Vegetation Management

Executive Summary
Critical electrical power infrastructures—including transmission lines, relay facilities, pipes, fences, gates, bridges, and access roads—occupy many acres across the United States on rights-of-way (ROW) corridors. Easy, safe access to repair and update these critical infrastructures is essential. Proper maintenance—including vegetation management—of ROW and its supporting facilities is crucial to ensuring the reliable transmission of affordable electrical power, though this is no small task. Unmanaged and poorly maintained vegetation can cause electricity outages, wildfires, soil erosion, and water quality issues. These events can damage electric power infrastructures, resulting in serious reliability, economic, environmental, and national security consequences.

Proper vegetation management on ROW is not just a concern for utility managers; it is also vitally important to those who manage the land adjacent to ROW. How vegetation is managed on ROW can impact the surrounding land by causing wildfires, fragmenting wildlife habitat, and introducing invasive and exotic species. Utility companies and land managers can both benefit by implementing Integrated Vegetation Management (IVM) programs on ROW and adjacent properties.

IVM is generally defined as the practice of promoting desirable, stable, low-growing plant communities—that will resist invasion by tall-growing tree species—through the use of appropriate, environmentally sound, and cost-effective control methods. These methods can include a combination of chemical, biological, cultural, mechanical, and/or manual treatments. The IVM approach strives to manage vegetation and the environment by balancing benefits of:

• Control.
• Cost.
• Public health.
• Environmental quality.
• Regulatory compliance.

Adopting IVM on ROW can:

• Improve transmission reliability.
• Reduce vegetation management costs.
• Reduce utility customers’ costs.
• Improve native plant and songbird habitat.
• Provide other ecological benefits (e.g., reduce runoff, control invasive species, create wildlife habitat, etc.).

Examples of Integrated Vegetation Management (IVM) plans/policies

• Vermont Electric Co-op
• Matanuska Electric Association
• Mountain Electric Co-op (includes standards for ROW maintenance and ROW treatments)
• Delaware Electric Co-op

Other co-ops using IVM (don’t have specific plans)

• Carroll Electric (located in NW AR/SW MO; works with Finley Engineering which several of your MO co-ops use; looked at costs of using IVM) (T&D World Story)
• Duck River  (T&D World Story)
• New Hampshire Electric Co-op (Co-op website)
• Rappahannock Electric Co-op (Co-op website)
• Shenandoah Valley Electric Co-op (Co-op website)

Additional resources:

• EPA IVM Fact Sheet
• EPA benefits of IVM on ROWs

Best practices for a risk-based approach to vegetation management of distribution lines:

•  Report
• Presentation
• Briefing

Pesticide use in Missouri:
The overall goal of the Pesticide Program is to prevent unreasonable adverse effects of pesticide use on human health and the environment while helping assure the availability of pesticides needed to maintain our quality of life. This is accomplished by licensing pesticide applicators and dealers, registering pesticides and performing inspections and investigations in the enforcement of the Missouri Pesticide Use Act and the Missouri Pesticide Registration Act.

The Registration Act provides authority for Pesticide Registration. Other issues that relate to pesticide registration include Special Local Need (Section 24C) registrations, Specific Exemption (Section 18) registrations, and Experimental Use Permits (EUP). Learn more ...

• Pesticide Applicator Database
• Pesticide Registration Database

In 1988 EPA established the Endangered Species Protection Program (ESPP) to meet its obligations under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Learn more ...