Nice new wood chip piles that steamed in the morning chill and troublesome tress cut along property lines — these are just a few of the benefits some local residents have received from recent Orange and Rockland storm hardening work.

It’s hard to keep track of which O&R project is what, as the company’s in the second year of a $143 million capital improvement program that includes distribution line upgrades, new power poles, upgraded wire, and storm hardening.

“Everyone up here in Pine Grove is running on low voltage,” said John Cerullo, an O&R arborist and forester who is working with crews from new O&R tree subcontractor Trees, In — the company replaced Lewis Tree Service as O&R’s choice of tree crew in the field.

“All the poles are past prime and old conductor needed to be upgraded,” Cerullo said between talking on his phone and fielding questions from tree crews who were doing tree work around new O&R 45 foot power poles, where power lines were recently raised. Cerullo said that O&R is working closely with the Sloatsburg Department of Public Works on the third phase of a storm hardening project, which involves cutting back trees along the O&R power line right-of-way.

The new 45′ power poles installed in Pine Grove Lakes were part of a project to install new power poles throughout Sloatsburg.

DPW Supervisor Mike DeMartino drove his white pick up truck to meet with Cerullo and confer on a few last tree cuts. The storm hardening project involves tree trimming that O&R hasn’t done in quite a while, and probably won’t do again for a few years.

Michael Donovan, who heads up O&R media relations, said that recent O&R work done in the area is part of the capital improvement project and has been on the drawing board for a several years.

O&R has also begun a three-year, $7.3 million Smart Grid pilot program that will install new high-tech, computerized, operating equipment designed to improve overall electric system reliability for more than 25,000 O&R customers in 14 communities across Rockland from Suffern to Nyack. Additionally, over the weekend, the company announced a new CEO in Timothy P. Cawley, former senior vice president of Central Operations at Consolidated Edison Company of New York. Cawley succeeds John McAvoy, who served as O&R’s president and chief executive officer for a year, who was himself named president and chief executive officer of Con Edison.

O&R has stated in the past that the cost of the various projects that affect Sloatsburg residents has been factored into existing capital budgets and should not involve an increase in rates.

The upside of the O&R distribution upgrade and storm hardening project, aside from a boost in voltage, has been the free removal of a few pesky trees and fresh wood chip piles to boot.