AUSTIN, Texas — A new report released by the Office of the City Auditor revealed that Austin Energy is currently lagging behind on its current goal to trim trees around power lines throughout the city.
The audit was ordered by the city council after blowback from the power outages caused by February's winter storm. Many outages were caused by ice building up on overgrown tree limbs, which fell on and damaged power lines throughout the city.
Austin Energy is responsible for maintaining tree length around power lines on a 7-year basis, for the purpose of preventing power outages like the ones seen during the 2021 and 2023 winter storms. A KVUE report from February detailed how compromised limbs were contributing to increased outages during weather events.
The report found that the company had been trimming less than what industry standards recommend, causing overgrowth and trimming difficulty, which in turn could inhibit Austin Energy from being able to properly catch up on trimming practices until possibly as late as 2028.
The report recommends that Austin Energy adopt "a long-term maintenance plan of which trees to trim to meet its current and future trim cycle goals," as well as improving its data reliability to measure if trim goals are being met.
Below are the full details of the audit's recommendations:
1. To ensure Austin Energy can effectively and accurately determine the progress of their overall tree trimming efforts, Austin Energy’s General Manager should assign resources to develop a long-term maintenance plan to assess tree trimming performance for distribution lines. This plan should be reviewed annually and used to report tree trimming progress to stakeholders and the public. This should include, but not be limited to:
- Creating a plan that includes short-range, medium-range, and long-range maintenance schedules for trimming distribution circuits including an estimate of which circuits to trim to meet trim cycle goals.
- Assessing what improvements or added resources are needed if trim cycle goals are unable to be met.
2. To improve the accuracy and reliability of tree trimming data, Austin Energy’s General Manager should improve how tree trimming data is entered, tracked, reviewed, and assessed to inform planning efforts. This should include, but not limited to:
- Training staff to enter tree trimming data consistently and in alignment with established policies and procedures.
- Ensuring management regularly reviews data entered into AE’s tree trimming database to ensure it is correct and matches the information on the work plans.
In response to the first recommendation, Austin Energy agreed to create a series of goals, ranging from intervals of 12 months (short-range plan), 24 months (medium-range plan) and 5-7 years (long-range plan), with a proposed implementation date of December 2025.
Austin Energy also responded positively to the second recommendation, agreeing to create a short-term and long-term plan, both of which will include training processes. The company proposed the implementation of the short-term plan by December 2024, while proposing the long-term plan be implemented by December 2025.
"Austin Energy looks forward to implementing the city auditor’s recommendations," Austin Energy said in a statement on Wednesday. "While this audit directly follows the 2023 winter storm, it’s important to emphasize that more aggressive tree trimming would not have prevented much of the extensive damage from the ice storm. While Austin Energy never stopped trimming trees, the utility began trimming trees to industry standards in 2021. In addition to its existing contract crews, Austin Energy is bringing on additional tree trimming crews where possible to meet the target date to be caught up by end of the year 2028."