A group of neighbors in unincorporated Boulder County allege that Xcel Energy has wrongfully — and rudely — chopped down their trees, but the company says it was all in the name of precaution.
On Friday morning, Steve Iaconis, who lives on a hill that overlooks Boulder, returned from the grocery store to find an Xcel-contracted tree removal service hacking away at a branch of a tree that sits on the edge of his property, roughly 30 feet from a giant transmission line that runs through the neighborhood.
Jon Hinebauch, who lives on the other side of the transmission line, was told Friday that a pine tree he and his wife planted 40 years ago, shortly after moving into the home, was chopped down entirely.
“While we know that removal of trees and other vegetation is not always popular with our customers,” Xcel said in a statement, “the alternative is the possibility of serious damage to Xcel Energy equipment and of long-term outages over a very wide area, lasting days or weeks, with impacts to hundreds of thousands of consumers.”
Patti Hoag, who lives across the street from Iaconis and Hinebauch, returned from a business trip Jan. 15 to find her family’s catalpa tree — which she believed, and had been assured, was not an interference to the power lines above — completely gone, save for the stump.
“The fact that they’re still coming back, it’s flat-out harassment at this point,” Iaconis said. “Enough is enough, already.”
