Bury the Hatchet: Don’t Clear-Cut Urban Tree Canopy

HOUSTON – (By Ralph Bivins, Realty News Report) – CenterPoint Energy spends millions every year to make Houston an uglier place.

As a preventative tactic, the utility company pays people to cut huge V-shaped incisions in Houston’s beautiful oaks and other magnificent trees, making the city less attractive, less shady and less cool.

CenterPoint disfigures our trees order to protect their power lines, so that a storm won’t break tree branches that could rip down CenterPoint’s wires and cut off electricity.

With verbiage sounding just like a utility company, CenterPoint calls the tree butchery “Vegetation Management.”

CenterPoint spent $46.5 million on Vegetation Management in the Houston area last year, KHOU reports.

So what did the $46.5 million Vegetation Management efforts accomplish?

After a statistically mild Hurricane Beryl made landfall Monday morning, July 8, more than 2.2 million CenterPoint customers lost power in the Houston area. And a week later, a significant number of CenterPoint customers remained without power.

Hurricane Beryl was not much more than a tropical storm. Its winds barely edged above the minimum 74 mph threshold for a Category 1 hurricane (74 to 95 mph).

If a weak Category 1 storm can knock out 2 million customers, imagine what damage a Category 2 or 3 hurricane could do.

Bury the Solution

Burying the power lines should be part of the solution.

When burying electric lines is mentioned the powers that be respond that it’s impossible because the is cost so high. In established Houston neighborhoods, the cost of unraveling and routing a maze of other utilities and easements, would be astronomical, they say.

The recent voices proclaiming that burying power lines is prohibitively expensive are frightening. They call for more aggressive tree prevention with fervor, as if clear-cutting every tree inside the loop would be a good idea.

“Put efficiency above all.” It sounds like the logic of the 1880s when manufacturers justified dumping factory pollutants into the nearest river. Disposing of hazardous waste properly was deemed to be too expensive in the 1800s, just like burying power lines is deemed to be too expensive in Houston today.

However, underground lines are not cost prohibitive in Houston’s suburban areas.

Almost Every New Suburban Community has Buried Power Lines

Virtually every master planned community developed in the Houston suburbs these days has buried power lines. And we’re not talking about only Class A, top-of-the line communities like The Woodlands. Even smaller residential communities with affordable homes and few amenities have underground power lines.

Buried electric lines have been de rigueur in Houston community developments for about 40 years or more, says veteran industry consultant Lawrence Dean, CEO of Houston-based Community Builders Advisory Services.

“I’ve been in the business since 2001 and I can’t remember being involved with one that didn’t have the lines buried,” Dean says.

Commercial urban areas, such as Uptown Houston, have gone through conversions to underground utilities.

“When Uptown buried or relocated its lines in the 1990s, it was by far the most expensive element of its streetscape program for Post Oak Boulevard,” says Steve Spillette, president of CDS Community Development Strategies. “That said, given everything this town has gone through, maybe it’s worth the pretty enormous cost.”

Maybe burying utility lines is worth the cost to CenterPoint who had to replace 2,000 wooden utility poles that failed in last week’s storm?

Maybe it’s worth the cost to the 2 million Houstonians who watched food spoil in their refrigerators and freezers during last week’s black out. Wonder what CenterPoint would do it everybody sent the utility company an invoice for the $500 of food that spoiled in their freezer and fridges last week?

Maybe burying power lines is worth the cost to the restaurant owner who lost a week’s worth of revenue because they had no power. Maybe the restaurant had to throw out food also.

Maybe it’s worth the cost to the shopkeeper or salesman who lost a week’s worth of sales because they had no electricity.

How could the cost of burying the lines be paid for?

“Either local governments would have to come up with the money (unlikely) or CenterPoint would have to levy a large additional surcharge to our bills,” Spillette says.

One thing is for sure, with underground lines installed, CenterPoint would be able to trim its budget for Vegetation Management.

All the mature trees in Houston’s Inner Loop would be prettier if the utility companies would quit whacking V-groove cuts through our mighty oaks. By the way, a home with beautiful trees Is worth more than a home with disfigured trees, an eventual payout for a city that depends on property tax revenue.

Right now, we get the worst of both worlds. The dreaded tree butchers come to your neighborhood to uglify the landscape and your power get knocks out in storms anyway.

(Commentary by Ralph Bivins, Founding Editor, Realty News Report.)

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