ST. LOUIS – Storms, strong winds, downed trees and power outages—all are common in the spring season. However, Ameren works year-round to keep their lines free of trees to help keep power on.
The company works hard to trim thousands of miles of lines, aiming to mitigate any damage that may come this spring and summer.
“Outages do occur. Tree-related outages do occur, so we are trying to get 500 additional miles trimmed this year in just the St. Louis metro region,” said Amy Werner, the manager of Vegetation Management at Ameren Missouri.
Ameren has worked to strengthen its infrastructure to further withstand stronger winds and the company has seen great progress after a few rough storm seasons.
“Everything that we have hardened from last year, we saw no outages. We are strategically working on areas that were hit and impacted the hardest in the 2023 and 2024 storms. (We are working) in areas that have not yet been hardened,” she said.
Now, the work can be done faster than ever as Ameren looks to utilize an efficient tool when it can. But in some areas, Ameren has to use other methods.
“We also have climbers. They actually climb up each individual tree, trim it, come down and get up the next one. Obviously, that’s going to be the hardest, most dangerous and, unfortunately, slowest work for us,” Werner said.
Ameren will notify individuals in advance if they have lines on their property that require maintenance.
If a tree needs to be removed, the homeowner has to sign a consent form. Ameren wishes to keep the trees healthy, so that’s why certified arborists are doing the work, making proper cuts so trees aren’t damaged.
Ultimately, all this hard work is one of the most important things that Ameren does.
“It’s actually a piece that I think most customers don’t realize is important to provide that reliable and safe power,” Werner said.