Due to the ongoing controversy in the electric industry involving the Enron scandal and deregulation, it is more important than ever that our members know as much as possible about the business they own.

The Rural Electrification Administration was created in 1936 to provide loan funds to private power companies for the purpose of electrifying rural America, but low interest rates and long-term loans could not entice CIPS or Illinois Power to extend electric service into the more rural areas of Southern Illinois.

In the late 1930’s, this geographic area was still suffering from the one-two punch of the Great Depression and the 1937 flood.  Rural residents were aware of the fact that electricity would make their lives better, but they also knew they were never going to get electricity for their homes and farms, unless a new and different type of power company was created to provide it.

In September of 1938 a group of 75 local residents, who refused to take "no" for an answer, eventually convinced the Rural Electrification Administration (R.E.A.) to loan them some money.  A corporate entity had to be created to receive and be responsible for those funds, and the group decided a "Not-for-Profit" corporation would best suit the task of extending power lines into areas already deemed unprofitable by CIPS and Illinois Power.

The electric cooperative you own has grown to be the largest in the State, with energy sales some 76% greater than the second largest cooperative which is located in Bloomington, Illinois.

All of SouthEastern’s "R.E.A." government loans were paid in full several years ago and we are now 100% privately financed.  SouthEastern receives no government subsidies of any kind.

Excluding other area electric cooperatives, SouthEastern is this area’s only locally owned power supplier.  CIPS is now owned by Ameren UE of Missouri and Illinois Power is owned by Dynegy, a global energy conglomerate, headquartered in Houston, Texas.

If you were to check the Annual Reports of either of those corporations, you won’t find any local residents who serve on their board of directors, or who are key employees.  That situation is in sharp contrast to SouthEastern, where all Board Members and  employees live and work in Southern Illinois.

The bottom line for us isn’t profit, the bottom line is providing reliable, dependable, electric service, and while most other electric providers have abandoned locally mine coal in order to increase profits, our commitment to the Southern Illinois community is stronger than ever with a $220 million dollar upgrade in progress at the Lake of Egypt Power Plant, which will increase the plant’s capacity, availability, reliability and at the same time, reduce emissions by over 75%.

That power plant is currently purchasing over $16 million dollars of locally mined fuel each year.  The influx of that $16 million dollars, combined with the Lake of Egypt Power Plant’s payroll for over 100 employees, and their  $1.2 million dollar annual property tax assessment, has a definite positive impact on all of Southern Illinois.

This commitment to our community and the air we breathe, combined with a residential rate freeze imposed upon Illinois Power and CIPS as a result of deregulation, is probably going to result in a situation where the rates of SouthEastern members are going to be higher than their city neighbors for about four or five years.  Although it’s hard to predict what the rate-relationship of the three area energy providers will be in the future, I suspect SouthEastern will be very competitive when those frozen rates of IP and CIPS begin to "thaw out" in January of 2007.