The emerald ash borer, an ugly little beetle from northeastern Asia, started invading the United States and Canada in 2002.
Now the dead trees left in the bugs’ destructive paths are falling over and knocking out power lines. Logs sawn by homeowners are piling up along wooded roads in Upper Bucks and power outage complaints are on overdrive.
The beetles’ deadly passage has cost Durham Township residents so many power outages in the past decade that there’s been a surge in applications for whole-house generators.
Township administrator Danielle Cox told the township supervisors at their July meeting that the township has issued 38 permits for whole-house generators since 2013, with 21 of those approved in the last three years.
The township has been dealing steadily with frequent residents’ complaints about outages, and constantly frustrated in attempts to get assistance from Met-Ed, the company that provides electricity to Durham and parts of bordering municipalities.
The Durham supervisors finally turned to state Sen. Jarrett Coleman, R-16, whose district includes parts of Upper Bucks and parts of Lehigh County.
Now, relief may be in sight.
In an email to Durham, Robert Arena, the senator’s outreach director, said the utility “has the responsibility to provide electric service in a manner that is regular and customary with the provisioning of the service in other areas of Pennsylvania.”
This fact was established after the senator contacted the Public Utilities Commission for confirmation of that requirement.
Arena said the senator’s staff will now work with officials at Met-Ed to resolve issues of who is responsible to clear and remove fallen ash trees which often cause such outages.
The beetles lay their eggs under the ash bark and when the eggs hatch they consume the nutrients a healthy tree needs to survive. The dead trees then may simply fall or, brought down by wind or lightning, crash into power lines and leave an entire neighborhood dark.
The email noted Met-Ed has its own grid system and does not share it with any other company, but it does have a circuit across the Delaware River in Gilbert, N.J., that transmits electricity to Bucks County.
Durham turned to the senator for help after little, and finally, no response, from Met-Ed. According to the email, Met-Ed will support efforts to obtain state and/or federal grants for the removal of dead ash trees and other preventive measures.
Coleman’s staff will be working with Met-Ed and the township to decide on the best way to reach out directly to residents’ complaints.
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