Task Force: Final Report (Summary)
Posted General, Trees, ANC action on Tuesday, December 14th, 2004.

(This summary was distributed at the ANC3/4G Meeting on Monday, December 13th 2004)

BARNABY TREE TASKFORCE: FINAL REPORT

Executive Summary: The controversy over free removal and drastic pruning in Ward 4’s Barnaby Woods and Ward 5’s Rhode Island Avenue neighborhoods is the result of the inability of three bodies to coordinate their efforts and fulfill their appropriate responsibilities: 1) the Potomac Electric Power Company (Pepco), a D.C. public utility with a monopoly on the distribution of electric power; 2) the District Department of Transportation (DDOT), including the new Urban Forestry Administration (UFA), which assumed authority over trees on public space from the Department of Public Works (DPW) in 2002; and 3) the D.C. Public Service Commission (PSC), established by Congress in 1913 to regulate D.C.’s public utilities. This report explains how each party contributed to the problem, the steps taken so far, and the recommendations of the Barnaby Tree Task Force (BTTF), formed September 28, 2004, to resolve it.

Findings of Fact

1. After neglecting routine tree-trimming, Pepco lobbied for exemptions from the Urban Forest Preservation Act of 2002 (UFPA), which it abused by removing and disfiguring healthy but overgrown trees and failing to provide for their replacement. Following 80% power outages in 2003’s Hurricane Isabel, Pepco commissioned James Lee Witt Associates to study its response. The May 2004 Witt Report found that “downed trees and limbs were the single major cause for line damage”; noted “a public perception” that the outages resulted from Pepco’s earlier cutbacks in tree-trimming; and recommended that “the community and Pepco. . . work to preserve healthy trees, and replace unhealthy trees with trees unlikely to cause damage in a storm . But when the PSC ordered Pepco to implement the Witt Report Sept. 15, 2004, Pepco began Sept. 20 to execute a campaign to remove healthy but overgrown trees as welt as unhealthy ones. Pepco disregarded UFA instructions to adequately notify homeowners before tree work. When ward 4 Councilmember Adrian Fenty intervened, DDOT imposed a Sept. 21st DDOT stop-work order (extended Sept. 28 for 90 days). Pepco pressure led to a temporary lifting of that order. When the PSC, Pepco’s statutory regulator (again at CM Fenty’s request) asked Pepco Oct. 18th for annual budget series with details of tree-trimming and line maintenance, Pepco president William J. Sim refused to supply them. Pepco also has been unable to document claims of routine tree trimming (which disagreed with neighbors’ accounts at a Nov. 8Ih ANC 3/4 G meeting).

2. After a shaky start, DDOT is the “most improved player. The conflict between tall trees and electric wires resulted in part from longstanding DPW forestry policies. And at first, DDOT approved Pepco’s requests for wholesale tree removal. But after tests by arborists using newly available equipment, UFA determined that at least 4 and as many as 6 out of a sample of 10 trees targeted by Pepco for removal are healthy and should be saved. (It should also be noted that DDOT acknowledged that the trunks of three trees removed before the stop-work order were solid and therefore the trees should not have been removed.) DDOT issued new administrative directives to Pepco and UFA Nov. 3rd requiring advance notice to ANCs and property owners before trees are removed.

3. After crucial months as a passive spectator, the PSC has tentatively started to fulfill its responsibility for the oversight of Pepco. As noted, the PSC does not collect data in sufficient detail to determine whether Pepco is complying with its orders, nor has it yet disciplined Pepco for failing to comply. But on Nov. 19th, responding to an Oct. 29th complaint by the Office of the People’s Counsel (OPC) on behalf of Leroy Hall and other residents in Ward 5’s Rhode lsland Avenue neighborhood (whose trees, as the complaint put it, were left looking like “demented Disney World topiary”), the PSC ordered the creation of a city-wide” ‘Tree Trimming and Maintenance’ Task Force,” with representatives from OPC, Pepco, DDOT, and the PSC. The task force has begun meeting with Deputy Mayor Herbert Tillery. It should be noted, however, that the PSC has responsibility of the oversight of Pepco and the formation of a task force, while augmenting their efforts in this area. should not absolve the PSC from their role in holding Pepco responsible for compliance. And on December 13th the PSC formally requested the last five years of Pepco’s budget data for tree work and line maintenance in the District within (7) seven business days.

BTTF Recommendations for improvement

1. The City Council should close two major gaps in District tree law, and increase oversight of DDOT and the PSC. Pepco’s blanket exemptions from the UFPA should be repealed or replaced with a process of PSC waivers of specific provisions when necessary to ensure safe, reliable and quality electric service, with utilities subject to penalties for breaking the law. The law should require thaf property owners within 150 feet be notified in writing at least 10 days before any major tree work. Fines for violations of the UFPA on public space should be increased. And DDOT and the PSC should, be held accountable for the regulation of Pepco’s tree policies.

2. DDOT and UFA need to be more effective stewards of the trees owned by the citizens of the District of Columbia. UFA should be less reactive; scrutinize Pepco’s tree removal and pruning more closely; restructure emergency regulations until the UFPA can be amended; extend required permits for work on public space to include trees; adopt more systematic shade tree management; and embrace a leadership role on tree policy in the new city-wide task force.

3. The PSC should upgrade its regulatory oversight of Pepco. Based on recent evidence, the PSC should 1) reject Pepco’s contention that it is in compliance with Order No. 13381; 2) increase PSC oversight of utility vegetation management using “incentives/penalties for compliance, ” as recommended by the FERC report; 3) form an internal ”’ARC Team” to Avoid ‘Regulatory Capture’ by Pepco; 4) insist on Pepco supplying past and present budget data in enough detail to determine Pepco’s allocation of resources: and 5) make any lifting of rate caps on Pepco’s distribution services depend on vastly improved Pepco compliance with PSC directives and District tree law.

4. Pepco needs to change its corporate culture and commitment to accountability from the top down, beginning with action to improve its corporate relations with the D.C. citizens, who own the trees, DC government, and Pepco customers and shareholders. Pepco can begin this change by 1) remembering that monopoly privileges serve the public good; 2) increasing the quality and oversight of contractors; 3) improving record-keeping by Pepco arborists of tree-work; 4) providing more useful detail of its budget to regulators, shareholders and the public; 5) funding tree-trimming more consistently; 6) spending less on lobbying to expand its monopoly privileges and, instead, paying out more dividends to shareholders; and. 7) admitting its mistakes to D.C. citizens and pledging to improve its corporate partnership with the community it serves.

Extensive background information is available from the Barnaby Tree Task Force. For additional information regarding the work of the Bamaby Tree Task Force, please go to: http://barnabywoods.org:8080

Complaint by the Office of the People’s Counsel to the Public Service Commission on behalf of Leroy Hall and Ward 5 Citizens at http://www.opc-dc.gov/

Urban Forest Preservation Act of 2002 (D. C. Act 14-63 4: 50 D.C. REG 888), enacted January 31, 2003 http://ddot.dc.gov/ufa/frames.asp?doc=/ufa/lib/ufa/ufa/pdf/ufa_tree_bill.pdf

FERC Utility Vegetation Management Final Report of March 2004: http://www.ferc.gov/cust-protect/moi/uvm-final-report.pdf

Pepco Holdings, Inc. Hurricane Isabel Response Assessment, Final Report, May 2004 (The “Witt Report”) http://www.wittassociates.com/upload/wysiwyg/PHIReport.pdf

Tree Regulations – Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, May 24, 2004 http://www.ddot.dc.gov/ufa/cwp/view,a,1294,q,614267,ufaNAV_GID,1622.asp

Pepco Holdings, Inc. Response to the James Lee Witt Associates Hurricane Isabel Response Assessment , May 26.2004 http://www.PEPCOholdings.com/news/PEPCO_Holdings_Witt_Response.pdf

DC Public Service Commission Order No. 13381 [to PEPCO], September 15, 2004 http://www.dcpsc.org/pdf_files/commorders/orderpdf/ordno_13381.pdf

Report of the Potomac Electric Power Company in Response to Commission Order No. 13381, December 3. http://www.dcpsc.org

“Pepco: residents share blame for falling trees.” by Catherine Dolinski. Montgomery County Gazette, January 2, 2004, http://www.gazette.net/200401/montgomerycty/county/194731-1.html

“Arborist Accurately Admonishes Pepco, ” by Jonathan Strong, letter to the editor, .Northwest Current November 11, 2004, p. 12.

“New Device May Save Trees Near Power Lines,” Washington Post District Weekly, November 11.2004

DDOT Urban Forestry Administration, description: http://ddot.dc.gov/ufa/cwp/view,a,l292,q,575249.asp

UFA mission statement, http://ddot.dc.gov/ufa/cwp/view,A,1292,Q,575228.asp

DC Public Service Commission Mission Statement: http://www.dcpsc.org/abt/mission.shtm”

Description of James Lee Witt Associates: http://www.wittassociates.com/1162.xml

Description and History of the D.C. Office of the People’s Counsel: http://www.opc-dc.gov/

Description of Pepco: http://www.PEPCO.com/about_frms.htm

Casey Tree Foundation: http://www.caseytrees.org

Barnaby Tree Task Force Members:

Doris Chalfin Voice: 202.363.0731 dchalfin@starpower.net	John Mueller Voice: 202.364.1015 jdmatlbmc@.aol.com
Glenis Gillis Voice: 202.724.8052 gillis@dccounsil.us	Tova Sanders Voice: 202.363.8884 tova@gwu.edu
Dean Girdis Voice: 202.966.4358 dean.girdis@starpower.net	Deborah Redmond Voice: 202.362.2255 dlredmond@starpower.net
Carolyn M. Mackenzie Voice: 202.686.6989 cammgarden@aol.com

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