Business : East-Central Iowa REC Awarded $8.4 million Grant

East-Central Iowa Rural Electric Cooperative has been awarded an $8,436,237 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to rebuilt 246 miles of distribution lines throughout the utility’s service territory. The grant funds will come from the mitigation program. These federal dollars will be matched with $1,124,831 from the State of Iowa and $1,687,248 from East-Central itself.

East-Central demonstrated that it will cost considerably less to rebuild 106 line segments now than to repair them after a major weather event sometime in the future. CEO Harry Ruth said, “These lines are 50 and 60 years old. They are built with old steel and copper conductor. The poles are too small, and the spans between the poles are too long. Rebuilding them to our current specifications with aluminum clad conductor, heavier poles and shorter spans of 200 to 250 feet will greatly improve the reliability of our service. The lines that we build today can stand up to the ice and wind events that seem to be increasingly common in Iowa.”

The lines to be rebuilt will be in Black Hawk, Benton, Bremer, Buchanan, Fayette, Linn, Tama, and Iowa counties. Construction will begin in the coming spring and will be completed by December of 2014. East-Central will take competitive bids from contractors to do the construction.