Dive Brief:
- The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) aims to get tougher on electric utilities' "vegetation management" – that is, tree trimming. Since before Superstorm Sandy, where millions were out of power for days or weeks, in part because of trees on power lines, state officials have been sensitive to the tree problem. Now they want to see how to make it better.
- "We're going to get in your face a little bit more than in the past," BPU official Jerome May told utility officials as the board started what probably will be a year-long process of writing new regulations. Board staff talked about options that include making utilities trim trees more frequently than the four-year cycle that's now required, raising penalties for failure and demanding more frequent reporting.
- Clashes with property owners and localities are a delicate issue, especially when the state considers what to do about trees outside of a utility's right of way.
Dive Insight:
This is just a reminder that even one of the most banal issues remains one of the most critical. No matter how much industry reimagining goes on, we can't escape the fact that trees falling on power lines give us the biggest headaches and seem the most fixable of problems – "seem" being the key word here. Utilities have a long list of responsibilities in this regard, including rules for the wholesale-level transmission corridor. But state regulators and lawmakers feel it close to home when storms cause neighborhood trees to cut our electricity off.