Edmunds County Tribune -

Crews from nine electric cooperatives as well crews from at least three contractor construction companies are assisting with repairs at cooperatives hardest-hit by Winter Storm Wesley. 

Throughout South Dakota, electric cooperative crews have been working since the storm started Wednesday, April 10, at making repairs to damaged infrastructure. At one point Thursday, more than 16,000 members of more than a dozen electric cooperatives were without power. By 1 p.m. Friday, ongoing outages were still reported at nine co-ops, affecting more than 6,600 people. (See the outage map for all South Dakota electric cooperatives at https://outages.sdrea. coop/outages/maps Individual cooperatives may have more detailed maps of their local outages.) 

FEM Electric Association staff are assisting Sioux Valley Energy in Colman. The damage includes 373 poles at last count throughout the counties it serves (five in South Dakota and two in Minnesota.) The Sioux Valley Energy system covers a total of approximately 6,000 square miles and has damage in almost half of it—2,500 square miles. Other crews assisting are from H-D Electric Cooperative in Clear Lake, Codington-Clark Electric Cooperative in Watertown, and Lake Region Electric Association in Webster. The co-op also has contractors from Legacy and Karian Peterson assisting with repairs. 

Other co-ops requesting outside assistance include: Bon Homme Yankton Electric Association in Tabor, Central Electric Cooperative in Mitchell, Douglas Electric Cooperative in Armour, and Rosebud Electric Cooperative in Gregory. 

Additionally, Kingsbury Electric Cooperative in DeSmet and Southeastern Electric Cooperative in Marion, continue to make repairs to their systems. On April 10, Kingsbury Electric lost a couple of poles to lightning strikes before other ice and snow damage started occurring. Southeastern continues to replace more than 100 poles in its area. Progress was being hindered by muddy road conditions buried under layers of ice and snow. Line Crews continue to move in on the more heavily damaged areas in and around the north Canistota and Montrose areas. With poles and wire breaks due to excessive ice loading in those areas, plans are to make a big move with their crews in that area later April 12 and early on Saturday, April 13, 2019.  

Thursday night, Madison-based East River Electric Power Cooperative reported it had restored power to 22 substations that lost power due to the April blizzard. By Friday morning, they were down to three substations without power. Along with the substation outages, there are downed power lines on parts of the transmission system and crews are currently working to repair those structures. Consumers in the affected areas could see outages into Friday.

East River Electric is the wholesale power provider to 24 distribution electric cooperatives and one municipal electric system in eastern South Dakota and western Minnesota.