power lines
Virginia Tech has a power line/tree diagram that works but very few homeowners are not aware of it. Here the powerline guys trim it back but leave the lower stuff for the cable co.( who rarely trim) and the phone co. (who rarely trim), the latter come out only when there is a tree laying on the line. Mike, two of the farms are on PENN DOT'S list to be highways in the years to come. They came out and asked for 500' for a right-of-way, came back and said they needed 1,000' then came back a third time and said they needed 25 acres for a four lane. The other farm they said they wanted the entire place up front for a four lane toll road. The farms are 100 miles apart. Which is cheaper a farm or 66 homes and two car dealers??? A farm in a valley or remove 450' of a hill ( well over 1,000,000 yards of earth)??? The yuppies are building homes about two miles away from one and paying about $120,000 an acre for land. 1/3 acre lots for $44,000, six miles out, yuppies are paying $10 a square foot. They need a four lane for all the traffic and the yuppies need their heads examined for paying so much for land. What is the right-of-way worth?? meandering off topic, If the power co. did not have to do so much Public Relations work and just came in and cleared the right-of-ways millions of trees would be gone. Small trees under the lines, 25' away larger trees and standard trees not closer than 50' of the right-of-way. Now how are you going to get the homeowner to agree to that if their lot is small and they want a shade tree? In europe the lines are underground, at least in the towns in Germany I visited. Electrifying rural America was okay for a work project years ago but rural America is now the suburbs and no one taught the homeowner that trees should not be planted under the powerlines. It takes a generation to teach the people to change. If you teach the children now, you will not see the change untill they are home buyers in the future. If you past a law today it would still take a generation until the public got used to the idea of no tree lined streets or smaller trees at least. There used to be a standard maple tree on our street about every 25' or so, about 100 trees. The boro repaved the road and removed all the roots on one side of the trees in the process. Two years later they put in new waterlines and removed the roots on the other side of the trees, then the next year they cut down all the trees because they were dying. So now, new ordinances, you can only plant ornimentals close to the street. The powerlines are on the other side of the street and one by one the trees on the other side are being cut down and replaced with smaller trees.Too much rambling on. I'm going to sharpen my saws.
