Tallahassee utility officials say the city’s trees need what they call “enhanced trimming” to help fight outages caused by squirrels and falling tree limbs. Rob McGarrah is the general manager of the city electric utility.
“Obviously the greater distance the trees are from the lines the less probability they’re going to contact the lines or fall on the lines. The tree distance is also a function of how much animal challenge we have because the squirrels use the trees to get on the lines,” McGarrah says.
McGarrah says there’s no problem as long as the animals are just running along the power lines. He says the trouble comes when the squirrels touch between the line and pole, closing the circuit. Right now, officials trim tree limbs to leave a four-to-six foot gap around the wires. The pilot program would extend that distance to ten-to-twelve feet. The utility plans to track whether the change leads to a decrease in outages. During their Wednesday meeting, City Commissioners cautioned they’d like to keep aesthetics in mind, but voted to move forward with the project.
