BC Hydro defends West Kelowna tree removal, citing public safety risk

After a West Kelowna couple complained that trees near their home were cut down with little notice, BC Hydro is defending the tree removal, saying that it was required for safety and system reliability reasons.

The utility said it is focusing on removing potentially problematic vegetation near its infrastructure, after a costly incident earlier this year on Vancouver Island.

West Kelowna residents Brent Bessex and Linda Nicholas complained that cedar trees near a utility box by their Derrickson Place home were removed by BC Hydro with limited notice.

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The couple said they received a generic letter about plants and BC Hydro boxes with a small, handwritten note in the margin, saying BC Hydro would be removing their cedars to meet the requirements noted in the letter.

The couple said there was no date for the removal specified in the note and that despite following up with the utility about the trees, the mature cedars were removed within two days while the pair were out.

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“After 40 years, why not leave them? They weren’t impacting anything,” Nicholas said.

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However, BC Hydro said the cedars needed to be removed because they posed a safety risk and threatened the reliability of the electricity system.

“In this case, these cedars were located very close to one of our transformer boxes, and as the trees have grown and matured, the risk of their roots interfering with our underground distribution equipment increased significantly,” said BC Hydro media relations manager Tanya Fish, in an email to Global News.

“This can pose a safety risk to the public, and lead to outages and costly repairs for our customers.”

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Earlier this year, Fish said, the utility spent $30,000 replacing a transformer box on Vancouver Island that was “badly damaged by mature trees.”

Since then, BC Hydro has been on the lookout for similar problems, Fish added, and has been proactively working to remove or trim vegetation before problems arise.

“In this instance, we did provide advance notice to the customer and advised them that the trees were to be removed for safety and reliability reasons,” Fish wrote.

On its website, BC Hydro said there must be a minimum of three metres’ clearance in front of the doors of a transformer like the one near the couple’s home, and a minimum of one-metre clearance on the other three sides.