Will Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Conroy visit my street and ask NSTAR to cut down trees that will damage power lines at some time? I like my trees, but I understand the necessity to take them down. There are people on my street that depend on electricity for medical equipment. I could never put my desire to have nice trees over the health needs of my neighbors.

Thank you Joe Plumber and pmotw for confirming that stupidity is alive and well on the net. If you actually knew what you were talking about you'd know that these are high tension lines 80 feet in the air and the tree line is 85 feet away. So unless we're talking about 120 foot trees, they don't stand a chance of even hitting the lowest line. Duh. But you're too stupid to do the math.

Banks have been real honest too lately, Hope they repo your house and throw your brass in the street next.

Martin Brody’s response to my comment was very immature and inappropriate. I would have flagged his comment as inappropriate, but sometimes it’s best for all to see how nasty and selfish some people are. My comments were directed to the situation on my own street and my own close neighbors.

Nstar lacks some simple common sense. To Mr. Brist's comment, the trees in question have no remote likelihood of ever disrupting electrical transmission. Ever. But Nstar is enforcing an archaic rule set forth by the federal government(surprise, another patently useless, poorly thought out rule) that indiscriminately (that's the key word) requires a clear cutting of anything within 65 feet of the lines. So much effort, time and money wasted on something that has NO adverse effect. The flipside, to pmotw's comment, there is thousands of miles of streets with trees, massively encroaching on lines; the same trees that caused significant interruption to service during the huge storm earlier this year. Nstar is, again, wasting valuable resources focusing on the wrong problem, and that is the core of the dispute.

I meant Mr Brodie

Utility tree trimming program is not funded by federal monies. In addition, transmission lines can result in substantially more electric impact (10s of thousands) than distribution line outages (at most in hundreds). Lastly, the utility can be fined significant amounts of money if outages are result of poor maintenence and as we have seen over the last year the public is going after them very hard to prevent future events (See CT). Eitherway, it all will come out of the rate payers pockets.

Although I sympathize with the neighbors and can fully understand why this would upset you, you all purchased land knowing this was the utility property and you have an easement agreement that states they have the right to maintain. Shame on the utility for not upkeeping this areas of the many years however their negligence does not set a precedent on what to expect. I would focus your efforts on working with the utility to obtain some mitigation efforts that will hopefully lessen the impact and work with them on what can be done on what improvements they can make/offer.

All of the trees which have been turndown had been trimmed and were below the power lines. We have a hideous eyesore in our neighborhood again. The last time this happened, NStar had to replant. Now we will have to stare at the power lines. Think this will improve property values here? Not likely.

I hope the people who are complaining about their trees being cut down or trimmed are not the same people who are for the asphalt bike road. Remember they complained about the NIMBY abutters of the old rail path?

Jeff- you sound as though you are a spokesperson for Nstar, but you are likely not because your email was well written and nice.

Many of the neighbors who bought their homes, knowing of the right of way, have cohabitated with Nstar and predecessor companies, for the most part amicably, for DECADES. They didn't just wake up one day noticing there were power lines in their back yards. With some regularity (every few years) they trimmed and pruned this right of way easement. In my family's case, this spanned 40 years! This is not a singular event. Neighbors had been accustomed to dealing with Nstar, and for the most part, again, amicably. This all changed; they no longer were remotely desirous of being polite nor amicable. For all the money they earn, one would think they would have devoted some resources to spreading what appears to be a difficult (i don't think it is) mandate; a radical shift from what neighbors had been accustomed to for DECADES. But no, they hired a young, very inexperienced spokeswoman to roam the neighborhood spreading the news of the radical shift in policy that people had been accustomed to for DECADES. This is a conglomerate that will exist with or without the (relative) 'handful' of customers affected. "you don't like us, try candlelight for a while.". The "new" Nstar doesn't care and they care even less what affect they may have on your life/ property. Much could be gained by much better communication.

As for stockfarm road area in question specifically in this article, Nstar had previously 'raised the area's several years ago. With some protest, the(previous) good neighbor in them realized that wasn't right and replanted trees that will likely never affect these high tension lines some 70 feet high. Thats why they planted this type of tree. The federal regulation that Nsatr is standing behind was precipitated by a singular event some 5 years ago that caused a massive outage. It was a tree that arched against the high tension line. In instances along stockfarm, that's a 7o ft tree. They don't exist. There is the letter of the law and the spirit. Nstar, justifiably, doesn't want tall trees encroaching on the line. We get it. The spirit of the law would stipulate that a 10 ft bush that provides a barrier of privacy to neighbors would be OK for decades if not forever. Or simply topping a tree or pruning versus cutting to the ground, would suffice in not encroaching on the lines. Afterall, they have been using this methodology, successfully for decades. Nstar is hiding behind some opaque federal regulation few people understand. Nstar has done little to work with neighbors to lessen impact or accommodate in any way, as they and their previous companies had done for years.

I agree that NSTAR owns working with the neighbors and working to come to a good solution so that 1.) they can complete the work they are required to do and 2.) they make all attempts to minimize impacts with the neighbors. In order to do the above all parties need to work together to get to that point. Shame on NSTAR if they changed their tactic on how to deal with their neighbors amicably over the years, to that I agree there really is no excuse. I do not work for the utility, however I do follow utility regulations quite a bit and I do know the legal landscape has dramatically changed for them to do their business even just over the past 2 years ago. Alot of it is our faults, in that we have no patience for electrical outages. How many residences were outraged last hurricane when we had to have no power for a few days. The equivalent DPU in CT has fined the utility in that case in the millions for failure to keep easement clear. Utilities are under the gun to ensure that trees are no longer a source of electrical outages.

The focus should be to get NSTAR to come up with remediation plans to at least make every effort to make the area look as good as it can despite what they need to accomplish. Like what was mentioned low growing bushes etc are a norm for them to plant to appease sensitive areas.

Landowners fighting the providers of electric power. Neighbors versus neighbors. Come on everyone. Let's work together and finally get this power underground! Please!