It’s been heartbreaking watching these giant 100-200 year old cactus being cut down. According to APS, the water laden cactus could cause potential arcing under the power lines but it seems to me that if the higher ups at APS were educated about the desert, they could have come up with an alternative to destroying so many. Thankfully, a public outcry has influenced APS to reconsider how these giants are removed thus saving some from this fate.
2 thoughts on “heartbreaking”
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This is a national travesty. Anyone who has a conscience should look at this and be sickened. This needs to be brought to the attention of people outside of Phoenix. Please send images such as this to organizations who can help spread the word. Your area seems to have many caring people. Please let the rest of us know what we can do.
Hi Mary and hello to all others who are concerned with regard to this issue……Although I’m still very upset about the destruction, I’m now a little more informed. I want to share a comment from one of our Stewards who is not defending APS but does explain what is going on. Please read his note:
“I don’t think this is quite as cut-and-dried as the media have portrayed. APS is required by federal regs to remove vegetation under HV power lines. One may question whether the regs make sense, but right now APS has no option.
So the only matter about which there’s an option is whether to relocate the saguaros versus pulverize and recycle the material. As I’m sure you know, relocating saguaros is expensive—not only do they have to be removed and transported someplace, they also have to be replanted with bracing and the hole they came from has to be mitigated. I’ve read figures from $1000 to $3000 for the cost of relocating a single sizeable saguaro. And in some areas, there can be hundreds of saguaros per mile of power line. Doing the arithmetic, this means it could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per mile for APS to relocate the cacti, or millions of dollars over the stretches where this work must be done. Not only that, but successful transplantation is by no means assured.
Every cent APS spends to bring us electricity has to be approved by the Corporation Commission and, if approved, gets built into the rate base. I have no idea whether the CC would approve the additional cost required to relocate the saguaros, especially under current economic conditions. It looks as though APS has opted for the lower cost option, which has the least impact on the ratepayers (us). Now I’d be happy to pay another buck or two each month for relocating saguaro, but I’m not at all sure that everybody would.
Up on the State Trust land in north Scottsdale, many of the saguaros are being relocated because (a) Scottsdale’s helping pay for it, (b) there are places in the Preserve and around the city where the saguaros can be usefully relocated, and (c) there’s plenty of volunteer labor to help (like us stewards). Volunteers—stewards plus corporate groups—also have participated in multiple projects to relocate smaller cacti out of the mandated removal area. APS has contributed the amount it would cost them anyway to pulverize the saguaros to the transplantation effort, plus the use of their heavy equipment. Obviously, Scottsdale’s situation is not typical of communities in metro Phoenix, but presumably if other cities had offered to take salvaged saguaros APS would have been willing to help them too.
So even though I personally wish all the saguaros could be replanted, and even though I’d be willing to contribute to make that happen, I don’t think APS is doing anything dastardly, underhanded, or stupid. In fact, by recycling the material into the immediate environment from which it came, I’d say they’re trying to make the best of the situation.