Rural Coops Receive Federal Money

(Radio Iowa) Three rural Iowa electrical coops are getting a combined 20 million dollars in federal loan money. Prairie Energy Cooperative got a six million-dollar loan to help offset the costs of connecting 78 more customers. Prairie’s Sarah Olson-McLaughlin says the loan will help them keep up with maintenance.

“It’s kind of almost run of the mill. … It’s to start to help with rebuilding our infrastructure. It’s keeping up so we keep the lights on, the reliability and we keep our costs down for our members,” she says. Extending and maintaining a power grid is expensive. This is particularly a challenge for rural electrical grids that have fewer users and serve more miles. Prairie’s 43-hundred members are spread over eleven Iowa counties. Olson-McLaughlin says a transformer would cost 830 dollars two years ago and that price has more than doubled. The per-foot cost of wire is up and the cost of poles has increased as much as 64 percent.

“And then fuel. Everyone knows about fuel… oh my goodness,” she says. Theresa Greenfield is the state director of the USDA’s Rural Development Department and says the rising costs have a big impact the rural projects.

“These public and cooperative partnerships are so important, that we can leverage our dollars together. Our federal tax dollars and investments and our private investments for the success of our communities. For our producers. For our small business.” The U-S-D-A has invested one-point-one billion dollars in rural Iowa electric programs since 2021.

(By Zachary Oren Smith, Iowa Public Radio)