SRP Partners with the City of Tempe to Plant More Than 450 Trees
The city of Tempe, Ariz. will be safer and greener thanks to a partnership between the city and Salt River Project.
As part of the Right Tree Right Place program, SRP contractors removed 171 trees that are encroaching on power lines in the city and replacing them with more than 450 trees more suitable for the area. Tempe is turning the removed trees into nutrient-rich compost that residents can pick up for free.
Each year, the SRP Vegetation Management crews trim or remove thousands of trees growing directly under SRP’s distribution and transmission lines that pose risks to electric service reliability and public safety. The Right Tree Right Place program lowers this workload demand by removing trees from dangerous and encroaching areas while reducing the heat island effect, improving air quality and beautifying the area with new tree plantings.
This is the second Right Tree Right Place project SRP has taken on. In 2018, SRP partnered with the City of Phoenix to remove 400 trees and replace them with more than 1,400 trees.
SRP is a community-based, not-for-profit public power utility and the largest electricity provider in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, serving about 1.2 million customers. SRP provides water to about 2.5 million Valley residents, delivering 260 billion gallons of water (800,000 acre-feet) each year, and manages a 13,000-square-mile watershed that includes an extensive system of reservoirs, wells, irrigation laterals, and 131 miles of canals.