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East River line crews assist with Iowa storm repairs

A half-dozen utility workers from East River Electric Power Cooperative will assist with power line repairs this week in north central Iowa, following a weekend ice and wind storm.

Corn Belt Power Cooperative, based in Humboldt, Iowa, is requesting the mutual aid. The generation and transmission cooperative reports 240 high-voltage transmission poles were destroyed and several dozen substations knocked off line by the weekend storm. The State of Iowa has declared the north central and northeastern parts of the state a disaster area.

East River Electric is sending five line workers and a mechanic, along with vehicles and equipment to assist with rebuilding transmission lines in the Hampton, Iowa area. The crews loaded up Monday morning and headed toward the "storm job," about 40 miles south of Mason City. The crews expect to stay at least one week.

This is the second time in two months that local Touchstone Energy Cooperative line crews have helped an out-of-state utility make storm repairs. In early January, workers from East River and Sioux Valley Energy rebuilt 14 miles of transmission structures for Dawson Public Power District near Kearney, Neb.

East River is looking forward to assisting Corn Belt with its storm job, according to Dan Wall, manager of Transmission and Engineering Services. "Corn Belt was one of the cooperatives that assisted East River with repairs following the Thanksgiving weekend 2005 ice storm in eastern South Dakota," Wall said. "That's why Touchstone Energy Cooperatives like Corn Belt and East River practice the principle of Cooperation among Cooperatives -- because during storm repairs, many hands working together can restore power much faster."

Information from Corn Belt Power’s web site:

HUMBOLDT, Iowa — Feb. 26, 2007 — The weekend winter storm that coated power lines with up to two inches of ice, whipped up 52 mile-per-hour winds and dumped more than 10 inches of snow in some parts of Corn Belt Power member systems’ territories resulted in 240 downed transmission poles and 31 substation outages.

Some of the transmission system will be back on line today while other areas may take several days to energize. Currently, 27 substations are still off line. An estimated 7,500 member-consumers in the Corn Belt Power system are out of power.

Humboldt-based Corn Belt Power Cooperative is a generation and transmission cooperative that provides electricity to 11 rural electric cooperatives (RECs) and one municipal electric cooperative. These utilities provide power to farms, rural residences, small towns and commercial/industrial customers in 28 northern Iowa counties.

For more information visit their web site at www.cbpower.coop.

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East River Electric Power Cooperative, headquartered in Madison, S.D., is a power-supply cooperative that delivers wholesale power through a 2,600-mile transmission system to 21 member electric distribution systems. These distribution systems in turn provide retail electricity to more than 85,000 homes and businesses in a 36,000-square-mile service area, covering 41 counties in eastern South Dakota and nine counties in western Minnesota, including Sioux Valley Energy. East River and its member cooperatives belong to an alliance of 631 Touchstone Energy Cooperatives in 46 states, delivering energy and energy solutions with integrity, accountability, innovation and commitment to community.