Empowering Communities

A gift from ComEd helps keep holiday lights on in Chicago’s East Garfield Park neighborhood

December 8, 2020
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To celebrate the holiday season, the 11th District Police Station in Chicago’s East Garfield Park neighborhood is displaying a Christmas tree outside of its headquarters building for local residents. The festive decoration will spread more than holiday cheer – it will also ensure reliable power to ComEd customers living nearby.

When a city forester noticed several spruce trees planted on ComEd’s Fisk Generating Station property, he reached out to ComEd to ask if the energy company would donate one.

The answer was obvious. After all, it is the season of giving.

Since one of the spruces was growing too close to power lines, its branches would eventually make contact and potentially cause electric service interruptions in the neighborhood. Since vegetation management was necessary, it made sense to donate the tree back to the community.

Trees and other vegetation cause about 13 percent of all electric service interruptions. Preventive pruning around power lines is vital to providing reliable electric service. ComEd’s vegetation-management program helps ensure the proper maintenance of trees – and planting of new trees – along distribution and transmission rights of way. 

For tips on how you can help prevent tree-related outages, and keep holiday lights in your neighborhood glowing all season long, click here.