Increasing Reliability through Vegetation Management, Safe Tree Planting

Vegetation management is a large part of our mission to improve our members’ quality of life through the safe delivery of highly reliable, reasonably priced electric service, innovative energy programs and exceptional member service. We pride ourselves on our dedication to providing reliable service to our memberconsumers. Because of that, we have a robust vegetation management program.

TREES, POWER LINES AND SAFETY

OEC policy states a minimum of 10 feet must separate all lines and equipment from tree branches. This allows our crews to safely work on lines when needed and ensures our service to you is reliable and uninterrupted. When trees make contact with power lines, the safety of everyone in or near that tree is at risk. For example, a child climbing a tree that is touching a power line provides the electricity a path to the ground, causing serious injury or even a fatality.

Another example is a property owner attempting to trim trees in or near power lines and accidentally making contact.

We cannot stress enough the importance of letting qualified professionals trim or remove trees around power lines. If you need trees trimmed, please let our trained staff take care of it for you.

TREES AND RELIABILITY

Trees account for a large portion of OEC's avoidable outages and are often timeconsuming to restore.

Each time a limb brushes a line, it leaves a scar. Over time, those scars affect the amperage (the strength of the electric current) and, if left unmaintained, lead to brown-outs or complete failure of the line. In fact, this scenario became real life for members near Noble in 2016. Thousands of members lost power simply because trees had worn down the reliability of the power lines in which they were entangled.

This helps explain our approach to vegetation management: The less trees we have to contend with near our lines, the less outages our members will experience.

AFFORDABILITY AND TREE MAINTENANCE

Our skilled and certified on-staff arborists use industry-accepted best practicies when pruning trees to maintain the health of each tree. Our contractor crews (Riggs Tree Service) are trained to do the same.

"While trimming trees is a short-term fix, we do prefer removing trees altogether when possible," said Clifford Chastain, manager of vegetation management.

"As a member-owned cooperative, it is our responsibility to ensure our members' dollars are being well spent," said Chastain. "We try our best to balance that responsibility with helping improve our members' quality of life."

In addition to our robust pruning program, OEC and its contractor (Edko) utilize herbicides to decrease the need for complete tree removals. The herbicides used by OEC are harmless for humans and animals while being a cost-effective method of preventing new growth.

SAFE TREE PLANTING

The easiest, most cost-effective way to protect the power lines and ensure reliability is to plant the right tree in the right place. We have given away over 200 free trees since 2018 along with directions on how to safely plant each one. Proper tree planting guidelines can be found at www.okcoop.org.

Contact Clifford Chastain at 405-217-6679 for questions regarding OEC's vegetation management program.