A Baytown community is dealing with an arboreal aftermath—tree trunks and branches cluttering yards after CenterPoint Energy contracted the trimming job to a third party, with little follow through on cleanup. The neighborhood's dismay comes following work done by Lewis Tree Service, who, despite being tasked with preventing trees from meddling with power lines, allegedly handed homeowners the broom to sweep up the mess they made.
On February 5, homeowners like the 70-year-old Lowell Ernst, who faces health hurdles including a pacemaker and an injured shoulder, were simply delivered a notice by Lewis Tree Service, representing a power play by CenterPoint to axe trees threatening electrical lines—no matter the chop left a lumberyard's worth of debris behind. Ernst admitted to ABC13, saying, "They came over with a little piece of paper and said, ‘Hey, we need to take that tree down,’” and, "I didn’t read it,” with the detritus removal detail apparently lost in the trimmings.
However, CenterPoint's regulations, anchored in an almost ancient 2012 webpage, suggest a different tale, stating debris left by their sanctioned trimmers should vanish on the same day as cutting—unless weather wages war or the downed timber was already tangling with powerlines. The inconsistency leaves locals caught in the brambles of policy and practice, with some, like Ernst, lucky enough to catch a break after media intervention. The clean-up crews arrived at the Ernsts' yard the day after The Houston Chronicle highlighted their hardship, spurring a CenterPoint energy rep to promise debris removal in a hush-hush fashion, "This is just between you and me," as Gennie Ernst recounted.
Yet, neighborly luck was not on the side of everyone, for, while the Ernsts relished in their clutter-free quarter-acre, their single-mom neighbor stared down at her own woody Everest, with costs to clear ranging between $500 to $800—a hefty hill to climb for a community peppered with fixed incomes and elderly folks. In a statement obtained by ABC13, CenterPoint's spokesman Logan Anderson shifts the sawdust, saying the company isn't responsible for the debris desolation, leaving the homeowner to face the fallen foliage.
Whether the rest of the residents will see the same service as the Ernsts or if they'll be left to forage for funds and fend for themselves remains an unanswered question. Amid the tangles of policy, paperwork, and potential peril, the arborous aftermath in Baytown stands as a stark reminder of the sometimes thorny interface between public utility management and the residents rooted in their reliance on it.
