es from the air across Clay County last week
By Kelly L. Crawford
Guest Writer
Residents of Clay County may have noticed in the last week a helicopter doing tree trimming in various areas of the county. Blue Ridge Mountain EMC enlisted the assistance of Avid Aviation to provide a helicopter side trimming service to help trim back trees and overgrown vegetation in rights of way.
By using this helicopter trimming service, BRMEMC will be able to trim back overgrown trees more efficiently and quickly than if performed from the ground. With approximately 6,400 miles of line to maintain, it is important to be as efficient as possible to keep costs low and maximize the number of miles of line cleared each year. It’s estimated that the helicopter can trim three miles of line per day.
Following aerial trimming, crews will come through to properly clean up and dispose of the material left behind in many of these areas, but this work will take time.
BRMEMC has worked hard to identify areas within our service territory where trees have grown too close to lines or more regularly fall on power lines causing outages. Our hope is that by using this service now we can stay ahead of overgrown trees and vegetation in our rights of way and ensure electric and broadband reliability for our members into the future.
The safety and well-being of our members is important to us. For this reason, we ask that members please stay away from the areas that are being trimmed and cleared.
Kelly Crawford is manager of media and communications at Blue Ridge Mountain EMC.