Letter: Tree trimming program is welcome
PSE&G crews trim trees along Searingtown Road, just south of I.U. Willets Road in Albertson. (Jan. 2, 2014) Credit: Newsday / Audrey C. Tiernan
I am pleased to see a utility exercising a little common sense ["PSEG: More trimming," News, Jan. 7].
I have lived in a heavily treed area in Huntington for 22 years, and I have lost count how many times my neighbors and I have lost power due to fallen trees and tree limbs, overgrown brush and the like.
Once I watched an ivy-covered tree come in contact with an electrical line and catch fire; the tree burned for hours and melted the electrical lines. The Long Island Power Authority finally came in to cut the tree down to four feet below the line. It took 12 men more than two hours before the power could be restored.
Time and again, I have called LIPA to trim the trees. It claimed that my neighbor, on whose property the vines continued, would have to call it in. What a waste of time and resources! I always thought that the utility companies had an unfettered right of way over property so that they could do exactly the kind of preventive work I am describing.
Wendi Stranieri, Huntington
