Richmond County

The Impact of Electric Cooperatives on Rural America

By Aimee Sanford

11th Grade

For many years electricity was unavailable to rural areas, which kept the economies of these areas completely dependent on agriculture. Even in the middle of the 1930’s as many as 90% of the homes in rural areas didn’t have electric service, but thanks to electric cooperatives like the Northern Neck Electric Cooperative, today about 99% of the United State’s farms have access to electricity. Electric cooperatives are independent electric utilities that are owned by the members they serve; they are close-knit with their communities and were key in the development of rural areas.

The first action taken by the federal government to get electrical power to “farms and small villages that are not otherwise supplied with electricity at reasonable rates” was the Tennessee Valley Act in 1933. Also that year, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president and started his “New Deal” programs, which included the notion of giving federal assistance to rural electrification. In 1935, President Roosevelt established the Rural Electrification Act, which in a short period of time increased the number of operating rural electric systems by two, the number of consumers with electricity by three, and the miles of electrical lines was multiplied by five. By the early 1950’s over 9 out of 10 United States farms had electricity and today someone not having access to electrical power is virtually unheard of. Currently, locally owned rural electric cooperatives, which started by borrowing funds from the Rural Electrification Act, supply most rural power and provide their services as non-profit organizations. The REA is now the Rural Utilities Service and is a division of the United States Department of Agriculture. The ability of electric co-ops to provide low-cost electrical power has boosted economic development and counteracts the cost of working with less populated areas.

Before the introduction of electric cooperatives in rural America, life was different, to say the least. People had no refrigeration, no radios, and no electric lighting. They had to salt their meat and use kerosene lanterns that provided only dim lighting when some tasks demanded more; and without radios, information traveled at an excruciatingly slow pace. The Northern Neck Electric Cooperative is a perfect example of a co-op that revolutionized life in an area where it seemed like the people were decades behind their neighboring big cities. The NNEC was chartered on June 3, 1937, and as my 93-year-old grandfather Millard H. Sanford remembers it, “The first line was put up going from Oak Grove to Red Hill……it single-handedly is responsible for the development of the Northern Neck.” He also recalls the local heroes that pushed for the co-op, like Elvin Peed, and my grandfather’s cousin, Robert “Mutt” Nash, who studied electric wiring at Warsaw High School and installed electricity in my great-grandparent’s house before many people knew exactly what electrical wiring was. My grandfather also remembers the excitement everyone in the area experienced as they quickly realized they were on the brink of a new era. They couldn’t believe the benefits a local co-op offered, like affordable electricity and new jobs. The co-op even makes charitable contributions to local societies. Today the NNEC serves the counties of King George, Lancaster, Northumberland, Richmond, Stafford, and Westmoreland. In the last seventy years the NNEC members have grown to numbers of about 7800.

Electric cooperatives were instrumental in the development of rural areas. They eased their customers into the new 20th century quickly and efficiently and many continue to provide affordable electricity to this day. They let people who didn’t live in cities have an option so they weren’t limited to just farming; they could now start businesses and improve their hometowns. The possibilities were, and continue to be, endless.