Trees and their limbs represent one of the biggest threats to power lines.

     Entergy understands this, and in an effort to keep their customers’ lights on, they have a program that aims to get rid of trees that are a threat to their systems.

     Frank Childs, operations coordinator with Entergy, says this year’s effort has been going on in Brookhaven since the end of January.

     “This is an ongoing effort to try to give better service to our customers,” said Childs. “These are trees that are too close to lines and have forks or splits in them.”

     Childs says Entergy officials go around all their circuits and look for dead trees that could be a hazard to their lines. The dead trees are tagged and then cut them down.

     The latest effort has been going on in McComb and Brookhaven.

     “What we’re doing is trying to keep people’s lights on,” said Childs. “If we can eliminate a dead or dangerous tree and keep the trees off the lines, that keeps customers’ lights on and saves us money, which ultimately saves the customers money as well.”

     Childs said if one of the trees on Union Street Extension – where crews were working Thursday – fell, it would probably take down one or two poles.

     “That would be a six- to 10-hour outage,” Childs said. “That line feeds a service station down the road and all those houses, so it would be a lot of people without power.”

     There has been a larger amount of tree-cutting activity in town recently. Childs said the area around Highway 51 has seen increased activity in taking down trees that could be a hazard.

     “We may get another area next year that is labeled as potentially hazardous and take care of it,” Childs said. “We do this all over the area.”

     Public Works Director Steve Moreton for the city of Brookhaven works with Childs and Entergy to help get rid of trees that could be pose problems.

     Moreton said he’ll work with Childs to identify dangerous trees and Childs will get the tree cut down, with the city coming behind with the Solid Waste Department to haul them away.

     The process works to save the city money as their budget is $12,000 this year for tree cutting. Moreton said that doesn’t go very far.

     “I’ve already used $7,000 of it,” Moreton said. “I’ve got a few more trees to cut down and it’ll be gone. We try to pick out the worse ones to get rid of like the dead ones.”

     Moreton said there are plenty of large oak trees around town, and hiring a contractor to cut one down would set the city back around $1,800.

     Childs compares the preemptive measures to taking vitamins.

     “You don’t know if it’s doing you any good at all when you take vitamins, but you take them,” he said. “Then you realize you haven’t had a cold in a year, and you ask if it was the vitamins. Cutting down trees is just like that.”

     Childs pointed out the number of times the area has experienced strong winds recently, and there have not been as many people without power as usual.

     He said the effort to cut down the trees is wrapping up for this year, but Entergy workers will keep their eyes out for any more that need to be removed.

     “Then we’ll go back out in October and tag more trees to come down,” said Childs.