NWA editorial: Out on a limb

Utility backs off growth inhibitor plan

Here's an idea doomed from the very beginning: Let's take a chemical that will retard the growth of trees and inject it around those growing near power lines.

So far, so good. But here's the doomsday factor: Let's do it in Fayetteville.

What’s the point?

A power company made the right decision to back off use of chemical inhibitors to slow tree growth near power lines in Fayetteville, but the plan might work with education.

Southwestern Electric Power Co., known by most as SWEPCO, recently backed off its plans to use a growth-regulating hormone to diminish the conflict between trees and the overhead power lines all of us rely on to keep those cell phones charged, those refrigerators and freezers cooling and those computers whirring. Trees are the leading cause of power outages. When they come into contact with power lines through growth or falling limbs, the result can be anything from flickering lights to complete outages.

Power companies are in a no-win situation when it comes to trees planted under or near power lines. If they do nothing, customers complain when their power supply is disrupted. And as plenty of Northwest Arkansas resident have seen, utilities create no fans when their tree "trimmers" march on a neighborhood and aggressively cut back tree limbs.

It makes perfect sense, then, that a utility would be drawn to the use of growth regulators that, while not eliminating the clash between growing plants and power lines, will slow down their frequency. It's an approach some commercial nurseries and landscapers use, with reports of great outcomes for both the trees involved and the utility, whose are eager to get out from under the costs, dangers and bad publicity of tree limb cutting.

When some homeowners in Fayetteville recently got notices from a SWEPCO-hired vegetation management company explaining plans to treat trees with growth-retarding hormones, it set off environmental alarms. Swooping in with door-hanging notices might have worked in some communities, but Fayetteville isn't exactly known for a population of docile residents. Injecting anything into the ground sounds, well, unnatural, so the phones at the City Administration Building started ringing.

Now, the utility and city officials will consult on the best ways to provide information to affected homeowners. Peter Main, a spokesman for SWEPCO, said the utility may try using the growth-retarding approach elsewhere first.

Good idea. We'd recommend a public education component is vital to any sort of plan affecting trees on public and private lands. It was a no-brainer in Fayetteville that injecting anything into the ground would inspire visions of environmental contamination, although the use of growth inhibitors appears to be viewed by the EPA as fairly tame stuff.

Fear shouldn't dictate what SWEPCO can and can't do, but the utility has a responsibility to educate the public it is attempting to serve.

In the long run, inhibiting growth of trees near power lines sounds far more acceptable than the sight of de-limbed trees that have grown into the danger zone. But people need a comfort level with any campaign to use growth inhibitors.

With knowledge, however, it may just grow on them.

Commentary on 11/28/2015

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