Power Line Safety

Blachly-Lane Wildfire Mitigation

Interested in Blachly-Lane’s wildfire mitigation efforts? Information regarding Blachly-Lane’s wildfire mitigation plan and on preparing for outages can be found on our Outage Preparedness page.

Hay on Power Lines

Help keep electricity flowing to our communities and keep them safe from the threat of fire. If you spot hay or grass collecting on a power line, please report it to your local utility.

Late spring and early summer is hay season in the northwest. During and after harvest, excess hay is carried by the wind and often lands on transmission lines. Widespread power interruptions and even fires have resulted from grasses collecting on power lines.

Tree Trimming

Help us keep electric service reliability high and costs to members low by putting power line friendly trees to use on your property. Call us today to ask about our tree removal service to remove trees growing in or near power lines.

Members who have qualifying trees removed are eligible for a $50 voucher towards a power-line friendly tree. Call us at (541) 688-8711 and ask to speak with our right of way department. They can assess your situation and determine if the trees really are a hazard to Blachly Lane’s power lines or poles.

Tree Planting Guide

If you’re getting ready to plant trees, bushes, or shrubs, please look around to see where overhead power lines may hinder their growth in the future.

A 2-foot tall fir seedling will grow over 100 feet tall and 30 to 50 feet wide. The cost to maintain a tree like this for the duration of its life can be over $30,000.

After you’ve looked up, look down for underground service as well. Planting over underground utilities or planting cover to hide underground utilities makes an outage last longer and is unsafe for workers. To get your underground utilities located free of charge, just call 811.

Other things to consider:

• No trees should be planted within 25 feet of power lines.
• Small trees that mature less than 25 feet tall should be planted at least 25 feet from power lines.
• Medium trees that mature less than 40 feet should be planted at least 40 feet from power lines.
• Large trees that mature larger than 40 feet tall should be planted at least 60 feet from power lines.

Power Line Friendly Trees

Use the power line friendly trees list below to choose trees that grow no higher than 25 feet and seldom need pruning for power line clearance.