Imagine you live in a town with only one grocery store. The store has decent prices and is regularly stocked, but it’s almost all junk food produced in out-of-state factories.
You see other stores in similar areas with a variety of food for similar prices – food that’s grown locally, is healthier, and is produced in environmentally friendly ways.
Now suppose you had the chance to vote out the old managers, the ones who are just fine with keeping the same old junk, and elect new ones. Wouldn’t you do it?
Now here’s where I break with the analogy. I’m actually not writing to discuss food systems. I’m writing to discuss our electricity.
Coal is the junk food of our electric system. It is easy, and for a long time it was cheap.
But our citizens are realizing that coal (just like junk food) comes with a host of problems: health risks, competition with local sourcing, sending dollars to huge out-of-state corporations.
As La Plata Electric Association customers, about 70 percent of our electricity comes from coal; our communities’ electric diet is 70 percent junk! It’s time for citizens of Southwest Colorado to vote to break ties with the LPEA board members who for years have supported junk food energy in the face of changing tides.
Our communities want clean and local sources of energy, not a five percent cap on local renewables that the incumbent board members have supported.
It’s time for change. Candidates Rachel Landis, Guinn Unger, and Kim Martin represent that change.
Marty Pool
Durango
