By Bob Myhr, OPALCO Board Member
These are exciting and challenging times for OPALCO. We have celebrated our 75th Anniversary and our success in building a member-owned cooperative to meet our electrical needs in San Juan County. OPALCO consistently rates at the top of the co-op world for our safety record, system reliability, financial strength, and innovative approach to solving problems.
The time has come to focus our attention on the next 75 years: the future of our Co-op and the legacy we will leave to our children. As our region’s hydro-electric resources begin to reach capacity, energy is less abundant and more expensive than in the past. This presents a new challenge for continued success and new opportunities to engage our membership in energy savings and conservation that will help keep our rates down. We will continue to use and further develop utility smart grid technologies that help us to be more efficient—but the greatest factor going forward will be increased member understanding of energy usage and changes to our household and business practices in how we manage our energy loads. With each new challenge we face, we will approach solutions together as a co-op. Our purpose is, as it has been since the beginning, to empower ourselves to improve the quality of our lives.
To create this next chapter of OPALCO’s story, we need your help. What is your vision for the future of our Co-op? What are your major concerns? What would you like our Co-op to look like ten years from now?
Part of that picture is our modern communications challenge: how to support our communities with a better, faster, more robust flow of information and data. How can OPALCO best meet this challenge? We have devoted serious study to the options and drafted the Broadband Initiative plan for member consideration. In this rapidly changing world, we must stay on top of a complex equation of technical, organizational and environmental concerns to keep the Co-op—and our communities—healthy and strong. As we continue to refine the plan, please share your input and feedback and help shape the way forward. Broad member support is required for the broadband project to be realized.
OPALCO is always investigating partnerships that may be of benefit to our co-op. By far, the most important partnership is with you, our members. We are here to serve you. Now is the time to create a cohesive vision for the next chapter of OPALCO’s long story, and we want to hear from you.
Please join us on Saturday, May 4th, as we get on the ferry for OPALCO’s 76th annual meeting. Our theme is “The Next Chapter,” and we invite you to bring your ideas, your concerns, and your brightest vision to add into the mix for our future development.
My vision for our coop is to find more and better ways to keep our environment natural and healthy (communal solar energy?) We should strive to avoid the city’s radiation and rush for faster life at the cost of health and beauty.
The idea of putting transmitters on most of the poles in the islands in order to provide a broadband, effectively bathing us all in WiFi radiation, is a terrible and irresponsible one.
We are living on the islands because we love the pollution free environment, beauty, quiet and a healthier living. Many of us, including my family, avoid Wifi altogether and do not want radiation imposed on us. We plug our internet in and receive 10MB from CenturyLink with no radiation and with an excellent (land) phone service (with all the goodies) and unlimited long distance. Our cost is $65 a month.
“Experts” in the industry will tell us that the radiation involved is less than we receive from the sun. The fallacy in this is that we evolved on this planet for millions of years and have evolved in harmony with the sun’s radiation.
It is not by accident that cancer has exploded in the last fifty years. Wifi is not the same as the sun’s radiation and “experts” always defend the industry and not our health. They said x rays were safe when they weren’t. Same is true for DDT, Thalidomide and other experiments on the public that are too numerous to mention.
The population’s general health is declining due to radiation pollution and food with lists of ingredients that sound like a chemistry experiment.
Radiation should be used by choice only and not inflicted on all against their will. Opalco’s proposal will severely harm residents health and should not be implemented.
Naomi Aldort