Every May, over 500 line workers, teachers and volunteers gather in Grand Junction, Colorado at the Mesa Hotline School for the two-week annual learning event. The school attracts participants from across the United States, emphasizing safety and reliability in electrical transmission and distribution. It’s an energetic and transformative learning experience with the aim of equipping people with the knowledge and skills needed to keep the lights on for the communities they serve.  

Building off last year’s award-winning theme of Co-op Campus, our most recent Communications and Energy Services Conference provided another dynamic two days of learning and connection, centered around a 70s-inspired theme of 'More Power to Ya.'  

Every farm has a story, and that story often has a distinct before-and-after moment of when the farm gained electricity. For many across the rural west, that moment was in the 1940s and 50s after the Rural Electrification Act took effect and member-owned electric cooperatives emerged to bring reliable and affordable electricity to their communities. For Mammoth Farms, that moment happened in 2018.   

EEA is a member-owned rural electric cooperative and its day-to-day work serving its member-owners is guided by the seven cooperative principles.

All of us at one time or another have experienced the inability to find an item we needed to purchase, or have had to settle for a different or novel solution to our requirements. Now imagine that solution at prices three or four times the cost of what one used to pay prior to 2020. That has been the ongoing nature of the post-pandemic, worldwide supply chain crisis.

To address the housing shortages, the town of Buena Vista and local building manufacturer Fading West recently broke ground on the Midland Apartments; a 60-unit, income-restricted building that will provide much-needed affordable housing in the area.

In Simla, Colo., a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held for three new electric buses and chargers, thanks to grants from the 2022 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program. Big Sandy School District was among the lottery winners.

Spring training and the start of Major League Baseball season means different things for Tri-State employee Chris Gilbreath, father of Colorado Rockies pitcher Lucas Gilbreath.

As a cooperative, we know that when people come together, we can achieve greater results than any one of us could have done alone.  Such was the case in the electrification of the Dahlia Station, a key depot along the Amarillo-to-Albuquerque pipeline managed by NuStar Energy – one of the nation’s largest independent liquids terminal and pipeline operators.