Growth Presents New Challenges for Mississippi Co-ops

D’Iberville, Miss.—Pull off Interstate 10 at the exit for this community and you don’t have to look far to find development.

Barely three miles north of the coast, the new homes and stores here and in neighboring enclaves are a testament to the spirit of recovery from Hurricane Katrina just two years ago. But they are also having an impact on the electric co-ops which serve them.

“A lot of developers have come in. We’ve got thousands of lots that are being developed for subdivision growth,” said Robert J. Occhi, president and CEO of Coast Electric Power Association, Kiln, Miss., which serves the D’Iberville area.

“A lot of businesses that were destroyed have rebuilt,” he said, including national chains such as McDonald’s and Burger King, which put up larger and more modern stores.

North of town, Highway 67 is being widened from two to four lanes. “This will open an entire new corridor of growth for us,” said Ron Barnes, Coast Electric’s vice president of marketing and public relations. The co-op has about 2,000 more consumer-members than it did before Katrina.

Singing River Electric Power Association, Lucedale, Miss., has added some 3,000 consumer-members.

“We’ve seen a mass migration from the beach inland, across the system,” said Lee Hedegaard, Singing River’s CEO and general manager. “There are thousands of meters on the way.”

For Singing River, a number of those will be for something that area hasn’t seen much of since the 1970s: condominiums.

“With the change in environment since Katrina, condominiums have become really popular. We’ve got about 6,000 condominium and apartment units under construction right now in our service territory,” Hedegaard said.

Most of those are starter homes for young people, or new homes for retirees.

“If you were 60-plus, and you lived down near the water, and your house was flooded, destroyed, those people said, ‘I’m not going to do this again in my lifetime,’” Hedegaard added.

McComb, Miss.-based Magnolia Electric Power Association’s growth topped 7 percent last year—more than double the normal rate—as developers kept busy.

“They’re developing property that maybe wouldn’t have been developed otherwise,” said Darrell Smith, Magnolia Electric’s general manager.

Officials at all three Mississippi co-ops agreed that residential growth is returning to more normal levels, generally in a range between 2.5 and 3 percent annually. Still, each has had to adjust.

Magnolia Electric moved up plans for a new substation, and is busy increasing the capacity of existing ones.

An aggressive change-out program is underway to get rid of old copper conductors that Smith said “didn’t fare well in Katrina.”

The co-ops have hired new employees, ranging from linemen to billing office workers.

“We added an underground construction crew in Pearl River County which got a lot of the development. A lot of people from New Orleans came up there,” said Occhi.

Coast Electric also has increased the fee it charges developers. And starting next month, the co-op will move to recoup $17.5 million that remains of the $110 million in recovery costs. Consumer-members will be charged $3 a month until the figure is paid down.

“If we didn’t have any more growth,” Occhi said, and without more federal help, “it’ll take about seven years to do that.”

But he said he doubts it will take that long to accomplish, for a couple of reasons.

“We anticipate that we’ll probably get some more money” from Washington, Occhi said. “Of course we will probably continue to grow.”

Source: Michael W. Kahn, Electric Co-op Today

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