PA Horticultural Society Picks PECO for Community Greening Award

PECO (NYSE:EXC) received the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s (PHS) Community Greening Award this week for its three-year project to create a meadow of native grasses attractive to wildlife on an 18-acre utility right of way in Lafayette Hill in Montgomery County. The award demonstrates that utilities can balance the need to meet clearance standards under electric transmission lines for reliability and sensitivity for the environment.

PHS selected PECO (www.peco.com/green) for the award from among 80 nominees statewide. PECO’s project was done in cooperation with Whitemarsh Township, the Wildlife Habitat Council, and the Pennsylvania Game Commission. PECO’s Stephanie Everett-Johnson of the company’s environmental services group and Alex Brown, a project manager for the utility’s vegetation management program, accepted the award. The PHS recognition is the fifth environmental award for PECO this year.

The Manor Road project involved eliminating exotic and invasive plant species that had dominated the utility’s electric transmission right of way and planting a mix of native grasses such as Niagara Big bluestem, Little bluestem, Indian grass, and Side Oates Grama to spread and flourish. PECO’s project also added bird and bat boxes to attract wildlife and restored stream banks with additional plantings. Weeds Inc. of Aston supported PECO on the project.

"Each year, PECO takes on several projects to restore native plant species to our rights of way and improve biodiversity to attract wildlife. We are proud of the PHS award as an example of our commitment to the environment,” said Mike Heffron, PECO manager, environmental services.

The work was planned as part of the company’s maintenance strategy for the right of way. It is a part of roughly 1,000 miles of transmission corridors across the Philadelphia region PECO maintains to meet federal standards for electric reliability. Those standards do not permit trees under transmission power lines. The native grass meadow will allow better storm water management, provide the cover for wildlife, and reduce long-term maintenance costs, said Brown.

The Community Greening Award celebrates public green spaces in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. The annual award is a joint project of PHS (www.pennsylvaniahorticulturalsociety.org) and Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful, a nonprofit that promotes and protects Pennsylvania’s natural and community environments. The award recognizes those who have made a difference by planting and maintaining quality green spaces.

Based in Philadelphia, PECO is an electric and natural gas utility subsidiary of Exelon Corporation (NYSE:EXC). PECO serves 1.6 million electric and 485,000 natural gas customers in southeastern Pennsylvania and employs about 2,400 people in the region. PECO delivered 83.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas and 39.4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2008. Founded in 1881, PECO is one of the Greater Philadelphia Region's most active corporate citizens, providing leadership, volunteer and financial support to numerous arts and culture, education, environmental, economic development and community programs and organizations.