ETNA GREEN – Etna Green is one of 72 towns across Indiana wary of losing power under a potential restraint on municipal electric companies. A proposal backed by several major electric utilities would limit the growth of municipal providers in towns including Etna Green, Columbia City and South Whitley by barring them from serving newly annexed land, the Associated Press reports. Behind the push are investor-owned utilities and electric membership cooperatives serving rural areas, which oversee most customers in the state. Under current state law, municipal, rural and for-profit providers operate in assigned service areas created 30 years ago. Municipal providers were later allowed to petition the state to take over customers in land annexed into their town or city. Investor-owned utilities say the proposed restriction on municipal utilities would provide “an even playing field” since municipal providers can take territory from others but the reverse is not true, according to the AP. The proposal is being developed by Republican Sen. Mike Crider, Greenfield, who has offered such a bill in the past to no effect. Etna Green has overseen its own electric service to residents “from day one,” according to Clerk-Treasurer Laura Baker. She explained the town belongs to and purchases power from the Indiana Municipal Power Agency and uses a substation located near Bourbon. Towns served by municipal electric companies are able to set rates locally and are more responsive, according to information from the IMPA relayed through town council President Andy Cook. Co-ops and for-profit companies together provide electricity to 93 percent of the state, according to Cook’s letter, while municipal providers serve the other 7 percent. REMCs outpaced municipal utilities in growth by 14 percent to 2.8 percent in the past decade, according to the letter. “The REMCs and IOUs contend that municipal electric communities are annexing them out of existence (but) to argue that municipalities with electric utilities are taking away all opportunity for the REMCs and the other utilities to grow is disingenuous,” the letter states. Etna Green utility customers range from individual residents to industrial operations like the Winona Powder Coating production facility, which opened in summer 2013. Though the facility was already within town limits, and annexation is rare for Etna Green – “We’ve only done it one time since I’ve been here,” Baker recalled – she could imagine future industrial growth in annexed territory causing contention. “A lot of times if the customer is residential, they’re like, ‘OK, whatever, that’s not a lot of money.’ But industrial customers are different, they’d be losing some big revenue,” she said.
