At last, a Jemez Mountains Electric Cooperative trustee with a vision, not just a plan for enriching himself and his compadres at the expense of co-op members.
Stanley Crawford, newly-elected Board of Trustees member for District 5, wants the co-op to assist homeowners with the purchase of rooftop photovoltaic solar panels and heat-pump residential heaters/air conditioners. Separating our co-op from Tri-State Generation, which is married to coal, is an option. So is providing charging stations for electric vehicles. This is, may I remind you, the 21st century, not the 19th.
I am all for power generation as localized as possible. This reduces the danger that an event – one of any increasing numbers of fires, hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes – will cause power outages that could cascade across the country. And Russia has hacked into our grid, as we have done to theirs. The threats are daunting.
I had thought that the widespread destruction of the power grid in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria was an opportunity to rebuild in a way to prevent such devastation in the future. Downed power lines could be buried. Lines that tenuously connected remote villages to the grid could be eliminated by building local wind and solar (even wave) generation facilities.
But, no, greed prevailed. A $300 million contract was awarded to a fly-by-night corporation from then-interior secretary Ryan Zinke’s home town. They were not able to complete the contract. Many in Puerto Rico still have no power.
America needs more Stanley Crawfords
Adele E. Zimmermann
Embudo