Start with the recorded grant
A utility easement is usually an express, recorded grant, and its scope is whatever the instrument says — including any vegetation-management or clearing rights. When a utility wants to clear trees, widen the corridor, or add equipment, the first step is to read the recorded grant and compare what the utility is doing to what it actually allows.
Exceeding the granted scope
If the utility burdens the land beyond the granted scope, the owner may have a scope-of-easement claim, and in some circumstances an inverse-condemnation claim — the argument that the over-burdening is a compensable taking. Inverse condemnation is fact-specific and procedural; it is a question for a real-property attorney, not a self-help remedy.
New infrastructure, old grant language
Cell towers, fiber-optic lines, and wind or solar easements raise scope questions the older grant language never anticipated. Whether a modern use falls within a decades-old corridor grant is exactly the kind of question that turns on careful reading of the instrument and the case law in your state.