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Houston to ban tall tree planting under power lines?


musicman

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A proposed ordinance before council would prohibit the planting of tall trees, including live oaks, under power lines. The measure originally was intended to strengthen existing rules to protect trees in public rights of way from being cut down or hacked up by developers.

But the proposed ban on planting live oaks under electric lines

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Ha. Unfortunately hiding the power lines in the trees leads to damage, especially if there's a hurricane. Look, we all saw the nightmare that restoring power was for Ike. I live one block outside of downtown and didn't have power for a week. We don't need to give the power crews any more headaches than necessary when some people went without power for 3+ weeks.

Or we could just do the "less ugly" and "more expensive" solution and bury the bastards under ground.

Uptown did it, and touted it as the reason they we up so soon after the hurricane.

Burying the lines will pay for itself in the long term with less breakage, make the street scape nicer, and allow for trees to be planted.

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Or we could just do the "less ugly" and "more expensive" solution and bury the bastards under ground.

Uptown did it, and touted it as the reason they we up so soon after the hurricane.

Burying the lines will pay for itself in the long term with less breakage, make the street scape nicer, and allow for trees to be planted.

That's not entirely accurate. Uptown buried a few stretches of line, but for the most part they just moved overhead lines to less visible areas. In spite of that their TIRZ and Management District allow it to be better funded for landscaping and aesthetic improvements than nearly any other neighborhood in all of Texas, Uptown officials concluded that burying all the lines would have been prohibitively expensive.

Uptown was among the places in the city that had power more quickly (and not all of Uptown had power so quickly) primarily because of hardened transmission lines.

i wonder what will happen with the existing oak trees around powerlines.

Eventually they die, and then they can only be replaced with shrubs...that's what it sounds like.

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