Letter: White River Electric board thanks workers

On behalf of the White River Electric Association Board of Directors, I want to thank the staff and management of WREA for your superior efforts over the June 20 weekend in restoring power to our members in town and in the Piceance Basin.
First and foremost, the board is relieved that no one was injured in the tear down or in responding to the tear down around School Street on Saturday morning.
When the board learned of the outage our first concern was for the safety of the lineman, the emergency response personnel and our membership; however, we were all reassured in knowing that the WREA lineman, staff and management team would respond immediately with great professionalism, determination and skill. The profession that you as lineman have chosen requires great technical skill, but more importantly it requires great determination and commitment. Your weekends and personal time can often be interrupted at a moment’s notice to respond to outages such as the ones that occurred during Father’s Day weekend.
We know that you and your families pay a personal sacrifice for that level of commitment. We thank you and your families for your unyielding dedication to this company and our community. Your efforts to keep our lights on over the weekend demonstrated how our small rural cooperative serves some of the largest electrical loads in the state of Colorado with the highest degree of technical skill and customer service.
Again, thank you to Dick Welle, Dale Dunbar, Frank Sampson, Todd Gerloff, Sondra Garcia, Rhonda Bromley, Ken McBryde and all the WREA linemen who rallied from far and wide to respond to the events in Meeker on Saturday, June 20 and in Piceance Creek on Sunday, June 21. This board is proud to be associated with the WREA staff and their continued commitment to excellence.
Gary H. Dunham
President of the board