Another planar separator ref question Do any of you know a reference for the following (surprisingly tedious to prove) result? 

Given a connected planar graph $G$ with $n$ vertices and $n+t$ edges, it has a vertex separator of size $O( \sqrt{t}+1)$.
Here is a proof using a well-known hammer. 

Let us assume wlog that $G$ is connected, hence it is a spanning tree plus $t+1$ edges. Clearly any cycle in $G$ must contain one of these $t+1$ edges which are part of the spanning tree.

I claim that the treewidth of $G$ is $O(\sqrt{t})$ which would imply the desired separator (and some more). To prove the claim let $k$ be the treewidth of $G$. Then by a theorem of Robertson-Seymour-Thomas, since $G$ is planar, there is a grid minor of size $\Omega(k)$. However a grid minor of size $\Omega(k)$ has $\Omega(k^2)$ disjoint cycles and each of them requires one of the $t+1$ edges. Hence $k = O(\sqrt{t})$.