Georgia Power said state law and reliability concerns led to the removal of a historic tree in Chatham County as part of its upcoming transmission line project.

The utility company says that a vast majority of its outages during the winter storm were caused by downed trees and broken limbs falling on power lines.

Georgia Power has removed a roughly 300-year-old live oak along Little Neck Road after weeks of public attention and community efforts to protect the tree.

There is a long history of the mechanical thinning of forests in standard forestry operations. Thinning typically involves ...