Blame me for your power bill
I have a confession: It’s my fault your power bill is going up.
Back in July, an Eversource rep knocked on my door to try to persuade me to participate in a pilot program to be more aggressive about removing “risk trees within the fall zone.” They’d cleared some timber in the spring, but were restricted in how deep into property lines they could reach. To sweeten the pot, they offered something in exchange: Smaller trees.
Yes, an arborist would work with homeowners on my block to plant new trees that won’t loom over the lines.
As for the choice of my street, I summoned the only question any journalist ever really needs: Why?
“Because you’re on one of two streets that lose power more than any others,” he responded. He added the detail I already knew: “We’re here a lot.”
I didn’t fact-check the Top-10 list of powerless neighborhoods, but I know I’ve spent a lot of time in the dark since moving to Newtown five years ago. I was only here for a few weeks before I had to figure out how to start my Honda generator, which kept me going for days the following spring when a macroburst trapped us in a fort of downed trees around my neighborhood.
While trees in Newtown drop like their teeny counterparts in The Kid’s Christmas village, I only faced such issues once during the three decades I lived in Stamford. What I did learn in Stamford was to be a little skeptical when the power company asked permission to cut down trees. Our home in Glenbrook was framed by a lovely stone wall, a vestige from its 19th century days on a farm (and later a ninehole golf course). The wall gradually rose in height and dropped again, and had a hole in the middle that 4-year-olds liked to pose in. From afar, the wall resembled a mantle clock.
One day about a decade ago, the power company asked if they could cut down a few scraggly trees on my side of the wall before they jeopardized lines.
What could go wrong? I found out when they were done. Zzzzip. Zzzzip. Zzzzip. Zzzzip. Zzzzip Five threats neutralized.
Alas, the chucklehead who was allowed to play with a chainsaw apparently stretched across the escalating wall instead of doing the job from my yard. So we were left with five stumps that ranged in height from about 3 feet to 7 feet. Just what everyone wants in their yard: A wooden tribute to the pipe organ.
Nevertheless, I told the Eversource rep in Newtown that we were game for the tree swap program, with the caution that another stump fiasco would earn him an eternal loop of phone messages saying only “I am Groot.”
I didn’t have much of a choice. We live in a densely wooded area, and too many of those surrounding me have been declared “windowmakers” by experts, neighbors, and — a little too gleefully — by my wife. Every time The Pup pauses to sniff a leaf during a walk on our land, I conjure the headline, “Dummy felled by tree in front of own home.”
My big follow-up question (after “why?”) was to grill the tree contractor about the shift from orange tags they previously used to sentence doomed trees to a bolder cobalt blue. Was it subtle political commentary?
“We used to use tape from Home Depot, but some people bought the same tape and marked trees in hopes of tricking us into removing ones they wanted gone,” he revealed.
That’s right, some of you tried to cheat the utility like you were playing Monopoly with your kid sister. The ol’ tape trick didn’t work.
“They actually seemed to think we didn’t keep track of everything on the computer,” he explained.
You can almost understand the temptation. Having a large tree removed from the yard can easily cost a cool grand. And “utility worker” is almost as low on the list of trusted professions as “member of Congress.”
Not every neighbor on my block signed the consent form. Some treat their trees like cloaking devices. One taps for syrup. But scores of trees have come down over the past few weeks. A guy handling the stump removal told me a couple weeks ago he was already tasked with removing 75 of them, and there are only 25 homes on the street.
Some people want to hug the trees, citing global warming. They clearly don’t understand how global warming works. Or that trees can’t hug.
Others pitch underground lines as though they invented the idea, ignorant of the price tag that comes with retrofitting a neighborhood.
And I love trees, but wonder how many are enough. While researching a story a few years ago about Houdini’s time residing at the highest point in Stamford, I found a detail from his diary that he enjoyed being able to see Long Island Sound some 5 miles away. I tried to take in the same view from the magician’s old crib 340 feet about sea level. It is now obscured by trees that have grown so high over a century that they not only shield the Sound, but the city’s tallest buildings.
Still, I feel queasy about your bill (and mine). As a neighbor and I commiserated about how the money could be better spent elsewhere, she pointed out that we’ve always gotten by with generators.
If it’s any consolation, I was driving home in stormy weather a few nights ago and had to stop a mile from home because a felled tree blocked the road. Then I reached the fork offering two routes to my home and opted for the one on the left. Another tree cut off that path. I turned around and went down my own street, which heavy storms typically transformed into an Indiana Jones Disney ride.
Eversource’s program changed that. No trees in the road, no lost power, no days of grumbling about the utility between trips to the gas station to keep the generator running.
Maybe there was a better way to make that happen. If there is, I’m … stumped.