When a tall tree in the woods off Durham Street fell down during a late February thunderstorm, it took a PPL transmission line with it and knocked out power to hundreds of nearby homes in both Hellertown borough and Lower Saucon Township.
An area of Hellertown with a recent history of power outages was the subject of a discussion by borough council earlier this month.
The Durham Street transmission line, which serves the largely residential Mountainview neighborhood as well as eastern parts of Lower Saucon Township, has historically been vulnerable because of tree-falls in the wooded area near Lost River Caverns.
One such fall during a freak thunderstorm in late February knocked out power to hundreds of residents in the borough and township for the better part of a day.
“We’ve had a lot of problems (with outages),” commented councilman Phil Weber, who lives in Mountainview. He said his family lost about $500 worth of food because of the most recent power outage.
Since the trees that are potentially threatening the power line are located on private property–outside the PPL right-of-way that surrounds it–council questioned what it can do to mandate their removal or trimming.
Council solicitor Michael Corriere said the borough can only act if it determines a tree to be dangerous or a nuisance, under Section 382 of the Property Maintenance Code.
If it’s not a public nuisance, the matter is for PPL and private property owners to resolve, he said.
“(The tree that fell) was way back (from the road)” and “way outside” the right-of-way, council president Tom Rieger noted. “It was really surprising where it came from.”
Councilman Mike McKenna suggested that council suggest to PPL that it reach out to property owners in that area to discuss their trees, since proactive maintenance to help prevent tree-falls could be cheaper than repairing the line again and again.
Borough manager Cathy Hartranft said she hasn’t had any dialogue with PPL about the trees in that area, but council instructed her to reach out to the power company and report back with the results of the discussion.
The power line that extends east along Durham Street from Hellertown provides power to many homes in the Wassergass section of Lower Saucon Township.
