Community Corner

Leave it to Beavers: Animals May be Causing Power Outages, City Says

Workers clearing away trees from power lines near Bloomer Park found evidence of beavers keeping busy in the area.

Did the beavers turn out the lights?

A Rochester city official said this week that beavers living along the Clinton River on the city border are likely to blame for some recent power outages in the area. 

But don't rush to blame the river-dwelling mammals just yet: They're just trying to get by.

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Deputy City Manager Nik Banda said DTE-contracted crews working this week to clear tree limbs away from power lines have found evidence that beavers chewing cottonwood trees were likely responsible for downed lines.

The work is happening near the Clinton River Trail off Letica Drive, on the edge of Bloomer Park in Rochester Hills. It's near JHP Pharmaceuticals, which has reported several power outages in the past year.

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Banda went out to the area to see for himself.

He described the scene as one of trees that had obviously been chewed with a beaver's large teeth. Banda didn't see any beavers — they're nocturnal. And he couldn't say for sure which specific power outages the beaver-downed-trees may have been responsible for. But he did say he would make sure the beavers wouldn't affect the power again.

Workers are creating a 30-foot clearing near the power lines. A spokesman for DTE confirmed the company had hired contractors to do some trimming work in that specific area to try to prevent additional power outages there. 

But he could not confirm whether beavers were responsible for the outages. "Nobody said anything about beavers," DTE spokesman Alejandro Bodipo-Memba said.

Banda said he's seen the evidence with his own eyes. "You go back there and it's amazing what these animals are doing," he said.

Don't worry, though: The river-dwelling mammals aren't about to stage a revolt in the city.

Lance DeVoe is the naturalist for the city of Rochester Hills, and he said beavers have lived along the Clinton River for years.

"They move up and down the river," DeVoe said. "It's not an environment they can dam up, so they travel up and down."

He couldn't guess the beaver population, but he said wherever there's a suitable habitat for beavers in the area, they'll be there.

Busy beavers have made the news in the Midwest recently for power outages.

In Hamilton, IL, over Thanksgiving weekend, police blamed beavers for downed power lines that forced the 90-minute closure of a busy U.S. highway at the height of the high-traffic weekend.

Last month, power line technicians in Onoway, Alberta, added "hungry beavers" to their list of possible official causes for power outages. 

In Rochester, city leaders were enlightened by Banda's discovery.

"Do they have a building permit?" City Councilman Ben Giovanelli asked.


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