But NStar spokesman Michael Durand said the company believes the information Yunits is using to make his case is incorrect.
“We don’t have control over how close people built their homes to the right-of-way,’’ he said. “But we have agreed to suspend work in that area so we can reach out to them and go over our differences.’’
Work to thin overgrowth along a 16.7-mile stretch of the twin transmission lines from Carver to Bridgewater began late last month and is expected to last until the end of the year, Durand said.
Most of the effort is focused along the swath in Middleborough, a town served by its own municipal gas and electric company. Durand said each of the lines on the NStar corridor carries 345,000 volts of electricity and must be kept clear to ensure reliable electric service.
“This work has got to be done,’’ he said. “Hundreds of thousands of people depend on these lines for their power.”
But Yunits said that he owns the land that the lines cross, and that NStar is using a 1965-era right-of-way through it that was included in a deal between then-landowner Goldie S. Fagerberg and the New Bedford Gas & Edison Light Co. when NStar bought the company years ago. At the time, Fagerberg was paid $2,000 for perpetual rights to a 300-foot easement, but NStar has cut overgrowth beyond the easement onto private property, Yunits said.
During an impromptu discussion with Middleborough selectmen Monday, Yunits described the shock he and his neighbors felt last week at discovering piles of felled trees where the buffer zone to the power lines used to be.
“I held one woman in my arms on Friday,’’ he said. “Every piece of her land was demolished.”
Yunits said at least 30 trees on his farm were cut. He pointed to a marked-up map he said was handed to him by an NStar attorney, a bright red line indicating the company’s idea of its right-of-way: The line goes right through one of his barns.
“They are telling me to hire another surveyor?” he said. “I’m telling them to take me to Land Court.’’
At the meeting, selectmen seemed swayed by Yunits’s story and said they were open to holding a meeting with residents to hear their concerns. Town Manager Charles Cristello said he would coordinate with Yunits on possible dates and times. No meeting had been set up as of Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Yunits said he planned to gather neighbors at his farm over the weekend to work on an action plan of their own. He said he has nine residents who plan to join him in a class-action lawsuit and is expecting about 20 more. He said he has reached out to local and state officials for legislation that would require the utility to contact residents in writing with specific dates and times for tree-clearing work. He also wants NStar to stop spraying vegetation on the line with chemicals meant to stunt growth.
Yunits and Bruce also pointed to how NStar and state environmental officials have spent the last five months working to protect Eastern box turtles that live along the Middleborough power lines. Forty-two specimens of the turtle, categorized as “of special concern” to the state, were caught and fitted with radio transmitters so workmen will know whether they wander into the work area.
Efforts to save any species are worthy, Yunits said, but the turtles “seem to have more rights than the taxpayers of Massachusetts.”
Durand said the company’s use of herbicide management programs on invasive species in rights-of-way are the reason those areas are “self-sustaining meadowlands” where native plants and animals thrive. He said workers using backpack sprayers apply the agent that is approved by the state directly to the leaves.
