News Release
HRM Challenging NS Power's Vegetation-Easement Policy
(Friday, January 3/2003)-- Halifax Regional Municipality made application today to have the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board force Nova Scotia Power to abandon its new vegetation-easement policy, Mayor Peter Kelly said today.
Mayor Kelly said the privately-owned utility implemented the new policy without any consultation with HRM and it will simply add more red tape to an already onerous process for new subdivision development.
The new vegetation-easement policy requires developers to give up a 20-foot easement on both sides of a street to Nova Scotia Power or the privately-owned utility will refuse to provide electrical service to that subdivision. Also, it restricts the kind, and height, of trees that can be planted in that 20-foot easement.
Nova Scotia Power contends it requires the easement to reduce the number of power outages caused by power lines coming in to contact with tree branches, particularly during ice and wind storms.
Mayor Kelly said "Nova Scotia Power should be using HRM or other public rights-of-way... not creating new ones for their own use."
The Mayor said Nova Scotia Power wants to reduce the number of power outages by eliminating trees. "Our community prides itself, and is known across the country, for its wonderful natural vegetation and our residents cherish the tree canopy above our streets. Nova Scotia Power has a responsibility to the citizens of HRM to come up with a more practical solution."
He said a more appropriate approach to the problem would be to eliminate overhead wires ---- not to eliminate existing trees located near power lines or restrict the kinds of vegetation that can be planted in new subdivisions.
"HRM's world does not revolve around Nova Scotia Power and its utility poles, " he said.
HRM recently conducted a cross-country survey of 12 major communities and found that all, either through a By-law or by choice, require underground wiring in new subdivisions and the use of insulated power cables in the more mature neighbourhoods. Communities as large as Toronto and as small as Summerside follow those practices.
He said " Nova Scotia Power could address its concerns about worker and public safety, as well as reducing the number of power outages due to ice storms, if it undertook an aggressive program of locating new wire grids underground and/or by using insulated cable on its existing network."
Mayor Kelly said that from both an aesthetic and an environmental point of view, preserving the existing trees in local neighbourhoods and planting new ones for the future is the approach favoured by HRM and its residents.
"The Power Corporation may be a little too strident in setting down policy about what can, and can't, be done on municipally-owned rights-of-way. Other industries, such as telecommunications and natural gas, don't seem to have a problem with locating their infrastructure underground, " the Mayor concluded.
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Mayor Peter Kelly
(902) 490-4010 or (902) 835-6097 (home)
