This week I wrote an article about PECO’s plans to cut down many old trees around Moylan and South Media. On Tuesday, 6 ABC had a piece about the Moylan/South Media and Swarthmore Trees featuring affected residents. Currently, the plans to cut down trees in Swarthmore seems to have been tabled for now after heavy pushback.

“It could affect property values, it could affect of course, primarily, the environment, it could increase flooding in the area,” said Wallingford resident Jill Davis…

Davis said PECO wants to remove some of her trees in the front yard and replace them with two utility poles.

“Within the last month, contractors showed up in our front yard and that’s when we found out the true scope of the work,” said Davis.

I’ve heard now that PECO is planning to take down more than 50 trees in the Moylan area. The township’s Shade Tree Commission has written a letter pointing out the value of the trees PECO plans to destroy (including some rare heritage trees) and that the plan seems contrary to PECO’s own guidelines. To add further injury, PECO has now started telling residents they plan to take down dozens of trees in the Copples Ln. area of the township in addition to the Moylan/South Media work. At this point, PECO is planning to remove more trees here than the township has managed to plant in several years of tree planting efforts and PECO has made no commitment to plant new trees in the township.

PECO has resisted altering their plans to remove less trees, planting new trees on the affected properties or burying the lines. PECO claims the project will improve reliability, but if reliability was truly the goal of this project…you’d bury the lines. Which they refuse to do.

Next week there is supposed to be a meeting between PECO and state and local officials to further discuss the situation. Hopefully we’ll get an update at the August township meeting.