’s tree-cutting crews arrive.
“Physically struggling to remain within the safety zone or resisting a lawful effort at removal from the safety zone may lead to arrest for any resulting criminal behavior,” the Pepco lawyer wrote.
Continued interference with Pepco’s tree-cutting might also cause the utility to file “a lawsuit for injunctive relief, damages for all costs and expenses incurred by Pepco in mobilizing and demobilizing its work crews, delay costs and all other costs incurred in attempting to perform the above described lawful work on your property,” according to the letter.
Some Fallsreach activists said Monday that they are shocked, but undeterred, by Pepco’s warnings. A small group, which identified itself as “concerned residents of Fallsreach,” sent a letter back to Cooper saying that the utility will be legally liable if its tree-cutting contractor injures activists who are standing under trees to try to save them.
Pepco has been under pressure in recent years to improve its performance after a series of storms knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of its customers. In 2011, Maryland’s Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities, fined Pepco $1 million for poor performance. The Maryland Electricity Reliability Act—sponsored by Montgomery County legislators—required regulators to set new performance standards and penalty for utilities. In response, state regulators developed new standards for improving power companies’ performance by, among other things, better “vegetation management.” The standards—known as RM 43—dictate how close tree branches can grow to different types of power lines.
In most neighborhoods in Montgomery County, Pepco asks for homeowners’ permission before trimming or cutting down trees on their property. Along Pepco’s transmission corridor in Potomac, however, the utility has evoked old easements it purchased in the 1950s to assert its right to cut trees on private property whether or not the owner agrees.
Potomac resident and businessman Fred Goodman, who helped organize the June 2 town hall meeting, said Monday that Pepco has now posted a notice on his door saying it would begin cutting his trees within days.
Cooper’s June 15 letter offered some small, potential concessions. Pepco, for example, may expand its voucher program that gives cooperative homeowners a $200 coupon for each of their trees that the utility cuts down.
“In reality, they gave us nothing,” Goodman said. “They gave us lip service.”
