Flood Updates
Update June 29, 2011 (Wednesday)
Harrison County Rural Electric Co-op continues to assess the flooding conditions. Levees have breached near DeSoto Bend causing the flooding to encroach further toward the southwest side of Missouri Valley. We began disconnecting services in our territory South of U.S. Hwy 30 and West of I-29 yesterday (June 28th). At this time we have approximately 55 residential type services off along with the majority of irrigation services. Our total is currently slightly over 200 services.We continue to patrol the area and monitor conditions as much as possible. We are only disconnecting if a member requests OR if the encroaching waters are upon our facilities and the need is present.
Water was also encroaching in some areas North of U.S. Hwy 30, which will involve disconnects.
We will continue to cover and sandbag our underground cabinets in an effort to protect these facilities from flood damage.
Update June 15, 2011 (Wednesday)
Harrison County Rural Electric Cooperative crews covered and sandbagged many sectionalizing cabinets located along 235th St. South and West of Mondamin. This is our most current pro-active measure in hopes of sparing as much equipment and power during flood issues as possible.We currently have 191 electric services without power in the Modale and Mondamin rural areas due to Missouri River flood circumstances. Conditions are being monitored constantly and steps have been taken to mitigate extended outages for members who may NOT be displaced by flood waters.
NOTE: Approximately 152 of these 191 services are irrigation services and do NOT involve a residence outage. That point should be taken into consideration when reviewing the public effect of this situation. There are also some “voluntary” disconnections where residents have evacuated the premises. Therefore, there is NOT a mass outage where the disruption of electric service is adversely affecting the safety and welfare of inhabitants.
We anticipate more extended outages due to the rising flood waters. We will try to report outages accordingly. We are only disconnecting as the rising water necessitates for the safety of the public, our workers, and the protection of our distribution equipment.
Update June 8, 2011 (Wednesday)
If you are in the affected areas on the Clay and Mondamin substations map your account would be highlighted in purple or yellow. You are invited to attend an informative meeting at the Mondamin Community Center tonight Wednesday (06-08-11) @ 6:00 p.m. sponsored by Harrison County Rural Electric Cooperative, your power provider.
Alert to Membership (June 2, 2011)
As many of you know, disastrous flooding is predicted for the entire western side of Harrison County along the Missouri River. These conditions will likely result in the necessity to cut power to many services in the affected area. Harrison County Rural Electric Cooperative will be taking steps over the next several days to protect our members and the general public from potential hazards due to the floodwaters reaching our electrical distribution facilities.
This is a very unfortunate situation for all of us. We are monitoring the situation closely and we are utilizing as much information as possible to be aware of how this flooding develops. We are utilizing information from the U.S. Corps of Engineers website as well. We will be working closely with the Harrison County Emergency Management office to keep them abreast of our activities.
Our power supplier, Northwest Iowa Power Cooperative (NIPCO) has advised us that they have decided to de-energize the Clay substation near Modale and remove some of the transformation equipment to protect it from floodwater damage. This is almost unprecedented due to the impending severity of the flooding. This will occur by the 8th of June.
Harrison County REC will attempt to continue providing electrical service to as much of the impacted area as possible by feeding power from the Mondamin substation. We will monitor the flood situation constantly as we will likely need to return for some re-switching of lines from the Mondamin sub before roads become impassable due to high water. The fact is, there will be some power disconnection and for some, it may be for quite a long time.
If left unattended and covered with water, transformers and sectionalizing enclosures that are located on the ground and fed from underground circuits would remain energized. This would create a dangerous situation for anyone in the water near the equipment. It is for this reason we will need to discontinue the power before these facilities become submerged. According to predictions and information from the Corps of Engineers, this will include a vast area. We may not always be aware of the exact areas underwater at any given time. We are advising the public to stay out of the floodwater and away from all electrical equipment.
If you are going to have to leave your premises, you should shut off all breakers and the main breaker in your home and the breaker below your electric meter including grain bins, pumps, etc.
All indications are this will be a long term event, possibly two to three months in duration. There are a lot of unknowns at this time and we believe our plans will be changing daily. Further information will be submitted regularly to the Harrison County Emergency Management website at www.harrisoncountyia.org/Flood2011.
If you have further questions or concerns please don't hesitate to call the office.
A map of the area likely affected is linked here for you. Please note that if your service is located in the purple highlighted area, you are advised that these services will be de-energized until the floodwaters recede. If you are situated in the yellow highlighted area, every effort will be made to keep the power on by feeding from the Mondamin substation but there are no guarantees as the floodwaters may be six to eight feet deep in some areas. River current could also present conditions that will cause power poles to wash out.
You are advised that power will be off in the areas indicated on the map and the affected area could even expand beyond the area we have highlighted for you.
Joe Farley, Manager/EVP
