A Kelowna man has come away with somewhat of a win after fighting with FortisBC over how his spruce tree was ‘trimmed’ back in May.

Giulio Di Palma says a FortisBC subcontractor topped and disfigured the spruce tree in front of his Barkley Road home, without notice, while he was at work.

The utility says they spend thousands of hours every year dealing with trees that touch or fall on power lines in their service area and they can’t always notify property owners before they begin.

Often, complaints to FortisBC involving tree trimming fall on deaf ears, but this time they listened to Di Palma and completely removed the tree at his request.

“From all the letters I’ve written, and from the media attention, that’s basically what caused this to move in a different direction,” Di Palma said.

He says after weeks of back and forth, he received a phone call from FortisBC asking him what would satisfy Di Palma.

“I said I’d be happy with taking the tree down, removing and chipping the limbs.”

Di Palma says he was out of town again and came home to a completely different looking front yard.

“I came back to a treeless lot, which has made us happy.”

Unlike some property owners who don’t want FortisBC to touch the trees on their property at all, Di Palma says he completely understood why his tree was a problem for the utility.

“Some of these other guys, some of their trees that I’ve even gone to see, because they phoned me, and they wanted to sort of round up a posse… you know, their trees are directly underneath the wires. They sort of cradle the wire. It’s like, man, look at your tree, you got a problem there,” Di Palma said.

FortisBC spokesperson Holly Harrison says, “we recognize the importance of trees to the communities we serve and property owners. That’s why we try our best to minimize tree trimming and clearing when possible. We rely on certified utility arborists to trim or remove trees that are too close to power lines.”

For his part, Di Palma is happy, but he believes nothing would have happened if he hadn’t been persistent.

“I honestly think that they just came to the conclusion that their contractors, because it wasn’t them, butchered my tree. I was going to keep trying until I got some kind of resolution,” he said.

Di Palma also says he knows if he had to pay to have the tree removed himself it would have cost him as much as $2,000.

“I am grateful that they’ve come back. I think that’s fantastic. I’m happy it turned out this way.”

Photo: Giulio Di Palma

The spruce tree at 451 Barkley Road back in May 2024.