Tree Pruning & Trimming
Why We Prune Trees
While trees are a vital element in the quality of life, they can also become safety hazards when not properly maintained around utility lines and equipment. As a proactive approach to help prevent service interruptions, we follow a vegetation management program to ensure the safety and reliability of our utility system. The program determines that we will prune all trees and trim vegetation around energized power lines, fiber optic cables, utility poles, pad mount transformers and other utility equipment.
How We Prune Trees:
We do our best to preserve the tree's health as we prune. We use lateral pruning methods recommended by the International Society of Arboriculture and the Arbor Day Foundation. We prune trees that are in the Utility Maintenance Zone and threaten our power lines (25-feet around high voltage lines, 10 to12-feet around distribution lines). We do not prune trees interfering with service lines. If you have a tree threatening your service line, we will lower the line temporarily so your professional trimming service can safely prune the tree. We provide this service free of charge.
Your Options:
As a homeowner, you have the right and responsibility to take care of your landscape. Likewise, we must care for our power lines. We have professional tree trimmers that help to maintain our lines poles and guy wires.
You do have options to standard pruning, including hiring a private contractor (at your expense). If you think you will be unhappy with a tree's shape after pruning, you may also want to consider tree removal.
- Private contractor - They will need to trim to Jackson Energy Authority's minimum clearance. This would be done in a timely manner. If you would like to hire a private service please contact us. A Jackson Energy Authority representative will provide a form to be signed that will outline the guidelines for trimming.
- Tree removal - If trees are determined by our personnel to need removal, we will do so at our expense. If trees are not a danger to the power system we do not remove them.
