LIGHT READING INLAND POWER AND LIGHT inlandpower.com
JA N UA RY 2 0 1 7
Remembering A Year Ago It’s hard to believe that at this time last year the Inland Northwest was recovering from two epic storms. We were thanking the majority of our members for your patience and understanding as we worked through power restoration efforts from the devastating wind storm that occurred on Tuesday, November 17, 2015. This was the largest outage event in Inland Power’s 78-year history. At the peak of the storm we had over 33,000 members without power. This is equivalent to 82 percent of our membership. We truly appreciate the support, patience and understanding you provided to Inland Power and its employees during the storm.
Overhead Re-Conductor Projects
At the peak of restoration, we had eight contract crews, two tree trimming crews and eight crews from neighboring utilities working alongside Inland Power’s seven crews. This made for a total of 25 crews and three times our normal workforce. Due to this valiant effort, most all line damage was repaired and the majority of our impacted members were back on within three days and all members were restored before the Thanksgiving holiday.
Deer Park Area • Casberg-Burroughs Rd from Scotts Valley Rd (1 mile east) • Tarbert Rd from N Glengrove Staley Rd (1 mile south) • N Glengrove Staley Rd from Glengrove Staley Rd (1.4 miles north) Bigelow • N Lehman Rd from Moffat Rd (¾ mile south) Deer Lake • East Deer Lake Rd from Garden Spot Rd (3 miles north) Loon Lake • Larson Beach Rd from South Loon Lake Rd (2.5 miles south)
“We appreciate the opportunity to be your cooperative. We look forward to a great 80th year of serving your energy needs.”
Just as we had recovered from this devastating windstorm, on December 21 the snow began to fall. By late evening on December 22, we had trees falling all over our system. Time after time, lines would be repaired just to come down again as more trees would snap or sag into our lines. This storm has been named the “White Christmas Storm” and most of our employees worked tirelessly until the last member was finally restored on December 30. In total, these two storms cost Inland Power over $3 million in recovery costs and were accounted for in our 2015 financial statement and net margins. Thanks to the incredible efforts of our staff, we have received over $2.3 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds to help offset the cost of the storms. We have also been allocated over $5 million in FEMA mitigation funding which we will be investing into our infrastructure and improving our system reliability by making improvements in 2017 in several areas, primarily:
Overhead to Underground Projects
Newman Lake (see graphic above) • West Newman Lake Rd from Shady Rd (4.5 miles south) • East Newman Lake Rd from Muzzy Rd to N McCoy Rd (3.5 miles south) • Newman Lake to Greenbluff - Muzzy Rd to Mt Spokane Park Drive (7.5 miles north) Blanchard/Priest River • HooDoo Loop Rd from Tweedie Rd to Old Priest River Rd (7.2 miles north) Spirit Lake • Hero Ave (2 miles) • Hero Ave across Hwy 41 to Paisley Rd (1.2 miles south) All these projects will help us harden our system and significantly reduce any future outages.
i nland powe r is my coope rat ive