Blue Ridge Electric and The Heritage of Electric Cooperatives
For Immediate Release
Contact: Renee Whitener, Director of Corporate Communications, Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation, (828) 758-2383 ext. 3213; Pager:1-800-471-1323; or E-mail: Renee Whitener
Boone, North Carolina (February 13, 2003) – When Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation was first formed in 1936, it brought the first flow of electricity to homes, churches, farms and businesses in northwest North Carolina.
Originally formed as Caldwell County Electric Membership Corporation, Blue Ridge Electric’s first poles and line were cut, set, and hung by hand—by the sweat of many men and women’s brows who fought hard for the right to form the cooperative and bring electricity to this area.
Life in the days before the late 1930s was dark and filled with manual labor from dawn to dusk for families in our area. While electricity had come to many towns and cities, it remained elusive in more distant areas because existing utilities found it unprofitable to bring it to rural areas.
A glimmer of hope began to form and the stage was set for life to change in areas like ours when, in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into creation the Rural Electrification Administration (REA). This action recognized that support was needed to help rural areas, but it was the self-sufficient, enterprising residents of these areas who pulled together to form cooperatives like Blue Ridge Electric and literally set the infrastructure of a power system for their communities.
How people across the country formed their cooperatives and brought electricity to rural areas is one of the nation’s greatest examples of economic democracy. Men and women petitioned, educated and organized to bring power to the communities existing utilities would not serve due to sparse populations, rough terrain, or other financial reasons. These committed folks drew lines on rough paper that served as maps and secured sign-ups from those wanting power in their communities to make life easier for them and future generations. They obtained pledges of land from eager landowners for rights-of-way easements so that power lines could be constructed for themselves and their neighbors. And line crews, who were quite often aided by thankful cooperative members, cleared rights-of-ways and dug holes, while others followed with poles and hardware. Last came the crews to hang the line.
While Blue Ridge Electric was actually formed in 1936, it would take two more years for the groundwork and infrastructure to be completed so that in 1938 the first 155 homes, six stores, four churches and a few schools in Caldwell County would be “energized”. Later that year, the lights came on in Watauga County and by the following year Ashe and Alleghany counties had experienced the arrival of life-changing electricity. Two years later, the cooperative would be re-chartered under its current name serving some 3,000 members with over 867 miles of line.
Today, Blue Ridge Electric remains a not-for-profit, locally owned cooperative whose mission is to provide at-cost electricity to northwest North Carolina and to contribute to the quality of life in this area. The cooperative has grown to its current membership of over 65,000 consumers, served by nearly 7,000 miles.
And while a linemen’s work is still very physically demanding and labor-intensive, the invention of bucket trucks, protective safety gear and instruments and other modern-day equipment has helped linemen work more efficiently and more safety than over 65 years ago. Computerized equipment is also in use all across the cooperative’s electric plant and this information assists the cooperative’s efficiency in areas such as more quickly determining problems and their locations and identifying outage locations.
Much of the electric system was built in the 1950s when Blue Ridge Electric was serving nearly 12,000 members. Last year, the cooperative determined after several years of study, that an upgrade to the cooperative’s transmission system was needed to continue providing power reliability that has stood at 99.97 percent efficient in recent years. Coupled with a dedicated rights-of-way maintenance program that manages the obstruction of large trees and brush to nearby power lines, the upgrade project helps ensure Blue Ridge Electric can meet the power needs of its members for years to come. The cooperative’s service area has experienced a steady two- to three-percent growth rate, yet the power demand from this growth has tended to grow by five percent annually.
While Blue Ridge Electric has progressed and continues to prepare for the future needs of its membership, the cooperative remains committed today to the same principles upon which cooperatives were founded in the 1930s: to serve our local member-owners with reliable, safe power at the most affordable cost possible for our area.
The cooperative also remains committed to its higher calling of contributing to the quality of life in the areas it serves.
As a cooperative, the consumers who Blue Ridge Electric serves are what the utility refers to as “member-owners”, said Renee Whitener, director of corporate communications. “We like to say we have stakeholders, as opposed to stockholders,” she said. “We listen when our members speak and we focus on responsiveness. In surveys, our members have told us that power reliability is priority number one, and that’s one reason you’ll see Blue Ridge Electric doing construction work and adding to our plant system, including the transmission upgrade,” she said.
“Yet you’ll also see Blue Ridge and our employees getting involved in many different activities and areas of the communities that are important to our member-owners,” she added. From volunteering in schools and contributing to local education through programs such as Bright Ideas that reward teacher innovation, to supporting areas such as Relay for Life, March of Dimes and the American Heart Association, to coaching local little league sports, Blue Ridge Electric employees and working to make a difference in the communities it serves.
“Being supportive of local communities not only a trademark of cooperatives, its one of our guiding principles,” Whitener said. “And at Blue Ridge Electric, being involved in our communities goes hand-in-hand with providing reliable electric service.”
