UI Removing Some 35 Edgewood Park Trees

This locust tree has another week to remain standing — before it and a couple of dozen other orange-tagged aboreal Edgewood Park denizens get the axe.

United Illuminating is clearing them as part of broader improvements to Westville’s electric grid.

The 35 or so trees in the park were supposed to start coming down this week.

City government’s top tree official, Christy Hass, who has to sign off on the tree removal, insisted waiting another week so she and UI have time to explain to wary neighbors that the trees are dead or dying — and that, in their view, the city makes out well in the deal. The above pictured treescape along Edgewood Avenue through the park will look dramatically different; Hass wanted people to hear about why before seeing it.

“This is not clear-cut[ting],” she said Monday.

Hass has been taking neighbors through the park to demonstrate the condition of the trees and describe the process by which decisions were made.

UI has been upgrading its infrastructure throughout town. That has included decommissioning three old, outdated substations. The utility is currently decommissioning one in Fair Haven. Now comes the West Rock Avenue substation by the West River in Westville.

That substation is about 60 years old, said UI’s vegetation manager, Dave Goodson. ​“Its time has come. It’s time to replace that older equipment with newer, more reliable infrastructure.”

Rather than build a new substation, UI will connect Westville’s wires to existing power lines from other areas. That means Westville will no longer be ​“an island by itself” especially vulnerable to outages, Goodson said. Currently, if the West Rock substation fails, the neighborhood loses all its power.

(Asked about the idea of burying power lines instead — read more about that here—Goodson responded: ​“That’s something that was looked at. It is really cost-prohibitive.”)

UI will erect new poles and higher-voltage wires in Westville and remove trees in danger of falling. It can’t do the latter job without the permission of Christy Hass (pictured).

Because the trees in question aren’t out on the street, the removal decision doesn’t have to come up for a public hearing. But because New Haveners have proved passionate about trees — and because trees play an important role in the city’s environment — Hass insisted on carefully going over each tree for removal and taking time to involve citizens. She walked the park with a UI work planner to identify trees deemed in the way and in danger of toppling.

It turns out that a good 15 – 20 locust trees right behind a fence along Edgewood Avenue, like the one pictured at the top of the story, are either dead or dying, Hass said. The city would like to remove them for safety reasons, she said — but, within budget constraints, higher priority goes to dying trees at, say, a school, where they could fall on a person. Another 12 trees targeted by UI near Coogan Pavilion similarly need to come down, Hass said; they include oak, maple, white pines, ash, and mulberry trees. The city will save a good $30,000 having UI take down those trees, Hass estimated.

As word spread this past week about the operation, neighbors—already suspicious of UI due to a history of aggressive tree removal in the wake of storm power outages — swapped concerns over an email-blast exchange started by Westville journalist Mark Oppenheimer.

“I am very concerned that UI is asking for tree removals anywhere they might think there could possibly, someday be a problem with their lines, and not giving any weight to the real tragedy of removing living trees, which beautify our neighborhood, fight climate change, and help keep our air clean. If these trees are left where they are, what is the risk? Given that there are no people living on the stretch of Edgewood Avenue that runs through Edgewood Park, the risk of a dying tree falling on a person would seem to be low; so why is this being done at all?” Oppenheimer wrote, eliciting responses from people throughout the neighborhood.

A Yale Avenue homeowner, for instance, reminded how a prior ​“pruning” of the same Edgewood Avenue stretch cut into the tree canopy, and how “[T]he arched canopy on most of our streets in lower Westville has disappeared. One only has to look at Alden, McKinley, Central and most other streets where once old and elegant trees stood only to be removed and replaced by little runts of trees. …

“How is it the UI can ride rough shod through our neighborhood and for their convenience destroy our streetscape? Who honestly thinks this severe cutting of our tree canopy will prevent the rare power outage? If you think about how many miles of wire power travels to get to a single home; a failure can occur miles away by a car hitting a utility pole which has a greater probability than a branch severing a power line.”

After hearing from neighbors like these, Westville Alder Adam Marchand walked the targeted portions of the park with parks chief Rebecca Bombero. He said he came away convinced the trees ​“clearly looked in bad shape” — like the one he photographed here, with a hole in the trunk — and had been appropriately chosen.

“From what I can see,” Marchand said Monday, ​“Christy Hass is being very active in engaging with UI and making them justify every tree removal. I’ve heard good feedback from folks in the other neighborhoods where the tree belts have been trimmed for the transmission upgrade. It seems to be going pretty well in terms of citizen engagement and people feeling satisfied.”

Two active members of Friends of Edgewood Park also came away convinced after park walks with Hass.

Willie Hoffman, the group’s president, said he’s glad UI will pay for a needed job. Otherwise, he said, the dead trees could harm live trees or knock out power if they fall.

He noted that UI has agreed to try to have the removed locust tree trunks fall parallel to Edgewood Avenue to serve as an erosion barrier along the steep embankment down to the West River. He also said his group will work with Urban Resources Initiative (URI) to plant shrubs in place of some smaller trees that will be removed along the service road, clearing the sidewalk while creating more of a ​“garden” feel.

“In a way, it’s a win-win,” agreed Frank Cochran, another active Friends member who walked with Hass. ​“but it’s going to look very different.”

Cochran stressed the need for the city to supervise UI’s crew when it removes the trees, given the utility’s ​“bad track record.”

“Definitely,” promised Hass. ​“They have to tell me every day what they’re doing. We will definitely have oversight over everything they do.”