This month marks a milestone birthday for Umatilla Electric. The cooperative was formed in June 1937, the exact date depends on who you ask...
- Umatilla Electric is having our 85th birthday this month, even if the exact date is open to debate.
- It could be June 16, the day in 1937 when our first board members signed us into existence with our original “Articles of Association.”
- It could be June 18, when they filed the articles with the state of Oregon.
- Or it could be June 19, when UEC held its first official meeting as one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s early wave of rural electric cooperatives.
- At any rate, we’re feeling chipper for our age, and still celebrating the milestones along the way.
- For the first time, we’ve passed 100 employees and just topped $100 million in total refunds returned to members in our Capital Credits program.
- Last year, we sold 4.8 billion kilowatt hours of energy, which was 4.8 billion more than in our first year. (Our first power lines weren’t energized until a year later, in July 1938.)
- In 1939, in our first full year of energy sales, we sold a total of 132,000 kilowatt hours, about the same amount that 10 households would use today.
- It appears that you, our members, have taken to this electricity thing.