9:18a.m. Utility regulators scale back on tree trimming regulation, citing impact on utilities, customers

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — State utility regulators are trimming back a plan to mandate more extensive tree trimming by Missouri’s public utilities, fearing consumers could have been hit with a costly rate increase.

The Missouri Public Service Commission is expected to approve the new tree-trimming rule next week. While still imposing the first industrywide requirements for tree pruning, the rule still would allow trees to grow closer to power lines than regulators had initially proposed.

Utility regulators are considering tree-trimming regulations after summer storms with high winds and winter storms with heavy ice downed thousands of tree limbs on power lines around Missouri in 2006 and early 2007.

The state’s four investor-owned utilities estimated that a proposed vegetation management rule published this July could have cost up to $364 million to comply with in the first year and an additional $288 million annually thereafter.

Joplin-based Empire District Electric Co. claimed it would have cost $45 million annually for it to comply with the initial proposal — an amount greater than the company’s $41 million in net income during the past state fiscal year.

Utilities could have sought to pass on those costs to consumers the next time they asked the PSC for a rate increase.

Consequently, utility regulators are revising their proposal with the aim of making it less stringent and thus less costly. A draft of the revised rule, provided Tuesday to The Associated Press, drew a mixed reaction from commissioners.

Among other things, it would strip a section that would have prohibited trees taller than 15 feet within the right of way of the largest transmission lines, instead letting utilities continue to abide by whatever guidelines the federal government sets.

As originally proposed, the PSC also would have required vegetation to be periodically trimmed within 25 feet of power lines with more than 50,000 volts and within 10 feet of power lines with between 600 volts and 50,000 volts, creating the possibility that utilities would have been required to cut trees behind their legal rights of way.

As revised, the proposed rule would lower the clearance for those larger power lines to 15 feet and leave the smaller lines’ clearance at 10 feet — with the caveat in both cases that utilities would not have to trim beyond the right of way, even if that is a smaller distance than the new requirements.