Well that's exactly what happened to hundreds of Illinois property owners over the years, particularly those living in the Bloomington-Normal and Champaign-Urbana area, as the result of the tree trimming procedures of one of the State's largest investor-owned utilities.

As a result of that company's practices, Illinois legislators have recently enacted laws to protect consumers from what the legislators have rightfully condemned as "abusive."

SouthEastern avoids the practice of "L" notching shade trees unless requested to do so by the property owner, and although we are required to obtain specific clearance distances for safety, our policy has always been to leave the property owner's tree as symmetrical as possible.  In short, we abide by the Golden Rule of tree trimming, "We treat your trees like they were our own."

Given the fact that SouthEastern operates and maintains over 3,300 miles of power line dispersed over a ten-county area, we are faced with the gargantuan task of keeping over 70,000 trees adequately trimmed to prevent outages and those annoying blinks.

SouthEastern uses the natural method of trimming, which results in a trim cycle of about 4-5 years when adequate initial clearance is obtained.  The natural method of trimming produces a more symmetrical tree and is less damaging than rounding over or "stub" trimming.

In order to keep our members more fully informed about their Cooperative,  maps depicting SouthEastern's 2002 non-emergency trimming, spraying and mowing plans are available.  Just call Bob Kielhorn @ 1-800-833-2661 (Ext. 165) for more information..