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How tall will cottonwood and willows grow around a borrow pit 5 acres and 40 feet deep. They are growing up out of the pond competing with reeds and cattails. I believe they are over ten years old right now and 12 feet tall now. I'm in a easement dispute with a power company. We agreed and I got in writing they would not cut these trees down. Now I'm being told because it was authorized by their third party land acquisition company and not by the power company itself, it doesn't count. The poles are 80 feet tall and the wires sag down to 35 to 25 feet depending upon who you ask. Can anyone tell me under these circumstances how tall these trees will actually ever grow? I have pictures, but don't know how to post them on here.

Please help!

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Doc, no experience in IL but around me they get awfully big.

Actually I can drive backroads and see big willows and/or cottonwoods. If I look, I generally find a pond that they have sucked dry and silted in.


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Doc, all trees grow according to the conditions in the soil. The same trees can vary in height. Given they have a good water source Cottonwoods will grow more that 35 feet tall for sure. Willows it depends on what type they are, sandbar and Bebb willows wont grow that tall but Weeping and Black willows will. You need a positive ID on your trees. One things for sure a chainsaw makes them all shorter.

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When I was about 7 years old, before we moved to the farm, the older neighbor boys had a tree house in a willow. As I recall, the tree house was around a mile up. Of course everything seems bigger when you're 7! grin


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They want to herbicide an entire side of my pond. It's a triangle along a 4 lane highway and they want to herbicide the longest side. I want the trees. I have bats, pheasants, song birds and other birds that will be affected by the herbicide. I'm on the prairie of Illinois, I have zero wind or shade protection without those trees. I need them for ice fishing and shade. We have reported cases of West Nile virus and now Zika. I don't like mosquito bites! I cannot remember EVER driving down the interstate in Illinois and seeing tall trees growing up out of the pond like mine are. Maybe I'm wrong? I have no problem with them trimming them when they get that tall, if they ever get that tall. I think the cattails and reeds that surround the pond out compete the trees because they haven't hardly grown over the last 10 years. Does that make sense?

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Eastern cottonwoods can exceed 100' height. I have a couple older trees that are likely 80'+.


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Are those trees competing like the ones I'm describing? I don't think mine have hardly grow at all.

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As Louis & Clark explored the west up the Missouri River they marveled at the giant Cottonwood trees.


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Cattails grow dense enough to provide habitat for mosquitos to breed, tight enough so that small fish that eat mosquito larvae cannot easily swim in the water to eat the larvae. If it was my pond, I would remove every cattail.


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With all do respect my cattails are an important part of nature in my overall pond world. My wood ducks live in it with their young. My Redwing blackbirds raise their young in it. It is an incubator for many life forms. Indians used different parts of it for for food. The white centers of the stems have great taste in salads. What a wonderful world we live in if you step back and really look at it.

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Unfortunately cattail seeds don't respect property boundaries. Now that I have good alternative cover around my older ponds and wetlands, I only need to pull a few per year, but the new pond required thousands to be pulled the first year. Less invasive plants with similar benefits are available, like giant burreed. There are also less invasive cattails, but distinguishing these from invaders is very difficult.

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The cottonwoods here grow very tall fast. They'll be 12 feet tall in 4 years given enough water. They are far and away the tallest trees in our 30 year old woods. Wish I'd have cut them down when they were small but they seemed far enough from buildings so I left them. One of them now would probably take out my garage if it fell wrong.

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I have zero problems with mosquitoes as of now. I can't fathom the thought of removing them. My pond is 40 feet deep and clarity many times is over 10 feet. My neighbors who also bought borrow pits of same size and depth chose to remove their cattails and their water clarity is not over 3 feet. My preference would be to have tall trees surrounding the pond because I live in flatland corn country and can't fish if there's much wind. My forester came out and said the willows were Sandbar willows and will be of no danger to the power lines. I have a signed document stating they can't cut down the trees, but they are trying to weasel out of it. I'm going to try to negotiate moving the cottonwoods to the opposite side of the pond or have my forester cut and herbicide the stump. Them herbiciding the trees is not going to be an option.

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If the third party land acquisition company had enough say so to acquire land and write the contracts, then their wording in the contract should be binding, at least that's the way I think.

If not, then ask the power company that you want the contract voided and to remove their power poles from your property.


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We have a few cottonwoods that have gone from 20' when we moved in more than 10 years ago, to at least 60' now. They put on at least 2' of growth a year, and steal a lot of my water before it gets to the pond. The only reason I let them stay is they are all males, so no fuzzies, and they are too far from the pond to have roots to the water in it. The females and their fuzzies will make a horrid mess of everything. There is one near the power lines, and it is likely to be removed this summer. It is also a female, so it is making a mess. It is still small enough to manage, but it wont be long before it is out of control!

You should demand they don't use herbicide, but harvest the troublesome trees (cottonwoods only) instead. The willows wont get near as large. They fall apart when they get too large.

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Originally Posted By: Dr. Terry
.... Now I'm being told because it was authorized by their third party land acquisition company and not by the power company itself, it doesn't count. ....


I think the key here is the power company has admitted that they hired a third party to act as their agent. I am not an attorney but, it seems pretty clear to me, that the contract is binding as it was their authorized agent that made the deal. If the power company says the agent was not acting on their behalf then isn't the contract void anyway as the power company has no standing or right of way...only the agent does? I have never seen a contract where one party can pick and choose which clauses they are willing to abide by. I would quit being defensive and go offensive. If they kill off the trees, I would get the lawsuit rolling for destruction of property and trespassing (trespassing because not their contract right?). Hmmmm....How much does it cost to buy and replace a big mature tree and have it moved to the property?

Last edited by Bill D.; 05/31/16 09:21 PM.

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Excellent points. My biggest concern is the power company Ameren owns the court system here in Illinois where 3 out of the last 5 Governors have gone to prison. I won the eminent domain case twice in the state capitol Springfield, but the ICC (Illinois Commerce Commission) in Chicago said they don't care and overruled the judge in Springfield. Ameren then sued me in Appellate Court and in my local County Court to rack up my attorney fees and I finally settled under the condition these willows and cottonwoods wouldn't be eliminated. Now they are telling me they "mis-surveyed" and my wind break trees 150 35" hybrid willow trees are in the easement I fought almost 2 years to keep them out of. They are trying to buy me out, but don't want to give me more than what the trees were valued at. I was told the next step is to get a restraining order since they're actually trespassing and in breach of contract because they didn't put the poles where they were supposed to and the easement isn't where it's supposed to be? ??????? The poles are up but the line isn't through them YET. It's only a few days away though. I feel so alone, scared and hopeless.

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Alone, scared, hopeless and soon to be dead broke. I feel for you.


It's not about the fish. It's about the pond. Take care of the pond and the fish will be fine. PB subscriber since before it was in color.

Without a sense of urgency, Nothing ever gets done.

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I threatened a Temporary Restraining Order. Since I had the law on my side and stopping construction would cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars per day, I got the amount of money I wanted and they got to cut down my trees. I'm as happy as I could be under the circumstances. I never gave up and I fought them to the bitter end. I would rather not have the money and not have the power lines and have everything left alone, but they will never forget the name Dr. Terry Traster. I can promise you that!

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I feel for ya. Ive fought for trees my entire life. Power lines, road commissioners, neighbors, Big Rex my dad was a good dad but didnt like trees. Corn and beans dont like trees, that was Big Rexs problem .I came home from work one day and a neighbor had bulldozed a 1/4 mile fence row out that was way over 1/2 mine. If it wasnt for the wife talking me down I was headed to his house with a chain saw to cut every tree in his yard. Im glad she did now. Once there gone there gone.Im 60 now and have planted 3000 + trees in the last 40 yrs.I will never see them reach the size those big oaks were in that fence row were.If a tree hater had to suck for the air they produce he might think twice about them.

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I have cottonwood trees and they grow big and beautiful. I have one cottonwood at my pond and several vary large regular willow's also around my pond. My pond is bermed so I don't get water from extra acreage flow or from any water resource than rain. My one acre pond drops about three feet in a summer.

A friend of mine was on vacation and the electric company cut some scrub trees by the road in front of his house. He hired a lawyer and they got a 6 thousand dollars settlement out of court.

Two years ago a group of people came around and said they were going to cut my trees at the road of my property. I told them how my friend
was going to sue the electric company and won. I never saw them again. This is in Indiana.


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REMC came to the door and timidly suggested they might like to cut some trees that were growing up into the overhead lines. I could tell he was used to getting raked over the coals everywhere he went. I told him fine with me, I like having electricity more than those few trees. He was like, really??!!


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Dr Terry, I don't know about Illinois, but in Missouri, utility companies, and their agents (like land surveyors, tree trimmers, employees, etc)) are immune from trespassing if acting in good faith...you can not legally remove them from any land when working. In Missouri, after the wind and ice storms took out 90% of Ameron's 8 million plus customers in Illinois and Missouri, Missouri power commission created a regulation REQUIRING Ameron to either eliminate or trim ALL trees in ALL easments.

I had property with power line easements in Arkansas and Missouri...on the transmission line easement, the utility could remove all vegetation except grassy ground cover for the specified easement width under the lines....on the supply line (going to homes/businesses) any trees or limbs even partially within an easement would be removed at will, and any obstacles (like fencing) in the easement "could" be removed, at will. There is no requirement for a utility to install gates or to take care at all not to kill a tree when they trim. Maybe Illinois is different, yet a utility easement will be a very expensive legal battle!

Herbicides that kill trees are almost always used under high voltage transmission power lines so any vehicle can drive the easement

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It's like losing a family member. You should have gone to his place and cut every one of his trees down. It would have been worth it.

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According to NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation) the federal supervisors of Ameren et al, trees can be within 4 feet of the power lines that are 100 or bigger. Mine are the big 345. Anything else they tell you that there can't be vegetation in the easement is a bold faced lie. That is a SELF IMPOSED restriction, not an actual law, unless Missouri passed a law Illinois doesn't have. In Illinois, I do have the right to make them stop working. We settled and I stuck in the knife and twisted. I had negligible legal fees, I did nearly everything myself.

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