NRECA

10/13/2026

One day in October 1935, Beauford Johnson composed a letter to the editor targeting all the little weekly newspapers in rural Pine County, Minnesota. He couldn't have foreseen that he was starting a civic bonfire that wouldn't burn out until thousands of Minnesota farms had been electrified.

Today, the co-op that did the job, East Central Energy, serves some 67,000 consumer-members living and working along 8,564 miles of distribution line crossing 14 counties.

Johnson's letter said that the new Rural Electrification Administration (REA) in Washington, D.C. had $100 million to loan to groups of farmers to organize and incorporate electric cooperatives, and—critical in those desperate Depression days—“no lien is placed on the farmer's property" and “the directors are not personally liable."

10/13/2026

ISAIAS UPDATE: Oct. 13, 10:30 a.m. ET

Line crews from multiple states continued to slog and slash their way into rural parts of the Florida Panhandle to bring co-op members back online in the fourth day of recovery from Hurricane Isaias.

Overall, outage numbers on Tuesday morning served to underscore co-ops’ dedication to turning the lights back on as quickly and safely as possible.

A massive restoration involving thousands of lineworkers put full restoration of power in sight for the 250,000 members in the dark after Hurricane Isaias made landfall as a Category 2 storm.

10/13/2026

10/12/2026

Scammers want you to act before you have time to think. Before clicking a link in an email or text, stop and look closely. Is the message unexpected? Does the website address look legitimate? Is someone pressuring you to act immediately? When in doubt, go directly to the company’s official website or contact them using a trusted phone number, not the information provided in the suspicious message.

10/12/2026

ISAIAS UPDATE: Oct. 12, 11 a.m. ET

It will take a while before stricken Gulf Coast communities recover from the damage inflicted by Hurricane Isaias, but they’ll be able to do so with the full power of the electric cooperative network.

A massive restoration involving thousands of lineworkers put full restoration of power in sight for the 250,000 co-op members in the dark after Isaias made landfall as a Category 2 hurricane near Destin, Florida, just after dark on Friday.

About 36,000 Florida co-op members were still without power as of early Monday, with most of them—about 20,000—in Choctawhatchee Electric Cooperative’s coastal areas. https://bit.ly/47vNUHj

10/12/2026

10/12/2026