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Why woman climbed 20 feet into tree in protest will make you think

Posted at 9:28 PM, Feb 12, 2016
and last updated 2016-02-12 21:28:34-05

ATLANTA — A woman took to the trees Thursday morning to apparently protest Georgia Power’s decision to remove trees from the grounds of a Fulton County condominium complex.

The woman, identified as Jennifer Firestone, placed a ladder in front of the tree on the grounds of Cross Creek Condominiums on Cross Creek Parkway and climbed about 20 feet high into the tree, WGCL reports.

According to police, she was protesting the power company’s decision to remove trees from the property.

Georgia Power spokesperson Ashley Stukes responded to the protest in a written statement:

The construction work near the Cross Creek Condos is related to a large scale infrastructure project in Northwest Atlanta. This is a multi-year project critical to ensuring reliability in Atlanta including Hartsfield-Jackson, the CDC and hundreds of thousands of residents.

We appreciate residents’ concerns regarding trees in the area and we’re committed to working with management at the residential complex, as well as through the entire project, to minimize the impact to established trees and vegetation.

Additionally, Georgia Power spokesperson Jacob Hawkins also sent a statement to CBS46 Thursday night:

Ensuring that our right of way around our transmission lines is clear is an important part of maintaining reliability and meeting current North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) requirements, as directed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) mandate that utilities maintain adequate clearance around all applicable transmission lines, under all operating conditions, to prevent outages caused by vegetation.

Firestone disagrees and says the tree isn’t even close to power lines.

“The tree isn’t even near the power lines,” said Firestone. “I think the people should be more discerning to which trees really need to go and which ones don’t.”

Firestone came down from the tree after 6 p.m. Thursday evening.