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Communicating the Benefits of IVM
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Between temperature extremes, demanding terrain, and the pressures of service restoration, vegetation managers and their crews deal with some of the toughest working environments around. But not all the challenges come from the working environment; some come from well-meaning customers and members of the public.
Josh Roberts, vegetation management superintendent, Riviera Utilities, Foley, Alabama, understands these challenges all too well. Riviera provides electricity, natural gas, water and wastewater services to about 50,000 customers in south-central Baldwin County, the fastest-growing metro area in Alabama and one of the 10 fastest in the country. As vegetation management superintendent, Roberts has responsibility for all of it.
“We’re not just working around power lines,” Roberts says. “We have natural gas and wastewater rights-of-way, areas around the water wells, the lift stations, electric substations, gas regulators, any properties associated with those utilities. So our service area covers a lot of ground.”
Like many utilities in the Mid-South and Southeast, Riviera arrived at a vegetation management crossroads in the years after Hurricane Katrina. Would they continue with business as usual, or was it time for a new approach to managing ROW vegetation? Riviera chose to do things a little differently.
“About 13 years ago,” Roberts says, “we transitioned from a reactive to more of a proactive stance on vegetation management. And then about seven years ago, we started incorporating herbicide applications.”
Strategic Integration
Roberts started by making herbicide applications on the 100 miles of electric transmission right-of-way Riviera owns. Then as each year has gone by, he’s incorporated Integrated Vegetation Management (IVM) principles on the gas and wastewater systems; today, he’s integrating their electric distribution system as well. And while Roberts says some of Riviera’s customers were slow to warm up to their new approach, he attributes much of that hesitancy to a simple lack of familiarity with IVM methods and the benefits they offer.
“When we started the program, there were some concerns from the public, just because they were seeing something very different. But as we’ve stayed consistent with our approach, the number of complaints is down. We’ve seen a steady drop in outages — and we have the numbers to back that up. So, we can prove that our approach is providing a more reliable service.”
Roberts is careful to time applications to avoid a midsummer brown-out that could cause concern for customers in more densely populated areas. Late-summer foliar applications, along with fall and winter dormant-stem treatments, helps prevent visible die-back during the growing season and reduce the resulting phone calls.
Still, he takes seriously the questions and comments from area residents. Vegetation management work frequently brings his crews in close contact with neighborhoods, so they’ve taken a multichannel approach to communicating with homeowners in the areas in which they’ll be working.
“When we have contractors working, we send a Riviera employee with them,” he says. “That employee handles all the interaction with customers. It’s reassuring to the customer, and it allows the contractors to do their jobs without interruption. We also mail out notifications prior to starting work in an area, and we post information on our website. Customers can visit our website, access the vegetation map, type in their address and view what work we’ll be performing in the next few months.”
A Commitment to Stewardship
Roberts is also quick to point out to concerned customers Riviera’s commitment to habitat creation and management. Pollinator gardens have been installed at various office locations; Roberts hopes to start creating pollinator habitat on a larger scale at substations and wastewater lift stations — anywhere there’s an opportunity. In addition, Riviera aggressively protects the endangered gopher tortoises that build their underground burrows on the rights-of-way.
For his part, Roberts believes Riviera’s proven commitment to stewardship, along with ongoing communication with customers, will help ease the way for future adoption of IVM principles on more rights-of-way.
“The whole idea of IVM is once you start controlling the unwanted vegetation, it allows for the low-growing native plants to come back, ‘take over’ the right-of-way, and reduce the need for spraying,” he says. “So, we’ll continue to follow our plan and do what we're supposed to do, trusting that nature will take care of the rest.”
Vistas®
For over 30 years, Vistas® has covered strategies, trends and stories from across the Vegetation Management industry.