ENVIRONMENT VS. HYDRO ONE
Utility wants to axe 65 LaSalle trees
LaSalle Mayor Ken Antaya has vowed to do whatever it takes to protect a wooded area that cost the town $3 million to preserve.
“I don’t care if we have to chain somebody to a bulldozer, we’re going to do it because that area is too important to us,” Antaya said following a presentation to town council by a representative from Hydro One outlining plans for “emergency vegetation maintenance” along the area’s transmission corridor.
Jake Zink, a forestry supervisor with Hydro One, told councillors up to 65 trees need to be removed along the transmission line, which stretches two kilometres from Brunet Park off Normandy Road to Todd Lane.
Zink called it a “serious hazard” and said the work has to be done immediately, although he said the area is on a six-year maintenance cycle and work was last done in 2010.
“This work in April is strictly to target these danger trees that have to come out, they are a public safety concern,” Zink said.
In his report, Zink said some vegetation has reached heights that pose an “imminent risk to the overhead power lines,” and if left untreated, may cause a power outage. Additionally, the dense vegetation is “impeding access for crews to conduct on-going maintenance work or emergency repairs.”
Antaya said he’s skeptical and worried the utility plans to go ahead and clear cut the area and create a meadow in the wake, something he was told last summer by a representative of the utility.
“I’m still concerned that once they get there they’re going to say, ‘Oops, my saw slipped,’ and everything is gone,” he said.
“(They ’re) saying this is an emergency measure. An emergency to me is something that occurs very suddenly. This is not sudden. This is something that’s been happening for years. All of a sudden now it’s becoming an emergency.”
Antaya asked Zink for a report clearly outlining what trees are to be cut down before the work starts and has instructed town staff to report any activity in the wood lot.
“We made a big commitment out there,” he said. “We spent over $3 million purchasing and to compile that property so that we could preserve it and … we don’t want it destroyed by any agency, including Hydro One.”
Antaya said he hopes Hydro One will look at ways that will “cause the least disturbance and maintain the integrity of that environmentally significant area.”
I don’t care if we have to chain somebody to a bulldozer, we’re going to do it because that area is too important to us.