Con Edison Clear Cuts Thousands of Trees and Devastates Neighborhood

Here is a heartbreaking tale from Greenburgh resident Kristina Casone Bracken about the destruction of vegetation along the Sprain Brook Parkway and the devastating effect on the homes above the roadway:  Ten years ago, my husband and I bought a very small house (less than one thousand square feet) on one of the smallest properties in this part of Greenburgh.  The house itself was not what we loved about theproperty.  It was the fact that it sat amidst beautiful woods and, despite the nearby power lines,there was lush greenery in every direction. Directly behind our property is the Catskill Aqueduct.  Our understanding was that aqueducts are protected natural land; they cannot be built upon and their integrity as natural, clean habitat is intended to be maintained.

Because our house was so small and our property so lovely and private, we created a wonderful outdoor area in which to relax and entertain.  With our own bare hands, we put in a pool, a stone patio, a large vegetable garden, and a volleyball area.  We have done significant renovations on the property and have just begun renovations on the house, as we plan to expand our family.

At the end of the fall in 2007, Con Edison suddenly started cutting trees to the ground – tons of them.  The sound of the highway became much louder on our property and was quite noticeable to our friends and neighbors.  It was a disruption to the enjoyment of our outdoor area during the summer. Suddenly, for the first time, we could see the highway and people commented that they could see us on our deck from the Sprain. The enjoyment of our outdoor sanctuary was greatly affected by this reduction in privacy, as well as the visual and auditory impact.  

This change was hard to come to terms with, but we were convinced by Con Edison that this was a one-time aggressive cutting and we could look forward to the beautiful and lush low-lying growth that would now be encouraged, along with its associated wildlife.  This did not happen, as their application of herbicides and further trimming continued.  The highway sounds became harder and harder to deal with.

Last week, and without due notice, Cons Edison clear cut the entire wooded area behind our house and all along the Catskill Aqueduct.  The sounds of the highway now are intolerable – even in the house with all of the windows closed for the cold weather.  It is a struggle to have a conversation anywhere outside our house and loud voices need to be used in order to be heard.  If you’ve ever changed a tire on the side of a highway you know what it sounds like to stand on our property.

The needless devastation to natural habitat is heartbreaking and inexcusable; the view of each and every car driving on the Sprain Brook Parkway is offensive (not to mention the total loss of privacy); and, the property values of our home and those of our neighbors have been reduced.  The most salient issue for us right now is that we cannot find respite from the constant reminder of what was done because of the auditory assault of the sounds from the road cannot be drowned out, even inside the sanctity of our house - and even with a white noise machine running.

Con Edison has refused to provide any of the paperwork that justifies this type of radical “maintenance.”  They outright lied to us and our neighbors when they were repeatedly asked if the intent was to clear-cut the trees.  They have cut down healthy, low growing trees, old and stable trees, and continue to insist that they are cutting only tall, fast growing trees.  The real situation is that they have cut down all trees, regardless of species, all along their right-of-way.  They are continuing to do this type of cutting all along the power lines, with no fair warning to the towns or the neighboring property owners.  

Con Edison has justified their cutting by using high emotional-response phrases such as, "power outage," "safe power transmission,” and, "access to the lines."  The reality is that an unimaginable amount of trees have been cut that have absolutely nothing to do with any of these scare-tactic phrases.  

Con Edison has continuously stated on record (e.g. news programs, newspapers) that falling trees were the cause of the 2003 blackout and other major blackouts.  This is pure deception.  According to the Final Report on the August 14, 2003 Blackout in the U.S. and Canada (conducted by U.S./Canada Power System Outage Task Force), tree contact by a transmission line did occur and caused a line to trip on August 14.  However, the contact was between a low-sagging, overloaded transmission line and a tree on a right-of-way that was not maintained.  This tree contact was not the first occurrence of a long sequence of events (which included mismanagement of systems and human error, among other things) that caused the blackout in 2003.  In fact, according to the report, “…system modeling by the investigation team has shown that this outage [caused by tree contact] did not cause the subsequent events in northern Ohio that led to the blackout.”

The report discusses the causes of all of the major blackouts in the U.S. for the past 40 years or so.  In the few cases where trees were involved in major blackouts, sagging, overloaded transmission lines caused contact with trees that were on improperly maintained rights-of-way.  Since we’ve lived alongside of it, the Catskill Aqueduct has been thoroughly maintained, therefore would not pose a problem.

It is important to point out that trees and branches falling onto local distribution lines are a tremendous contributor to the cause of local blackouts.  Distribution lines are the lines along the road that bring electricity right to our homes.  This is a completely different maintenance issue than that of the high voltage transmission lines.

The massacred trees – some of them very old – cannot be brought back; it is too late for them.  But, we are asking for restitution.  We need a sound barrier to be built along the Sprain Brook Parkway to reduce the overwhelming noise, to reduce the air pollution and highway dust in our houses, and to restore the privacy that was lost with the felling of the trees.  Con Edison should absorb the cost of this, since they caused the problems here.  In addition, Con Edison should be required to replant low-growing trees where they have devastated residents’ quality of life and the natural habitat of the wildlife that was here.

Kristina Cascone-Bracken
http://greengreenburgh.blogspot.com