Tree Trimming a One-Sided Issue?

LOCK HAVEN – PennDOT is calling its recent city tree pruning a safety initiative. The contracted-out work ended this week.

A PennDOT spokesman acknowledged the project along state highways in town has drawn a lot of criticism. He said the project resulted from complaints from truckers about hitting low-hanging branches and an inability to see highway signs because of the trees; but once the work began even more complaints came in to City Hall and the local PennDOT maintenance facility.

While city officials said the tree pruning was not of their doing, “therecord-online.com” has learned the tree work resulted from an agreement reached in January between the city and PennDOT. The PennDOT spokesman said the two agencies actually compromised to save tree branches. He said normally trees are trimmed to a height of 70 feet but it was dropped to 30 feet on city streets.

ThePennDOT rep attributed part of the uproar to the fact that Lock Haven has no tree commission; other communities have such commissions and establish parameters for tree sizes and shapes. But Lock Haven has not addressed tree sizes, other than the downtown business area where the city is a participant in the state Streetscape program. He noted those trees would not be subject to the current trimming, but are maintained by city crews.

A final cost has not been determined for the city work, but he said it would be less than $100,000. He also indicated because the trees were not trimmed as high as is normally the case, another round will be in the offing sooner than normal. He said there have been few such instances of PennDOT action within the agency’s Clearfield district, noting that St. Marys recently went through a pruning where trees were described as even more of a safety hazard.