Letter to the Editor: Property owners take notice

Property/home owners take notice.

House File 460 and Senate Study Bill 1088, if passed into law, would allow electric utilities access to easements on your property for vegetation management (trimming, removal, spraying of trees, shrubs brush and other vegetation/ landscaping) at the discretion of the utility. In the absence of a recorded easement, the state would grant the utility an automatic easement. If the utility deemed a current easement to be insufficient for vegetation management, the bills would allow the utility to expand the easement without landowner consent. The landowner would not receive compensation for the new or expanded easements and the electric supplier would unlikely be liable for any property damages.

Proposed legislation of this nature has been introduced and defeated in the past but once again utilities are asking for legislation to grant them more control over your private property. Incredibly, this year House File 460 has passed the full House Commerce Committee and is now eligible for debate on the House floor.

Farm Bureau opposes both bills and believes that easements should be an agreement between a landowner and their utility and that the state should not grant automatic easements or expand current easements to a utility for vegetation management.

Please contact your legislators and ask them to deny this overreach of easement authority.

Kim Junker

New Hartford