Beaufort
While Beaufort’s annual Water Festival is entertaining thousands during its annual 10-day run, a controversy is brewing over the city’s live-oak-lined streets where Dominion Energy has begun a citywide tree trimming job it conducts every five years.
Some residents say the periodic maintenance work around power lines is a butcher job on the city’s beloved tree canopy.
Dominion says the trimming is necessary to prevent outages and that the limbs will grow back.
Complaints are inevitable when Dominion trims trees or puts up new power poles in the city known for its stunning tree canopy.
But the latest outcry from residents has prompted Dominion to schedule a meeting Wednesday where residents can learn more about the tree trimming practices, City Manager Scott Marshall said Monday.
Tree trimming work along power lines in the Pigeon Point area has angered some residents who think it goes too far. Dominion Energy says the trimming is needed for public safety. Robyn Koppernaes
The meeting comes after numerous resident complaints. City officials also have pressed the utility to communicate better on its trimming practices after it refused to show up to a recent city meeting where the issue was on the agenda.
Dominion says it’s concerned about safety
It’s a high profile issue in a city known for its massive live-oak trees and residents who love them.
Dominion spokesman Paul Fischer said the trimming work underway now will span 45 miles of overhead distribution lines across Beaufort. The work, which will last into September, is part of Dominion’s five-year cycle to ensure safety and reliability.
“While we understand and appreciate the passion surrounding trees across the Lowcountry, safety remains our top priority,” Fischer said. “Trees that have grown too close to overhead lines are both a fire hazard and an issue of employee and public safety.”
The work on the distribution lines hits close to home because those poles run through residential neighborhoods. The work follows trimming that already has occurred on larger transmission lines.
Trees are being ‘butchered’
Robin Koppernaes, a Pigeon Point resident, says trees are being “butchered.” “There’s no other way to describe it,” she said.
Along the streets in her neighborhood, there’s now solid sun where a lovely canopy once blocked its rays and heat, Koppernaes said.
Some Beaufort residents think trees are being butchered by Dominion Energy which is has began a five-year maintenance project trimming trees along power lines. Dominion says the trimming is needed to prevent fires and outages. Robyn Koppernaes
Koppernaes was among three or four residents who turned up at a Beaufort City Council meeting Tuesday, July 7 to complain that the trimming along the transmission lines was heavy-handed. In light of the trim work along the larger transmission lines, they raised concerns about the next round of maintenance along the smaller distribution lines, which began July 13.
Dominion Energy is trimming trees in the Pigeon Point area. It will be conducting five-year maintenance along power lines throughout the city this summer and into the early fall. City of Beaufort
The trimming this year has gone 50 to 75 feet into people’s property, says Koppernaes, who described it as “beyond the pale.”
Koppernaes wrote a letter about the issue to Marshall, who noted the city was powerless against Dominion because it owns the right-of-way.
“Which is really kind of depressing because Beaufort is a beautiful place and a lot of its beauty is the trees, and they’re being destroyed all over the town,” Koppernaes said.
Marshall agreed the trimming looks horrible but the city, he said, has little control.
Following a nationally recognized pruning standard
City officials said the Public Service Commission of South Carolina oversees utilities like Dominion.
Dominion’s Fischer says Dominion Energy and its contractors follow nationally recognized utility pruning standards approved by the International Society of Arboriculture.
Residents argue the pruning is going too far.
Cyndi Phillips, who lives on Frazer Drive, called the tree trimming used by Dominion an “assault” on the tree canopy that’s leading to light pollution and requiring heat blinds on her windows when none were needed previously. She says a better balance between the environment and electric utility infrastructure is necessary. She called for more cooperation between Dominion, residents and environmental groups.
Dominion was invited to the council meeting July 7, when the issue was addressed, but chose not to come, Marshall said.
That surprised Councilman Mitch Mitchell, who noted Dominion’s “heavy hitters” did come out to a City Council meeting in 2021 to explain why it was installing large power poles in certain neighborhoods. The size of those new poles was angering residents at the time.
Residents and Dominion Energy are clashing over tree trimming near electrical infrastructure. Karl Puckett kapuckett@islandpacket.com
He wondered why they wouldn’t come out again. “Hopefully, it just takes a little more coaxing and a little more gun power, and maybe you have that mayor,” Mitchell said to Mayor Phil Cromer.
Cromer said he would talk to Dominion, which he said needs to do a better job communicating with residents. He suggested the utility talk to neighborhood associations. The trim work, he said, can be “kind of shocking.”
“These people are caught off guard by some of this and I don’t want us to be in the middle,” Cromer said. “There is very little we can do because they have the right of way.”
Communication between Dominion, residents
The city can get more information out to residents so they can be better prepared, but Dominion needs to “step up” and do more than just print information about the tree trimming on bills, Cromer said.
In his weekly report to the city Monday, Marshall said that city staff and City Council members have received numerous calls and emails with concerns about Dominion’s tree trimming.
Trees are trimmed near a park in Pigeon Point in Beaufort. Karl Puckett kapuckett@islandpacket.com
The Dominion workshop is from 4:30-6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Dominion’s office at 108 Robert Smalls Parkway.
Residents want smaller poles gone
One question Pigeon Point residents are also asking is why smaller poles are still standing in some neighborhoods after taller metal poles were installed in 2006.
Koppernaes, for one, says the South Carolina Electric & Gas Co., which was later purchased by Dominion, promised that those smaller poles would be removed when the larger metal poles went up back in 2006. The telephone and cable lines attached to the smaller poles were supposed to be transferred to the larger poles. She recalls meetings where nice photos were displayed showing how there would be less impact on the tree canopy when the new poles were installed because they are taller and would allow the canopy to grow higher.
She says residents were lied to because it never happened. “Somebody dropped the ball,” she said.
The city approved an ordinance to deal with the abandoned poles a year ago, Marshall said. But the city can’t enforce the ordinance until the old poles are abandoned, he said.
Councilman Mike McFee and Neil Lipsitz say Dominion ought to compel other utilities like telephone and cable to transfer their utility lines from the old poles to the new poles so the old poles can be removed.
“They really are unsightly,” Lipsitz said.
McFee claims Dominion hides behind the fact it acquired SCE&G and fails to recognize it has a responsibility. Information residents shared about the smaller poles that were supposed to be removed is true, he said. The city, he added, should have all of that information from those meetings. Dominion, McFee claims, is going to hide behind the fact they are not SCE&G and didn’t make the promises. The reality is the secondary users of those smaller poles have known since 2006 they need to relocate their lines, he said.
“They’ve had ample time to do it and I think it’s time we compel them to do it,” McFee said.
“Amen,” Lipsitz said.
Which utilities use the smaller poles?
Marshall said the city had a conversation with Dominion recently about the smaller poles. The problem is the city doesn’t know what utilities continue to use those poles, Marshall says, but Dominion does. The city, he said, let Dominion know if it provides the city with the name of the companies, and the pole locations, then the city will contact the companies to enforce its ordinance.
Older poles where Dominion power lines have been removed cannot be taken down until all attached communications lines are removed, Dominion’s Fischer said. Although the communication companies have been notified, Fischer said, “we are preparing new survey data to provide additional notification and expedite the removal of poles, where possible.”
Resident Graham Trask accused the city of rolling over to Dominion. He owns property that was affected by Dominion’s tree trimming five years ago, he said.
“We had to stand in front of their trucks to stop them from destroying the trees because the city would not do anything,” he said.
This story was originally published July 21, 2026 at 12:59 PM.
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Karl Puckett covers the city of Beaufort, town of Port Royal and other communities north of the Broad River for The Beaufort Gazette and Island Packet. The Minnesota native also has worked at newspapers in his home state, Alaska, Wisconsin and Montana.