SouthEastern Illinois Electric Cooperative held its' 71st Annual Meeting on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 with 1,210 members registered and approximately 1,700 in total attendance.  For those of you who were unable to attend your Cooperative's annual meeting, this article will summarize the report members received at the annual meeting.

During the year 2008, your Cooperative invested $3 million in system improvements to replace aging infrastructure and invested $5.7 million in maintenance activities in order to increase electric service reliability.  Your Cooperative also constructed 353 new services, upgraded 167 services, rebuilt 26 miles of distribution line and replaced over 300 bad poles. 

Over the past 18 months, your Cooperative has experienced three of the most severe and devastating storms in its 71-year history.  The first was the ice storm of February 2008 which blanketed the southern part of our service territory with over 1 inch of ice and resulted in 11,700 outages and over $ 2.5 million in damages.  The second was the ice storm in January of this year which blanketed the southern and southeastern areas of our service territory with over 1 inch of ice and resulted in 9,500 outages and over $ 3.5 million in damages.  The third and hopefully last major storm for some time to come occurred in May of this year with winds exceeding 100 miles per hour in our western and central territories resulting in 12,500 outages and over $2.6 million in damages.

In summary, these storms caused damages in excess of $ 8.6 million to your Cooperative which has caused a significant strain on your Cooperative's finances.  Your Cooperative applied for FEMA assistance in all three of these storms and has received or is in the process of receiving $ 3.8 million in assistance to help pay for these major storms.  This will truly be remembered as a remarkable time in our history. 

Members were informed that the price of coal has been decreasing in 2009.  The market price of coal began rising in early 2008 and peaked in August 2008 at $93 per ton.  The price of coal has declined to a current market price of $42 per ton but that is still 23% higher than early 2008.  As many of you know, the cost increases incurred due to higher coal prices are being collected in the wholesale power cost adjustment charge on your bill.  Given that the market price of coal is decreasing, we also expect this charge on your bill to decrease as well. 

There is no question that the major storms that have occurred in the past 18 months have increased your Cooperative's costs.  Your Cooperative is taking steps in an attempt to avoid a general rate increase to members in 2010 but feel confident that if a rate increase becomes absolutely necessary, it will be limited to a rate increase of approximately 2%.

Lastly, Cooperative members were informed about federal climate change legislation that is currently under review by the U.S. Senate.  Your Cooperative adamantly opposes the legislation that passed the U.S. House of Representatives. This legislation in its current form is extremely detrimental to our region's jobs and family budgets.   Under the current legislation in its cap-and-trade tax plan, electric rates will certainly increase and could increase dramatically.  Not only will consumers across the country pay more in their electric bill, but they will pay more for a variety of other products that use electricity in the process of manufacturing those products or fuel used to transport those products.  The rise in electricity rates is only the beginning - it will cause many other cost increases as well.

See you next month and as always, "We'll keep the lights on for you."