Vegetation Management & You

Mar 4, 2025

A recurring challenge we face is unplanned service interruptions caused by trees and vegetation. When trees grow too close to electrical lines, poles, transformers or other equipment, they can cause power interruptions, and limit access to electrical equipment when it comes time for routine maintenance or inspections. Additionally, when trees are near energized conductors, they can pose safety hazards to the public and utility personnel. This is why cutting and trimming the vegetation along our right of way (ROW) is a top priority for CFEMC.

Through the years, we’ve determined that the leading causes of outages are not trees within our “maintained” ROW, but are the trees outside the ROW, referred to as “danger trees.” Danger trees are often dead or dying trees that have either succumbed to damage from storms, pine beetles or harsh weather conditions such as drought.

Cutting and trimming danger trees has remained a concentration for our vegetation management crews as we perform our maintenance cycles. But with thousands of miles of line, it’s impossible for us to know of every tree that could potentially hit our power lines, and that’s when we need your help.

If you see a potential danger tree near a line, contact us so we can have our teams inspect the area. Additionally, if you have a tree on your property that threaten our power equipment, we will cut down the tree for you at no cost.

As we strive to continue delivering reliable power, we monitor and maintain over 6,800 miles of line from the constant reliability threat vegetation can pose. As with all of CFEMC’s maintenance plans, we continue to analyze and find ways to improve as we provide our members with safe, affordable, and reliable service.