TREES in Huskisson had been pruned to protect public safety and provide local customers with a reliable service, according to an Endeavour Energy spokesman.
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He was responding to a resident outcry over the manner in which the trees had been lopped.
“While Endeavour Energy would prefer to never prune any tree, when dealing with live electricity safety must always be our first priority,” the spokesman said.
He said the minimum safety clearances between trees and power lines in a residential street were typically between two and a half and four metres.
“Huskisson has many liquidambar street trees which are a large, fast growing species that can reach up to 25 metres tall,” he said.
“When planted directly under low voltage power lines, these trees need to be managed at no greater than four and a half metres in height to keep our network safe and reliable.
“Many of the liquidambars in Huskisson are now at a height where structural branches from the centre of the tree needed to be removed to keep them a safe distance from power lines.”
The spokesman said Endeavour Energy’s vegetation specialist, a fully qualified botanist, would monitor the trees in Huskisson over the next six months to make sure they regrew as expected.
