Trials and tales of a not-so-advanced gardener--both in the dirt and beyond.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Why IPL is on my bad side...

Last fall, we had the Great Back Yard Clean-Up of 2008...limbs were cut down and chipped, brush was cleared and I was feeling pretty good about the way things looked in the "thicket that was."

Enter IPL (Indianapolis Power and Light)...

After calling a few times to ask about limbs hanging over power lines and the neighbor's power line being a bit too low, I never got a response. I figured it must not be a big deal or they were overwhelmed with requests, etc.

But no -- this was not the case. Over the winter, they came out and trimmed back all of those branches and they even installed a new pole to re-route my neighbor's line into their house (woot!). What they didn't do was take a single branch of what they cut down.

No, they left this mess for me to clean up:











And this is only half of it. There are 3 larger and taller than me piles as well as random limbs, branches and even large logs. I've called and called and actually talked with a few people regarding this issue.

According to them:
1. they don't cut down limbs on non-primary lines, which these are
2. they don't clean up after themselves during unscheduled maintenance, which this was

So here's my question...If you don't cut down those limbs, why did you come out and cut them down? Someone could have taken 2-3 minutes to explain this to me and I would have said: FINE.

Here's my other beef. Since you did come out and cut these down, why didn't you let me know that you'd be doing it? And why did it take you 3 months to do it?
If you'd come and taken care of it when I called you, I would have simply chipped this up when I rented a chipper!!

Now I have to spend even more time and money to clean this mess up again.
Thanks IPL!!

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