A Look at the Year Ahead
Hello Emerald Customers,
Happy New Year! I hope your holiday season was a relaxing time with friends and family. We’re excited to begin our 43rd year of operations as your locally-owned utility and to continue providing the low-cost, reliable service you deserve.
It’s always interesting to reflect on how far EPUD has come over the decades. From a little startup with a maxed-out credit card, we’ve now paid off essentially all our original system debt and built an electric system valued at over $200 million. These investments provide direct benefit to each of our customer-owners, allowing us to operate a more flexible, resilient system with far fewer outages.
We plan to continue these investments in the year ahead, with projects to move lines underground, strengthen existing overhead wire, upgrade substation equipment, and remove vegetation from our rights-of-way. I hope the sight of our crews working year-round across your community gives you confidence that your money is being well spent.
At the same time, we remain very aware that affordability is a real and growing challenge for everyone right now. As we put this year’s budget together, customer rate impacts were foremost in our minds. Unfortunately, we’re facing cost pressures from all sides, including large increases in what we pay for wholesale power and transmission. After a thorough public process with our Board and Citizens Advisory Committee, we were able to limit this year’s rate increase to 5.0% and push it out to April 1 to avoid higher winter bills.
I realize any rate increase is meaningful to customers and we’ll do everything we can to mitigate these in the future while keeping EPUD financially healthy. If you have any issues paying your bill or would like to pursue ways to lower your usage, please don’t hesitate to call our office. Our local staff is here waiting to help anyone in need.
Thank you for being a customer and I hope you have a healthy and happy winter season.
Please stay safe,
Kyle Roadman
General Manager