Meet Our Team of the Month for January: Vegetation Management

Here in Washington, AKA “The Evergreen State,” there are a lot of trees! The leafy skyscrapers for squirrels are one of the main attractions of the Pacific Northwest.

Someone must tame those tall, green wonders, and in Snohomish County and Camano Island that responsibility falls to the PUD’s Vegetation Management team. The 22-person department notifies, coordinates and, of course, trims to help ensure reliable power for PUD customers.

Please join us in honoring Vegetation Management as the January 2025 Team of the Month.

“The Vegetation Management Team is a cohesive group that supports each other and our customers,” said Mark Flury, Senior Manager of Transmission & Distribution, System Operations & Engineering. “They are extremely positive, always looking for continuous improvement, have a high quality and quantity of work and never ask for recognition. They simply do their jobs – and do them at a very high level.”

The group’s tree crews work across the PUD’s heavily wooded service territory. Working with customers and other stakeholders, the group tirelessly endeavors to ensure lines are clear of potential hazards. Without their efforts, outages would be exponentially worse during storms.

When storms do come, they are part of the storm response team out in the field for days on end.

“The Team of the Month recognition is a great honor,” said Randy Packebush, Vegetation Management’s Superintendent. “This team deserves it. They do a great job every day taking care of business. We really appreciate the appreciation shown by the PUD.”

Vegetation Management has gone to great lengths recently to inform customers of upcoming work and educate about electrical safety. The group has started sending postcards to customers before trimming to let them know they will be in the area for routine maintenance.

“We consistently hear from customers about how professional and helpful our Tree Trimmers, Notifiers and Coordinators are,” said Aaron Janisko, Senior Manager of Regional Design and Construction Services. “The team worked closely with Energy Services to find new ways to communicate with customers about upcoming tree-trimming plans. Since COVID, notifying has been a challenge, and this team took it upon themselves to find new and better ways to communicate, which has already been a huge success.”

The postcard also gives customers a chance to reach out with any questions they may have.

“It really helps to let people know,” said Jeremiah Gardner, a certified arborist who works in Line Clearance. “Customers seem to really appreciate it. They can reach out and explain their perspective. They might not know much about trees or electricity, so it’s fun to help educate them.”

The group has several other programs keeping them hard at work. They recently completed their first fire mitigation trimming near Index and Darrington. In addition, they have two cool projects with even cooler acronyms: TREE (Tree Relief for Energy Efficiency) and TOAD (Tree Outage Assessment Data).

“We got involved with the Energy Efficiency group to make the TREE Power program. It’s a grant available to public entities and local cities to support tree-planting projects,” said Jeremiah.

The team is also collecting data on tree outages to see what management strategies are providing the most effective reliability and safety results.

“With TOAD, all tree outage data – over 200 data points – are investigated,” Jeremiah explained. “We visit the sites to see what happened and analyze tree species, proximity to line and other considerations.”

The Vegetation Management team received the Tree Line USA award for the 21st consecutive year. The award recognizes public and private utilities that pursue practices to protect and enhance America’s urban trees. Tree Line USA promotes dual goals of delivering safe and reliable electricity while maintaining healthy community forests.

The department has 14 certified arborists, a classification that requires a test on 12 categories including tree identification. It also requires continual education to recertify.

“Our department has a good mix of senior employees, folks who have been with the PUD since the 1990s, and newer employees who have been here a couple of years,” said Business Operations Coordinator Madelyn Chrisman. “It creates a great perspective throughout the department and leads to great problem solving.”

Congratulations to the Vegetation Management team:

• Tracy Bell
• Travis Bouwman
• Leon Burfiend
• Dave Burress
• Tom Centanni
• Madelyn Chrisman
• Korien Cook
• Brad Cooper
• Nick Fowler
• Jeremiah Gardner
• Randy Gusa
• Dale Lanning
• Rich Lloyd
• Lincoln Manahan
• Matt Missel
• Randy Packebush
• Josh Perez
• Justin Rastovac
• Jeff Rolph
• Wayne Spoelstra
• Colleen Stevens
• Ed Tarantino