Pepco halts new Potomac line

River Road residents say utility company is trimming away too many branches

‘‘Trees need to be trimmed a certain distance from the line,” Dobkin said.

Annette Fribourg, whose property backs up to River Road, said she got in touch with local and national legislators when she noticed the tree cutting, which has been taking place along River Road.

‘‘If you look along River Road, there’s been huge swatches that are cut,” Fribourg said. ‘‘Some have been shaved completely — far back from the power lines.”

The West Montgomery County Citizens Association has been fielding complaints from citizens about tree cutting taking place from Potomac Village to Behnkhe’s Nursery, saying the pruning is sloughing off too much of the tree’s canopy.

‘‘When I first saw it, I thought it was really extreme,” said Ginny Barnes, president of the WMCCA. ‘‘They’re cutting [the trees] way back.”

Fribourg wrote to U.S. Rep. Christopher Van Hollen Jr. (D-Dist. 8 ) of Kensington, prompting a letter from his office to be sent to Pepco inquiring about the tree cutting.

During Hurricane Isabel in 2003, 540,000 Pepco customers lost power, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Many of these outages were due to trees, limbs and branches falling on lines, Dobkin said.

‘‘The last thing we want to do is harm the tree,” Dobkin said. ‘‘We take care in how they are pruned, though it may not look like that to some customers,” Dobkin said.

Pepco denied concerns raised by residents that the cutting was an effort to increase the amount of time between scheduled maintenance prunings. The pruning is related to the line project and not routine pruning, Dobkin said. Potomac is scheduled for tree maintenance pruning later in the spring, Dobkin said.

David Brown, a Potomac resident and manager of the ornamental tree and shrub department at Behnke’s Nursery in Potomac, said that utilities often don’t take enough care when they prune roadside trees.

‘‘I see some where the entire center of the tree is cut out; it’s basically a big Y as you go down the street,” he said ‘‘That’s an aesthetic issue and it can also be a health issue.”

When trimming trees, cutting fewer leaves is better, Brown said. ‘‘That’s the food for the tree,” Brown said.

The Maryland Roadside Tree law requires that roadside trees be cut to arborist standards, according to Laura Miller, forest conservation coordinator for the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection. The standards, set forth by the International Society of Arboriculture, outline the best ways to cut certain types of trees and the amount of cutting that is healthy. ‘‘Those are more or less the best management practices,” Miller said.

Pepco maintains that they cut all trees to arborist standards.

‘‘This is a community concern,” Fribourg said. ‘‘The question is, is there a solution that can accommodate the power needs and at the same time be less intrusive to the trees and the overall appearance of the neighborhood?”

Dobkin said that Pepco is currently trying to work to resolve the issue. He is unsure how long the project will be on hold. ‘‘Obviously there’s some people that are unhappy with the trimming,” Dobkin said. ‘‘...We’re trying to accommodate the people as best we can and minimize the trimming, but we need it to be sufficient enough to put up the [power line].”