PECO Energy kept a promise to Chadds Ford resident Bruce
Prabel. It was a promise he didn’t want kept. PECO promised to cut down the
trees he loved, and it did.
Two years ago, on his birthday, Prabel learned that PECO
wanted to cut down more than 300 trees on his and his neighbors’ properties,
properties on which PECO has easements. As reported at the time, PECO wanted to
make sure the trees didn’t grown tall enough to interfere with electrical
transmission along the high-tension wires.
Prabel, his neighbor Avis Spees and Chadds Ford Township
tried to prevent the clear-cutting, but even court action couldn’t stop the action,
he said.
“Our struggle all along has been to have a much more
selective job done, said Prabel.
Prabel and Spees wanted PECO to simply remove fewer trees,
then trim the others as it had been doing for decades, but that wasn’t to be.
Three weeks ago, the workers came to take down the woodland.
“It’s a tragedy, isn’t it,” Prabel said.
More than 300 trees were taken, he said, but the
re-vegetation agreement will only replace about 200.
“These are all small, slow growing trees and the size of the
trees going in are two to three feet tall. It will take a number of years for
those to grow up to where they’re showing some level of vegetation.” Prabel
said. He added that some of the tees that came out were in excess of 100 feet
tall.
He said the property value has
dropped substantially.
“I had a formal appraisal done
that between myself and my neighbor’s it’s about a third of a $1,000,000 worth
of damage if no re-vegetation took place. With the re-vegetation, we’re hoping
that the property values will come back somewhat from that. It can’t be
restored because they basically removed the entire woodlands and opened up the
visible pollution of the towers.
Prable said his wife left for
North Carolina the day before the cutting started because she didn’t want to
watch her woodland be destroyed.
“I think we’ve come
to the conclusion that we’ve probably arrived at the best we’re going to arrive
at without trying to take court action,” he said. “It probably would have
dragged on for three or four more years.”
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
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This is not a “clear cut” – this is a mortal sin on the part of PECO.
If PECO is to “re-vegetate” the properties, they should hire landscapers from no less than Longwood Gardens and Winterthur. Shame on them!
I cannot believe this happened and we are reading about it after the fact. We need to get stories like this out into the media before the cutting happens. Why don’t they spend their money putting the lines underground so they never have to worry about the trees ‘interfering’ with the lines.