East Mesa residents upset about tree removal

Barely 300 yards from a busy east Mesa intersection, residents enjoy walking along a tranquil path - an oasis of desert vegetation full of prickly pear cactuses and mesquite trees. The only sound comes from birds chirping.

Now, that path, known as Cactus Walk, is marred at some places. A couple of plastic lawn chairs remain next to a stump and dead leaves where a "magnificent" paloverde tree stood barely 10 days ago.

"It's such a shame," said Dreamland Villa resident Glenis Meunier as he surveyed the site, still fresh with tire marks from a wood chipper on a recent afternoon.

Meunier and other area residents are upset that 12 trees are being chopped down along the five-mile stretch. The trees are being cut down so that they won't get too close to the high-tension power lines that cover most of the stretch from 65th Street to Higley Road. Power lines tend to sag by up to 8 feet in the summer, presenting a fire hazard if trees get too close.

Residents said they understand the need to maintain the height, but suggest that trimming the trees would just as easily have solved the problem.

"It takes years and years for them to grow, especially here in the desert," Meunier said.

"They've destroyed the trees and left a mess," resident Betty Miracle said. The walk overlooks the back of her house.

Western Area Power Administration, a U.S. Department of Energy agency, oversees maintenance and operation of the federally owned transmission system.

Meunier's husband, Gene, questioned the need to bring down the trees.

"They've massacred the trees," he said.

Miracle said the homeowners association, which maintains the landscaping, did not do anything to preserve the pathway, which hundreds of residents use regularly.

But an association member said the power company approached them, concerned about the height of the trees.

Red Westall, a member of Dreamland Villa's homeowners association board, said the power company has the right of way to the land.

Westall said trimming was not an option because the power company does not have the time or the people to keep coming back to trim the trees. "That's just the way it is. They take them down and cut them," Westall said.

Westall said he has already explained the situation to some neighbors who approached the association.

"If this line were to go down, the electricity would go from here to Texas," Westall said. "That should tell people enough why these trees need to get outta there."

A WAPA spokesman in Colorado, Randy Wilkerson, said certain minimum clearances for vegetation have to be met. Wilkerson said the distance depends on the voltage of the line. The higher the voltage, the larger the distance needs to be.

"A lot of times we do work cooperatively with HOAs, but sometimes these measures need to be taken," Wilkerson said.

Peter Castaneda, the Bureau of Reclamation's chief of water and lands division in the Phoenix-area office, which also owns transmission lines in the area, said cutting down trees so they don't touch power lines is a normal procedure.

"There's been more sensitivity to such issues to prevent outages," Castaneda said. "Reliability has become more important."