Tree Muggers

During the past several months, the north end of Montclair has experienced numerous and extensive electrical failures.
The Current Montclair Times is reporting on the utility services response
According to PSE&G Division Forester Robert Hagglund,Six additional crews are hewing and trimming trees in a route extending from a PSE&G substation on the Nutley/Bloomfield border that provides power to the northern region of Montclair.

“We will be aggressively, and I do mean aggressively, trimming the trees away from the high-voltage lines,” Hagglund said. “The bottom line is, we’ve got to come into your town and trim trees. The [state Board of Public Utilities] mandates this.”

Hagglund noted that, in Montclair more than in nearly all of the other 35 municipalities in Essex, Passaic and Bergen counties of his PSE&G jurisdiction, there will be strenuous objections to the tree trimming.

“We’re not going to make everybody happy,” he acknowledged.

Climbing teams, or “manual crews,” will be going into residents’ backyards beginning next week to trim trees that pose dangers to overhead electrical wires. Hagglund said that, decades ago, the then-planners of Montclair opted to string along electrical lines in many backyards. PSE&G now must confront the consequences of this decision, such as the difficulty in reaching the obstructive trees or even driving crane-trucks into inaccessible yards.

Over on Baristanet, the natives are restless, From dozens of responses, we quote two:

Posted by: BobbyD | Mar 8, The extended series of recent power outages in Upper Montclair was attributed primarily to the underground cable that crossed the GSPkwy from Nutley. At least that is what PSE&G told me directly. So now PSE&G wants to cut down trees to fix our power problems? That is a distraction technique worthy of Dubya (i.e. a guy in Afganistan attacks us with our own airplanes, declare war on Iraq!)

Posted by: walleroo
If PSE&G wants to come into my yard and cut down my trees, they're going to have to do it with my dog's teeth wrapped around their ankles. Go ahead, guys, make my day.