State Readies Rogers City Coal Ash Hearing | CLICK HERE TO READ THE REPORTS
Michigan—Rogers City resident Joseph Veselenak likes to tell how, decades ago, the school’s football team showed up for practice one day and encountered a bizarre sight. A goal post was tilting crazily: One end of it was literally sinking into the ground. Mr. Veselenak, who coached Rogers City football in the late 1960s and through the ‘70s, immediately knew what the problem was. The goal post was slowly being swallowed by a rare form of geology that is actually quite common in Presque Isle County, where Rogers City is located: a blend of highly porous limestone, sinkholes, and underground caves, streams, and aquifers known collectively as “karst geology.”

***

Co-ops Scaring Members to Oppose Energy Reform
An electric utility in southern Illinois is frightening thousands of its customers by spreading misinformation about President Obama’s clean energy reform agenda. The Wayne-White Counties Electric Cooperative has joined the American Petroleum Institute’s “Energy Citizens” propaganda campaign, telling its members to oppose the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

***

South Carolina Co-op Puts $800 million into Energy Efficiency Campaign
South Carolina's electricity cooperatives have an $800 million plan that could dramatically cut energy use in nearly a quarter-million homes -- and cost almost no money. The plan could save billions of dollars in costs for electricity use and power plant construction, and substantially cut greenhouse gas pollution

***

Michigan Co-op’s Coal Proposal Flunks Prudent and Feasible Test
Data supplied by Wolverine Power Supply Cooperative concerning its proposed Rogers City coal plant is deeply flawed, according to a national firm that consults on energy, economic, and environmental topics. Synapse Energy says that Wolverine badly underestimated the cost of building and operating its proposed coal plant and significantly overestimated the cost of using more wind energy, energy efficiency, and natural gas to meet its member’s needs.

A Conversational Blog

Well, here we go, the first blog for Co-op Conversations USA. My name is Tom Karas and for better or worse, this website is my responsibility. There are many other members of the National Public Power Reform steering committee that handle all the other chores from fundraising to legislative strategy. But I get to manage Co-opConversationsUSA, and I will be doing this from my outpost in northern Michigan. Between myself, Mo Charbonneau and our webmistress M’Lynn Hartwell, we hope that you find Co-opConversationsUSA to be the perfect resource for co-op members to learn about the history of cooperatives and understand how members can effect progressive change.

Everyone should start with a spin through Congressman Jim Coopers essay about regaining control of our co-ops. On the History page we try and give you a sense of how this national reform effort got started, and we are actively seeking examples of good co-op practices to feature on the Solutions page. Look who is helping us manage your state page, and consider pitching in to help.

Visit us often and follow our growth. This blog space will see lots of action and there will be new features that come up on a regular basis. But like your hometown co-op, this site needs YOU. You are a MEMBER, that means you have Responsibility not only to your own co-op, but to helping all the rest of us at Co-opConversationsUSA know what’s going on in your neck of the woods.

We look forward to working with all of you.

Michigan's Wind Power Problem

The conference, held at Cobo Hall, in downtown Detroit, was amazing. I could finally see the face of the industry up close and personal. The big turbine guys were there, but so were the crane guys, the lube guys, the tower guys, and even the post-warranty guys.