Discover how Tri-State and our members are embracing the opportunity to power the West in our new podcast, Western Watts!
We'll dive into the heart of energy issues, from reliability to wildfire mitigation, and share firsthand insights relevant to rural, agricultural and mountain communities across Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming.
I think to keep communities in rural America viable, community participation participation is essential. You have to be on the chamber board. You have to be on the bank board. You have to be on the school board. The county commission, and and we all play those roles.
Speaker 1:You really have to be involved in all the activities and the other families in the community. Everybody knows everybody, and that's just how we survive. We have to pull our resources and cover all the bases.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Western Watts, the podcast where Tri State and our cooperative members explore what it takes to power the West. From reliability to wildfire mitigation, we dive into the energy issues that matter most to rural, agricultural, and mountain communities across Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Welcome back to Western Watts. I'm Elizabeth Schilling with Tri State.
Speaker 3:And Julia Perry with Tri State as well.
Speaker 2:And we have the pleasure today of talking with mister Tim Reiben. Thanks for joining us today. Tim is our chairman on the tristate board and has a real unique view
Speaker 3:and has the best boots.
Speaker 2:It's the best boots. Tim, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you. I appreciate the invitation. My name is Tim Raben. I'm from Alamogorda, New Mexico, which is in Otero County, Southern New Mexico, and I'm a trustee for the Otero County Electric Board, and it's headquartered in Cloudcroft, New Mexico.
Speaker 2:Tell us, what what do you do here for Tri State?
Speaker 1:Not much. Let's I am the current board member from Otero County Electric Southern New Mexico and the current chairman of the board.
Speaker 2:So tell us, where are you from?
Speaker 1:Alamogordo, New Mexico.
Speaker 2:Is that for all of your life? Or
Speaker 1:Yeah. My grandmother's family on my mother's side moved to Alamogordo in 1926 from Virginia with a lumber company. My great grandfather was sent to establish a new sawmill there. They were in the logging industry. So he moved his wife and eight kids down the road and established sawmill there, which was really the economic driver for the county at that time.
Speaker 3:And what's Alamgordo like?
Speaker 1:What's it like now? It's pretty much like it was back in 1926 when my great grandfather moved there. It's a very small town, and, there's really no manufacturing. Our economic driver today is Ullman Air Force Base. So we don't have a lot of growth opportunities.
Speaker 1:In all seriousness, I graduated high school there in 1978. Population was about 32,000, and the last census that came out, population was down to about 30,000. So in Alamogordo, Sixty Thousand in the county.
Speaker 3:What's the draw that's kept your family there for so long?
Speaker 1:That's a good question. Most of the family still lives there. We're in the ranching business and in the construction business and just never left. I don't just been there a hundred years. Family's been there a hundred years and, like it there and just never had a desire to move anywhere.
Speaker 3:Now you've got pretty deep roots. It just seems like you keep digging them deeper probably.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, we're the second largest by land size county and state in New Mexico, but we only have about 60,000 population there. So it's very small in population size, And we're related to about half of them, so some form or fashion. After a hundred years, got pretty deep roots, and we're involved in a lot of community activities and county activities and pretty nice place to live. We enjoyed there.
Speaker 3:And birthday parties must be nuts if half the town's gonna turn up. Right?
Speaker 1:It's busy. Yep.
Speaker 2:Well, when we talk about serving electricity, a lot of times we'll talk about the people at the end of the line. You have kind of a unique connection to that phrase. Tell us more about that.
Speaker 1:My wife and I, Debbie, we are that member at the end of the line, literally. And so the line I just wanna tell people doesn't go buy our house. It comes to our house. So we are absolutely at the end of the line. Our business is back up the line a little bit.
Speaker 1:So live within about a half a mile of our headquarters where our construction business is. It's on the coop line also. All of our ranch facilities are on the coop line as well, but we have a very good appreciation for those people living out in rural America and live at the end of the line how important it is to keep power on.
Speaker 2:So how did you get here? What got you into electricity and specifically cooperatives?
Speaker 1:I, got on the co op board in 02/2010. My brother had actually been on the board before that, and, he got involved in it. He was encouraged to get involved in it. He partners with my two older brothers in our ranch and our developments, everything we do. And the older brother is the one that kinda took care of the business operations, the office.
Speaker 1:And, he was encouraged to get on the board because of our requirement of electricity. We're a big consumer of it with our aggregate production facilities. So we have a large open pit mine where we mine sand and gravel crushers, screening equipment. We, produce ready mix concrete, hot mix asphalt. So we're a large consumer of electricity, and we're on the, coop line.
Speaker 1:And so they encouraged him to run for the board, and he did that, in February. Then he became the chairman of a bank down there and decided he need to get off coop and encouraged me to run for his seat, so I did. Got on there in 02/2010 and have remained there since because of how critically important electricity is to our business. Our business and our family are residential as well. So our residents are on the coop.
Speaker 1:Our business is all influenced and and regulated by the coop, and so it's it's very important that we have a voice in that process.
Speaker 3:I wonder if that's a rural thing because the more board members you talk to, the more you realize they're not just on the board. They also have three other businesses. They're also juggling a ton of family and a ton of kids and helping everybody out. Like, it's just a I don't know if that's a rural lifestyle thing, but just constantly moving, being involved, doing community stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, I think to keep communities in rural America viable, you have to do that. So community participation is essential in the life of rural communities. You have to be on the chamber board, you have to be on the bank board, you have to be on the school board, the county commission, and and we all play those roles. Fortunately, for me and my family, as I said, I'm in business with my two older brothers, so we kind of divide and conquer. And and one of some school board, one's on the bank board, one's on the commission, the coop board, and and it just goes on and on.
Speaker 1:You become a sports coach, and all three of our wives have been tutors at the school and involved in all the school activities. And so you really have to be involved in all the community activities and the other families in the community. Everybody knows everybody, and that's just how we survive. We have to pull our resources and cover all the bases.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It sounds like it's not an accident then. All of these rural board members were already doing all of this other stuff anyway. Why not add board member to it? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And the coop board is one of the more important ones in our area. The rural telephone cooperative board has really become in recent years equally as important. Now that the, reliance on broadband is if you don't have access to high speed Internet broadband, you just can't hardly survive in today's world. And so for electricity, that was the case back in the nineteen thirties that brought the rural electrification act to bear.
Speaker 1:Well, now it's broadband. Got we're working on getting broadband out to rural America so that they can keep up with the urban setting.
Speaker 2:It's all an investment in the future of your communities, what the potential's gonna be.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it's actually been a contributor to our growth in population because with COVID, people started working from home. And as we got broadband deployed, well, they were able to actually move to a rural setting because they had access to high speed Internet so they could do their job. And so that's probably been the key contributor to any growth we've seen in the last five or six years for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It really goes to show that the ethics and morals of cooperatives have still kind of stayed exactly the same. They came together originally because of the lack of availability of electricity, which modernized their entire life. And then Internet is just round two, and you're doing it in the exact same way, you know, getting it to people that otherwise might not even gotten good service or extremely expensive service.
Speaker 1:Well, my personal experience with it occurred when my children moved off to college. So when they got to the university, everything was on a laptop and that they used to do all of their studies and provide all their their coursework on. And when they'd come home, they couldn't do it. So, basically, they quit coming home because they couldn't do their work because we didn't have at that time, and this was only maybe ten years ago, we didn't have access to high enough speed Internet for them to do their coursework on, so they quit coming home.
Speaker 3:It's grandkid retention insurance, essentially. You seem to really gravitate towards, like, hard physical work, you know, construction, ranching, underground utilities. Is that a big part of your personality and work ethic?
Speaker 1:So when we were growing up, there was four of us kids in the family, my mom and dad. My dad was a World War two veteran. He was a, marine in World War two, served in The Pacific, and, he's from North Carolina. Somehow wound up back in Alamogordo, Married my mom, had four kids, and he died of a heart attack nineteen seventy. So I was nine years old at the time, but, basically, I mean, it was hard times then.
Speaker 1:Left my mom with four kids and a mortgage, and that was about all they had. So we didn't we didn't have much when we were growing up, but we didn't need much either. But in order for us to, have anything, you had to go to work. And so I actually filed my first tax return in 1974. So I'd have been 14 years old and I'd earned enough income working residential housing construction to have to file a tax return.
Speaker 1:And I've filed one every year since. So I haven't known much other than work, but I absolutely love it. I I hope I never become impaired to where I can't work. I'm not sure what I would do if I got to that point.
Speaker 2:So between your principles, your work ethic, what you've learned from running businesses, Are there elements of that that you apply to your role as the chairman of the board these days?
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. You know? I think that's what helps me qualify to be able to fill a position. I don't know how good I am at it, but I have learned along the way. The, biggest thing is how to be fair with people, how to, be compassionate with other people.
Speaker 1:We're all different. We all think different. We all have our view of the world. Doesn't make me right and you wrong, you right and me wrong. It just you know, in a lot of cases, it just makes us different, and we have to be able to accept that and and figure out how to get along with with each other.
Speaker 1:And, learned a lot of that. It it was kinda two part for me in business. Being in business with my family, it's very difficult to navigate a business relationship with siblings as you can only imagine. And so I've had to learn a lot of hard lessons along the way and learned them and not repeated them, and now I can apply them. And I think the main thing is how to be fair and compassionate with other people, especially people that I disagree with or may disagree with me and, understand that they have a position that's equally, as important as mine.
Speaker 2:So you say you have board members who might be acting like siblings just trying to get along Yeah. On the table.
Speaker 1:Which is fun. That you know, that's what makes it, fun. You feel like you accomplished something when you have a disagreement and and resolve it. And dispute resolution, I guess, is one of the components of being successful. If you can resolve disputes and move forward and still be partners or friends or family members, then you're successful.
Speaker 1:Well, I
Speaker 2:think we've gotten to see you do that too, just that spirit of taking the time to listen or even having, you know, subcommittees get together, talk about an issue that needs a little more more depth. But having that time for people's voices to be heard seems huge.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And we've in my time here at Tri State, I've been here since 2014. A lot of what we've done has fallen into that trap of we do it this way because we've always done it this way, and that's not the right reason to do things a certain way. So we've tried to go through the entire board. There's a clear separation between staff management and board management, and Dwayne is, responsible for staff management and conduct, and the chairman is responsible for the board management and conduct.
Speaker 1:And so we've gone through all of the board policies and the board conduct, and we've reviewed them and scrubbed them from head to toe, made a lot of changes, and become, I believe, more open, more transparent, and more compassionate for the entire membership. Doesn't matter if you're the smallest member, the largest member. We're all the same.
Speaker 3:I mean, if you're able to get 40 something people to find a solution that mostly works, that sounds really fair to me. People in New Mexico are genuinely going to have different needs than people in Northern Wyoming. So being able to resolve problems on a wide scale across the entire membership is pretty impressive.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it has its challenges. And but I think so far, we've been fairly successful. One of the things that I always keep in mind is I've got a sign in my office at home. I learned this lesson a long time ago, and that sign reads, the greatest single problem with communication is the illusion that it has actually occurred.
Speaker 1:Bernard Shaw is the one that coined that phrase. And, and if you stop and think about that for a minute, you know, it really makes sense. And, so I use that, also not only for my use, but I try to convey that to the other board members. Say, hey. You know, I think you two guys are saying the same thing.
Speaker 1:You're just saying it different. And that if you'll stop and listen to one another, you'll understand that you actually have the same goal in mind. You're just you got a roadblock there. And I think that's helped resolve a lot of the contention that we've had. Not that there's been a lot, but we have had some challenges over the last few years that I think we've successfully navigated.
Speaker 1:And a lot due to Duane's personality and experience as well has helped with that. So Duane's a great leader. He's been refreshing.
Speaker 2:So co ops came together to form Tri State knowing it's gonna work better if we're uniting our forces to secure power. Why is that concept important to you?
Speaker 1:No. There's power in the group, and, I mean, the it's the, basis for the coop model anyway, whether it's a grain coop or a fuel coop or an electric coop, the concept's the same. And, those of us in rural America don't have access to the numbers that Irvin said like here in Denver. So we're scattered and not very strong on our own. And when we'll compile our resources, it helps us be on a little more level playing field than, more highly populated urban settings.
Speaker 1:And so that's what occurred with the REA back in the nineteen thirties was all rural residents came together and started stringing wires and electrifying people's homes.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think a lot of it has stayed the same too because of that not for profit business model because it is rural. You have less people per line, so there's not a huge incentive for other companies to come in because there's not as much profit to be made or prices might even have to change just because of the amount of people or businesses per line in a rural setting.
Speaker 1:Well and they still wouldn't they still wouldn't be there today. The the IOUs aren't coming out to rural America because the the numbers don't work. And it's it just all comes down to quality of life. So if you want to enjoy good quality of life, you gotta have electricity. Now you gotta have broadband.
Speaker 1:And, so you had two options. And, fortunately, they came up with the concept of, applying a coop model out in rural America for electricity and broadband both. But you either move to an urban setting, which is not practical because those of us in rural America are growing all the grain and beef and, you know, we're supplying the food to America and a lot of the rest of the world, and and we're doing it out in rural America. We can't do it in Downtown Denver. You just that's just a fact of life.
Speaker 3:For people that might be unfamiliar, do you just wanna explain what the REA is?
Speaker 1:REA is Rural Electrification Act, and it was Roosevelt signed in 1936. And it was an act where the government provides through RUS, a rural utility service. They provide low interest loans to co ops to electrify rural America, and they did it through the establishment of co ops in those areas. They had criteria. RUS actually provided the language for bylaws.
Speaker 1:That's what establishes our size of our board and what our districts look like. We all had contracts with RUS where they loaned us the money so we could buy the poles and wires and hire people to electrify rural America.
Speaker 3:It was like the wild wild west but of electricity back in the thirties.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And the IOUs, independently owned utilities, PNM or XL, those type of companies were for profit businesses. And so they had to have a return on investment, and they could get that in urban settings. New York City, the the bigger communities, they could electrify them, or they have they may have, gosh, hundred or 200 meters per mile. And those of us out in rural America have three or four meters a mile, maybe seven meters a mile.
Speaker 1:And so there's no way to make a return on your investment in that setting. And so the IOUs were not gonna go there. They still won't go there today because there's just not an opportunity for them to make a return on their investment.
Speaker 2:Can we take a little personal turn? So you you have a pretty full plate even I mean, failing at retirement, you still have a pretty full plate. How do you keep up your energy? How do you take care of yourself to be able to do all the things that you do?
Speaker 1:I've got a good wife that takes care of me. I would give her most of that credit. She cooks really good. She got a lot of food allergies, so, she's real big on organic food and what I eat and what I don't eat. So I get to cheat when I come here to Denver.
Speaker 1:And, I don't know. I've just worked my entire life. I love to work. I'm scared to death of not being able to work. And I'm also afraid if I ever stop, I'll get run over, and I either get run over and not be able to start again.
Speaker 1:So I don't know. Maybe I'm just afraid of stopping.
Speaker 3:So you don't have to
Speaker 2:worry about movement or an exercise routine. You're just moving constantly by the nature of your life.
Speaker 1:People ask me that. You know, what do you do for exercise? I work. I don't do push ups and lift weights and that kind of stuff. I work all day long, and and I love doing it.
Speaker 1:And it provides me all, exercise I need, staying in shape. And so far, thankfully, I've been blessed with good health and been nervous about that most of my life because my dad died of a heart attack when I was nine. He was 42 years old, and his dad died at 36 of influenza. So I've been thinking most of my life, well, I'm not gonna live very long, so I better live it to the fullest. And I turned 65 here in two months and, yeah, got good health and got a wife that takes good care of me, and it all works as to this point.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 3:You do it a lot. Thank you. Organic food. Yes. What's your favorite meal that she makes?
Speaker 1:Gosh. That's hard to just pin it down to one, but I would have to say enchiladas. Enchiladas and kale soup, it's a toss-up on that. It's the best stuff you've ever had in your life.
Speaker 3:Do you guys have a garden at all?
Speaker 1:Yes. So we have chickens, and we've paired back our garden substantially. We'd always had a garden when I was a kid. We had a garden in the backyard and grew a lot of our own vegetables and, came home. And Debbie and I put in a big garden and and got chickens and started learning how to sustain ourselves, how to grow our own food.
Speaker 1:And, while we had kids there that could work to garden, we had a pretty sizable one. But since kids are all gone, we paired it back. But we still do grow some of our own vegetables, and Debbie's got a flock of chickens that she tends to down there. And we raise cattle. We keep our own steers, feed them out.
Speaker 1:And, so that that was an eye opener to me just how fragile life is if you're not able to go to the grocery store and buy whatever you wanna eat.
Speaker 2:You've worked with your family. You speak very highly of of your wife. Tell us in general just what family means to you.
Speaker 1:It means everything. I mean, that's why we're here. Right? That's why God put us here. Family is extremely critical.
Speaker 1:I'm fortunate enough, blessed enough to have three boys, and they're all back home in Alamgordo now, and they all have kids. And so we get to have family gatherings with them multiple times a week and watch grandbabies all the time. And the only reason for my business success is because I was able to work with my two older brothers and build a business and operate it and be successful at it and couldn't have done that on my own. And at the end of the day for me to without the family, there's nothing else really matters. That's what I'm here for, not we enjoy one another and vacation together, and that's what life's all about, ain't it?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, you gotta keep up 50% of the population of Alamogordo. Right? So you Yeah. Keep the kids coming.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it's extremely important. Family is.
Speaker 2:Well, it feels like that spirit of cooperation just on that personal small scale in within your family and then that concept taken more broadly to the work you do at Tri State and among Otero. We had a question on here that was, what do you like to do for fun? But we know the answer is work. You like to do work for
Speaker 1:It's pretty boring, I know, but that's what I enjoy. And the work I like to do is stuff that I can turn around at the end of the day and say, hey. I built that. Look what I did. And that and business was always a challenge for me, and that's why it was good.
Speaker 1:My older brother was there and was happy to do the actual in office business portion of it. The other brother and I did all the field work, so we constructed all the plants and and did all the construction work. And and, I I love to get to the end of the day and be able to look back and see what I accomplished. And and so we Debbie and I built our house, Debbie and the boys and I, when they were young, we built our own house. And and, that's kind of the stuff we do for fun is work on things, build things, and taught my kids how to work on their vehicles and how to do their own plumbing and work around their house.
Speaker 1:And and outside of that for fun, I like to hunt and shoot. I'm a long range shooter. I like to reload ammunition, and hunting and shooting is probably about the only thing really outside of work that I enjoy doing.
Speaker 3:What I learned is that you lied about retiring. It's just a facade, and you're probably just gonna casually start up a mechanic shop or something in your free time.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Retirement sounded good, but can't figure out how to get it done. Yeah. Too much energy, I guess, to it's that sense of accomplishment. You just have to feel like you're helping somebody, doing something for somebody.
Speaker 1:I just hope I never become impaired to where I can't do things. That that scares me.
Speaker 2:I think we hope that for you too. What's one piece of advice you've received, either good or not as good, that you would wanna share?
Speaker 1:A couple of philosophies, I guess. Say you can, say you can't, either way you write. You know? That's one that I like to live by. Bible verse, to whom much is given, much is required.
Speaker 1:We feel blessed. I felt as blessed at seven or eight, nine years old as I do today. You know? So it's all relative to your situation, but we've always had that belief that we've been given a bunch and we've gotta give back a bunch. I think that's why our community engagement and even my time here on Tri State and all this, I commit a lot of time here to Tri State because I've been given a lot also.
Speaker 1:The people that were here before me made my life possible, and so I'm gonna do what I can to make the people coming after me's life good as well.
Speaker 2:Sounds like you've made a a choice, and your perspective is to come from that angle of gratitude and appreciation, and it plays out in everything you do.
Speaker 3:Of your many hobbies and activities and side work, how did you get into distilling whiskey?
Speaker 1:Well, I've got a couple of friends down there that have distilleries. So I got started in it during COVID, got a little bored because we had to stay home. And so I, told Debbie, well, I'm going to try and make some beer because my dad did that when I was a kid. I can remember him making beer. And so she bought it for me for my birthday, little beer making kit.
Speaker 1:So we made some beer and it turned out pretty good, but it just sparked an interest in me. And how in the world are you taking grain that's just starch with a shell around it and turning it into something you can drink. I'm I'm one of those people that has to understand how things work, and that one eluded me. So I started studying. The beer was fairly easy because it came in a kit, but then turned to whiskey and thought, well, I'm gonna try to figure out how you do that.
Speaker 1:And it's quite an interesting concept. But for me, it was just fun to learn how the process has evolved over centuries and understand how it works, and then the byproduct's not all bad either.
Speaker 3:What's the most surprising thing someone's farming or growing or product down in Otero?
Speaker 1:Probably the pomegranate farm. I mean, like you say, you wouldn't think they would grow down there, but they do. With the lack of water that we have down there and the climate, there are just very few things that do grow. But in our air in Southern New Mexico, pecans do better there than just about anywhere. Texas is a huge producer of pecans, and I think Georgia is the next one in line.
Speaker 1:But New Mexico pretty regularly is the, top producer of pecans in The United States, and you wouldn't think that.
Speaker 2:Oh, I want pie.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3:I stopped at Buc ee's for the first time on the way home from Fort Collins the other day. They had those. I love the candied pecans. They have them, like, on a little roaster over there. So good.
Speaker 1:Yeah. My wife makes those.
Speaker 3:What doesn't your wife do? I think the list of what she can't do would be shorter, honestly.
Speaker 1:No. Yeah. She's she's quite the individual.
Speaker 2:So thinking about different ways you can approach business, the cooperative model is a unique one. Can you tell us a little bit more about how are decisions made in a member owned cooperative?
Speaker 1:So, at the local home coop, all of the members if you have a meter on our coop, you're an owner of the coop. You're not a customer. You're a member. And when the coops join forces and established tristate, which is a coop of coops, All of the individual coops elected their representative, and that's one of the things I've tried and still hear over the last four years of my term of chairman is that we're not directors, we're we're owner representatives. So to try to help change that mindset from just being a customer, to being recognized as an owner.
Speaker 1:So Tri State is owned by individual co ops, and those co ops elect a representative to come here to Tri State and represent their individual positions. It's part of the challenge of the co op board here, the size of it, but everybody has basically important to the organization. And with NRECA, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association is another group that formed. That association was built by the co ops to, provide training. That was their main purpose was to provide training to directors just like me on how I'm supposed to conduct myself as a coop director owner representative.
Speaker 1:And because the, industry's ever evolving, changing all the time. And so to stay current with that, you have to continue to go to training year over year. And, NRECA is the one that provides that. So it's a lot of continued education in order to stay current with the rules and regulations and the desires of a coop director.
Speaker 3:Why did you want to be on Tri State's board versus just Putero's board?
Speaker 1:I was encouraged by my local board chairman to, fill this role. I think he recognized my organizational skills and just the ability that I have as a long time business owner. He recognized that I may have some qualities that would benefit the Tri State family, and so he encouraged me to run for this role. But for me, it's been kinda difficult to fill, and I think most co ops are facing this issue is it means a lot of time away from home. It's five sixty two miles from my house to here.
Speaker 1:So it's an eight and a half hour drive for me. And I have to drive for a day and then attend meetings for two or three days, drive for a day back. And I'm not the furthest away director, so I'm close, but not quite. So the commitment to come here and be on this board is, is a big one. But I was at a point, fortunately, at that time in my life that I had the time to commit and decided, okay.
Speaker 1:I'll go give it a shot.
Speaker 2:So thinking about the reason cooperatives form, obviously, it's because there's some strength in doing things together. It doesn't mean everything's gonna stay the same. Things are evolving. Members are evolving, and Tri State is evolving to meet that need. What do you see as that future for Tri State that sets us up for success to keep meeting members' needs?
Speaker 1:That industry started to change with renewable energy finally getting legs under it, and so the future looks very good for the cooperatives. I even though we're going through a transition, the need for co ops is is every bit as great, if not more, today than it was in the nineteen thirties. We still have to have access to, electricity out in rural America. Tri State has evolved to become more transparent, more flexible, more engaging. We have the ERP, which kinda is the roadmap for our future capacity because capacity is everything in this business.
Speaker 1:Once we get electricity, we gotta make sure we can keep it on twenty four seven. And normally when that's a problem is when there's a, severe weather event, whether whether it's a heat wave or a or an Arctic blast, that's when the system's tested. We have proven that we're gonna be able to sustain that capacity well into the future. Tri State is positioned very well to not be impacted by what we believe is coming over the next five or six years with a shortage of capacity. You can't build capacity as fast as it's being consumed right now.
Speaker 1:Tri State has all the capacity. It needs to supply its demand well into the future. So continuing to work together, stay together, and at the end of it, we're gonna be better off as a result of remaining in the family.
Speaker 2:So every tri state member has a seat on the tri state board. Why is that important?
Speaker 1:Well, it's important because we all come from diverse areas. And so we're scattered over four states, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. And the needs of Otero County Electric down in Southern New Mexico are likely to differ a little from the needs of someone in Grant, Nebraska. And so it's important that the members can all come together, debate the merits of our individual needs and what actually works in the best interest of the whole group, and we'll come to a consensus on that. So that's why it's important that one member, one vote so that, we maintain some balance and harmony among members scattered over four states.
Speaker 1:We have probably the largest geographic territory of any, generation and transmission organization in The United States.
Speaker 2:That diversity really is what makes the cooperative business model so successful. Thank you for your part in that process. Thanks for tuning in to Western Watts. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube, or on our website at tristate.coop/wwpod. We'll catch you next time.