Flower Hill officials add landscaping to divert attention from tall utility poles

Just look away.

That's the advice from the mayor of Flower Hill, where PSEG Long Island earlier this year installed 45 80-foot-tall utility poles, to the dismay of residents and local lawmakers.

To help divert attention from the poles on the roadside, village officials have added small hedges and trees to the medians of Port Washington Boulevard. The plan is part consolation, part sleight of hand, officials said.

"Our idea was to take the eye -- as you're driving north and south -- away from the poles and into the center," Mayor Elaine Phillips said. "Kind of like Park Avenue in New York City."

It is too early to tell if the plantings have soothed the community's anger.

Larry and Carol Lioz, village residents since 1980, said the plantings caught their attention when they came home from a recent trip. At first glance, they appeared "minuscule" and "unimpressive," but "we ought to give it a chance," Larry Lioz said.

The median plantings appeared in recent weeks, when PSEG installed $25,000 worth of plantings, in conjunction with the state Department of Transportation and the village. Phillips said she wants the village to be stewards of the medians and allocate funds for maintenance.

"These poles have been the bane of people's existence," Phillips said of the installation, which included more than 200 poles from Great Neck to Port Washington.

She said she asked PSEG to beautify the area after a community meeting this spring, in which residents confronted utility president David Daly for, they said, inadequately informing the public about the poles.

PSEG officials have said the poles were needed to ensure reliable service. They can be removed and the wires buried, if the town or residents cover the roughly $20 million cost, utility officials have said.

Larry Ferrandiz, a senior forester for PSEG, said the approach "is quite unique . . . It made more sense to me from a landscaping point of view."

Officials said they hope the median plantings have the effect of "stealth towers" being increasingly used by wireless companies to make equipment more aesthetically pleasing. One tower next to Village Hall in North Hills has been made to look like a pine tree. "It doesn't lose its leaves in the winter," Mayor Marvin Natiss said. "But it's better."

Lioz, a Flower Hill planning board member and former trustee who lives near Port Washington Boulevard, said he first thought the plantings were a "waste of money. But . . . now that I understand why they did it, it's only fair to give it a chance to see how it matures."

Alicia J. Klat, an environmental attorney from Port Washington who helped form an advocacy group to oppose the pole project, described the gesture as "nice . . . but the mammoth poles are still there."

By Scott Eidler

scott.eidler@newsday.com@ScottEidler

Scott Eidler is a deputy editor for the towns department at Newsday. Scott has worked at Newsday since 2012 and previously covered municipal government and education.