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 really taken to this electricity thing.