Vegetation Management to Increase in 2020

Sangre de Cristo Electric plans to increase its vegetation management efforts in 2020 to clear trees and overgrown vegetation along company rights-of-way. Due to the heightened awareness with the forest fires that have taken place in California and locally with the Decker Fire, along with the potential risk to life and prop¬erty, it is of the utmost importance to our organization.

Our vegetation management plan will focus on cutting and clearing trees within our rights-of-ways. The plan will also address potentially dangerous trees outside of our rights-of-ways along our lines. There are two main reasons for this:

• Safety. Trees and shrubs located too close to overhead power lines or utility equipment can spark and create a fire, outage or shock hazards.
• Reliability. Trees that are too close to electric lines can cause interference with power lines during storms or cause an outage if a tree or a tree’s branches fall into lines. Clearing trees in our rights-of-ways and other vegetation also improves access to our lines to restore power more quickly during outages. The sooner our lineworkers can get to a line in need of repair, the less time it will take to fix the problem.

More information on SDCEA’s vegetation management program will follow in future issues of Colorado Country Life and online at myelectric.coop.

Before and after examples of recent vegetation management work on an SDCEA right-of-way in the Twin Lakes area. Clearing vegetation around SDCEA lines improves safety around electric lines and improves reliability of service to consumers.