Vegetation Management

BPA owns and maintains hundreds of properties in Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho and a few in Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, and California. Transmission Services staff live and work in urban and rural communities where its transmission facilities are located. Transmission Services has field offices in each region that work directly with land owners, government agencies and community groups to maintain transmission facilities and ensure public safety around high voltage transmission lines. Although power lines are essential to distributing electricity to your home or office, they are not designed for human contact. It is extremely dangerous to touch a power line, whether it is overhead or on the ground.
Tower diagram

Safety is at the core of what we do. 

Trees and power lines have never been good neighbors. That’s why BPA works hard to keep a safe distance between high-growing vegetation and nearby power lines through a comprehensive vegetation management program. Even though BPA regularly inspects its transmission lines, you can help by notifying BPA if you see trees or vegetation that might be growing too close to  the lines. For your own safety, it’s important that you never attempt to trim or remove a tree that’s near a transmission line on your own. Working around energized power lines is very hazardous. Instead, call BPA and its specially trained crews will take care of it.

Questions or Concerns? Contact us at 800-836-6619 or vegmgmt@bpa.gov. 

Vegetation Program

The vegetation program consists of three program areas for rights-of-way (ROW) management: Vegetation Management Program, Danger Tree Program and The Access Road Program.

Vegetation growing near high-voltage lines is hazardous in two respects. 

  1. If trees or tall brush touch a transmission line, they can shut down that line and disrupt the flow of electricity. For example, during storms or high winds, tree limbs can fall on transmission lines, knocking out power to communities. Because a single line in BPA’s system serves thousands of homes and businesses, an incident like this could trigger outages that affect the entire West Coast.
  2. Electricity can “arc” or “flashover” from wires, through the air, to trees, other vegetation or equipment up to 15 feet away, where it can cause fires, injuries or even fatalities to anyone nearby. Another danger is that electricity from the line can make a tree branch so hot it catches fire, which can threaten homes in residential neighborhoods and spark wildfires in rural areas. BPA crews will maintain a 25-foot safety zone between the highest point the vegetation will potentially grow and the lowest point the power line will sag under extreme conditions. Sometimes, even though a tree is outside the right-of-way boundary, BPA crews will remove any growth that comes within the 25-foot clearance zone or remove the tree if it’s unstable and likely to topple over on the power line.  

Landowner Use and Safety Information

Safety First

Safety is first at BPA, and we want to ensure safety around power lines.