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NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, FEB. 16, 2009 – The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) today honored Western Illinois Electrical Cooperative with the Association’s Community Service Award for the cooperative’s successful effort to leverage funding that enabled the community to keep its hospital.

Western Illinois Electrical Cooperative (WIEC) is a small distribution cooperative serving 3,500 members. Like many rural communities, Hancock County was facing the prospect of losing its local hospital, along with access to medical services, within five years unless the hospital could construct a new building. The City, however, lacked the million dollars in funds required to extend water, sewer and roads to the available site.

WIEC secured a $740,000 loan and $300,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development program and made a $60,000 loan to the city for utility extensions and road development. The $1,100,000 zero-interest loan assisted in leveraging the $22 million needed for the project. As a consequence, over 200 existing jobs were retained and 25 new jobs will be created. More importantly, the county’s only medical facility will remain open.

The project is helping to sustain Hancock County by strengthening one of the most critical components of community well-being: the health care system. In so doing, the program embodies the seventh cooperative principle, a “concern for community.”

“It’s hard to imagine any other utility working cooperatively with the government to protect their consumers’ access to health care. Taking on the challenge of keeping a medical facility open in the face of many hurdles illustrates the cooperative difference,” said Jack Wolfe, President of the NRECA Board of Directors.

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association is the national service organization that represents the nation’s more than 900 private, not-for-profit, consumer-owned electric cooperatives, which provide service to 42 million people in 47 states.

Nearly 9,000 representatives from cooperative electric utilities across the nation are attending the NRECA Annual Meeting, February 15-18, at the New Orleans Convention Center, during which they will set NRECA’s legislative and organizational agenda for 2009. In addition to considering and acting upon policy resolutions, delegates receive reports from NRECA officials, hear addresses by key public figures and business experts, and attend panel sessions on major issues affecting electric cooperatives and their consumer owners.

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