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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/ecological-havens-flourishing-beneath-power-lines/>
"Power lines zig-zag across North America, strung between towers that rise 100
feet or more into the sky. Beneath lie vast swaths of often barren land up to
100 feet wide and stretching for hundreds of miles.
“I think that there’s an incredible opportunity to use these really large
tracts of land that cross our landscapes for good,” says Eliza Meyer, program
administrator for the Right-of-Way Stewardship Council (ROWSC). Founded in
2013, ROWSC provides accreditation to power companies that work to improve the
biodiversity of the land along utility corridors (under power lines or above
pipelines).
That’s easier said than done. In order to protect power lines and give access
to utility crews to maintain the grid and the electrical power we rely on, the
land may well be bulldozed and have herbicide applied to it to clear the
right-of-way (ROW) of vegetation.
Constant clearing and mowing further leaves the land bereft of biodiversity.
If vegetation is not managed, disaster can strike. It happened on August 14,
2003, when transmission lines in Ohio brushed against overgrown trees,
initiating a cascading reaction that cut power to eight U.S. states and parts
of Ontario and Quebec in Canada. At least 11 people died as a result, over 50
million people were left in the dark for up to four days, and it cost several
billion dollars in economic losses.
In the aftermath, the U.S. and Canadian governments formed the U.S.-Canada
Power Outage Task Force to investigate what went wrong. Their conclusions
resulted in reinforced standards regarding vegetation on ROWs.
“There’s a lot of regulation that dictates what can grow, and how high it can
grow,” Meyer says. With this in mind, ROWSC promotes practices that foster
low-growing, native vegetation, such as wildflowers, grasses and shrubs.
According to Meyer, this type of vegetation not only protects power lines but
also creates new habitats for pollinators, small mammals and birds, and helps
outcompete non-native vegetation once established.
To date, ROWSC has accredited nine utility companies in North America — seven
in the U.S. and two in Canada — for their adherence to vegetation management
standards and the biodiversity it has fostered as a result."
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*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
