Co-op communities battle Mouse and Missouri

Dakota Gasification Company - July 18, 2011
By Tracie Bettenhausen and Andrea Blowers

Basin Electric member cooperatives across five states are fighting flood waters at varying degrees. Some have been forced to shut off power to their consumers, some have lost power due to continued high water levels, and, in other cases, consumers have asked to have their main power shut off because nobody is living in their home. And, crews are watching transmission lines and substations.

Two separate rivers are the culprits: the Mouse River, also known as the Souris River, in northern North Dakota, and the Missouri River, which stretches from Montana to the Mississippi River in Illinois.

In Minot, ND, the Mouse River has caused a level of damage never before seen. A quarter of the city’s population, 12,000 people, were forced to leave their homes. In many cases, water completely submerged the homes.

From a co-op perspective, the communities along the Mouse River have endured some of the most significant, concentrated impacts from flooding in and around Basin Electric’s co-op communities. Tom Meland, general manager for Central Power Electric Cooperative in Minot, says eight of the co-op’s 42 employees had to evacuate their homes due to flooding.

“We have one substation about half in the water and some of our transmission structures were washed out by flood waters,” Meland says. Tom Rafferty, community relations manager for Verendrye Electric Cooperative in Velva, ND, says they’ve disconnected power to between 400-500 of their members and more than 1,000 of the co-op’s members have been impacted by water.

Both Verendrye Electric and North Central Electric Cooperative in Bottineau, have struggled with travel in their areas.

Rafferty says there is currently one road open to go north and south in and around Minot . “It takes between an hour and three hours to go 15 miles depending on the time of day you’re traveling.”

Wayne Martian, manager for North Central, says the biggest problem the co-op has had is getting from point A to point B. “Our main east/west road, Highway 5, closed because of high water, so we only have one crossing, which is near the Canadian border.” North Central’s system runs about 50 miles from the Canadian border south and about 100 miles across.

Capital Electric Cooperative and Mor-Gran-Sou Electric Cooperative, which serve consumers along the Missouri River outside Bismarck and Mandan and rural communities, have some consumers behind the dikes in the safe zone, but many in front of the dikes. A number of those consumers have requested to have their power shut off, because access to their homes is limited and potentially dangerous.

“We estimated about 1,000 Capital Electric members have been affected by flooding,” says Wes Engbrecht, communications director for Capital Electric. “We’ve been very fortunate to have been able to maintain power for almost all of our customers.”

Jackie Miller, manager of member services for Mor-Gran-Sou Electric, says about 100 of their members have been impacted. In the interest of safety, the co-op disconnected power to about 35 homes along Square Butte Road and Rosie Lane west of Willow Road.

Officials from Harrison County Rural Electric Cooperative in Woodbine, IA, shut off power to nearly 200 services, most of which are irrigation lines. Western Iowa Power Cooperative in Denison, IA, also has nearly 200 outages. Jeff Bean, executive vice president and general manager, says the area’s economy relies heavily on agriculture, and much of the land is under water. “The co-op has been lending a helping hand and equipment where we can. It’s really sad to see these homes be inundated by water. Some of them are people’s dream homes,” Bean says.

In South Dakota, the cities of Pierre and Ft. Pierre faced flooding along the Missouri, and cooperatives had many accounts off line. Justin Bryan, area foreman of the Presho-Oacoma area of West Central Electric Cooperative in Murdo, SD, has a sandbag dike around his home. His wife, Pam, says, “You can always replace a home, but you can never replace a life. And thank God nobody has lost a life in this flood in South Dakota.”

Bon Homme Yankton Electric’s service area includes Gavins Point Dam. Downstream from the dam, more than 20 homes are dealing with water. But one loss hits home for the co-op – Larson’s Landing, a popular RV park. “One of our employees owns the park with his dad. It’s under water. It’s not his home, but it is his investment,” says Merlin Goehring, Bon Homme Yankton general manager.

Crops are impacted as well. After contacting farm service agencies, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) offices, and agriculture departments in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Iowa, it’s safe to estimate hundreds of thousands of acres, possibly millions, of Missouri basin cropland has been or will be affected by flooding. The USDA will release their estimate later this summer.

Ron Harper, Basin Electric CEO and general manager, says, “As a cooperative family, it’s been incredible to watch employees, members, families and friends join together to fight the rising waters charging in on our co-op communities. We’re just in the midst of these flood events and will only begin to understand their full impact when the water finally recedes. However, the strength and determination of our member co-ops had been demonstrated ten times over and I really couldn’t be more proud to be part of this co-op family.”

Co-ops donate $50,000 to Minot flood relief

Verendrye Electric Cooperative, Central Power Electric Cooperative, Basin Electric Power Cooperative, SRT Communications, and CoBank teamed up to donate $50,000 to the Mid-Dakota Red Cross in Minot on June 27 to help with flood relief efforts. Each co-op pledged $10,000.

On the web

Find more photos, stories and video of the flood events on The Flip Side blog at basinelectric.wordpress.com.

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