Tree touching power lines in California, United States: who is responsible

This page reports what the official source says. It is not legal advice: ask the office named here. It describes three utilities' own pages. It does not cover California's other electric utilities, and the state regulations the pages refer to were not opened for this page. Other states have their own rules.

Pacific Gas and Electric

The PG&E page Trees and Powerlines says the company's vegetation crews inspect approximately 100,000 miles of powerlines each year and trim or remove more than 1.5 million trees. It says its tree work meets or exceeds state and federal requirements.

Service drops, the wires that carry electricity from the pole to a home or business, are the property owner's responsibility to keep clear of vegetation and of dead or hazardous trees. The page says an owner who needs to work near service drop wires can ask the company for a free, temporary disconnect.
Minimum clearances around distribution lines: 18 inches in regular, non-high fire-threat areas and 4 feet in High Fire-Threat Districts, which the page says are set by the California Public Utilities Commission. The page says the company trims beyond the minimum to keep growth out of lines between annual cycles.
Transmission lines carry from 60 kV to 500 kV on the page, with minimum clearance of 4 to 15 feet depending on voltage, and larger clearances in High Fire-Threat Districts.
Around certain poles and towers it removes vegetation and other flammable material within a 10-foot radius of the base, up to 8 feet above the ground, and removes dead, dying or diseased growth between 8 feet above the ground and the height of the lines.
After tree work, branches and limbs under 4 inches thick are chipped and hauled away or cut small and spread on site if safe. Larger wood is left in a safe position on site, since the page says it belongs to the property owner.

The page says to call 9-1-1 for a tree hazard emergency and 1-800-743-5000 for other tree hazards, and that only trained, line clearance-qualified personnel should do tree work near powerlines.

Southern California Edison

The SCE page Vegetation Management says the company regularly works on trees that are dead, dying or diseased, or that grow into or near power lines, and that this work costs customers nothing. It gives 1.6 million trees inspected each year across its 50,000-square-mile service area, more than 750,000 of them in high fire risk areas. It says state and federal regulations require utilities to trim vegetation that could cause an outage, start a fire or endanger the public.

It says the company trims only the parts of a tree that may affect power lines, following national standards, and that trimming is for safety and clearance and not appearance.
It offers a free makesafe program in which crews remove parts of a tree to a level that lets other workers remove or prune the rest safely.
It says regulations require bare-soil clearance around the base of some poles and towers inside CAL FIRE's State Responsibility Area. Approved contractors clear brush in a 10-foot radius, up to 8 feet high, and the customer pays nothing.

The page lists 1-800-655-4555 for questions about vegetation near lines, 1-800-611-1911 for an object caught in power lines or an outage, and 911 for an electrical emergency.

San Diego Gas and Electric

The SDG&E page Tree Safety and Vegetation Management says the company prunes and removes trees and brush close to electrical equipment, for public safety and to make outages and wildfire less likely. It lists pre-inspection, patrolling, tree pruning and removal, pole clearing, quality assurance and fuels management as the steps, and says a property with overhead lines through or near it may get one or more visits from a vegetation management contractor through the year. It says its tree pruning is generally to a clearance of at least 10 feet from the power lines, that pole clearing removes vegetation in a 10-foot radius around poles that meet set criteria in the high fire risk area, and that all pruning and removal is done at no cost to the property owner. It gives 1-800-411-7343 to request an inspection of vegetation close to a power line or transformer.

What the sources leave out

The three pages describe each company's own work. They do not set out a statute or a fee schedule.

Who to call

911: a tree hazard emergency or an electrical emergency, per the utilities
PG&E, 1-800-743-5000: other tree hazards in the PG&E area
SDG&E Customer Contact Center, 1-800-411-7343: a request for an inspection of vegetation close to a power line or transformer in the SDG&E area
Southern California Edison, 1-800-655-4555: questions about vegetation near SCE lines