To the Editor:

I hope Dakota Energy stays in the East River and Basin Electric family of cooperatives.

My folks told us kids of how electricity made our farm life easier and how the REA made it possible. The system was new in those days and I recall few outages.

My family since then has been fortunate with our longest outage being a little over six-days. We bought a convection current stove after that.

I was at quite a few storm jobs with Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) and saw 48 wood H-structures (115 KV) downed by wind near Redfield; ice damage in the Watertown/Summit area on wood H-structures so bad that poles looked like strung bows; and aircraft/vehicle collision damage.

I also saw rising water near Webster which required moving a whole line segment of structures and in southwest South Dakota hill sliding and requiring lattice steel towers being moved. Multiple crews came together to repair these things.

Electrical energy requires generation and I recommend you read Page 7A of the Friday August 6, 2021, Farm Forum. The title is “Iowa utilities say they’re owed for helping during February’s polar vortex.” The author is Donnelle Eller, Des Moines Register, USA Today Network.

The issue “is whether the North Dakota and Iowa utilities - asked to provide electricity from eight dozen power facilities, including some that are infrequently used - should get paid, even though some operations were temporarily offline during the destructive storm.”

Our electricity stayed on in February 2021. Thank you to WAPA and to the family of cooperatives that made that happen. Please do not change our electrical energy suppliers now.

Clarence G Hanson
Huron