Missoula Electric Cooperative
The Missoula Electric Cooperative was born of a collaboration between the federal government, the State of Montana and citizen activists at a time when private utilities had largely abandoned rural farmers and ranchers. During the mid-1930s as now, small family-owned farmers were struggling, and private corporations such as the Montana Power Company were not inclined to offer any assistance.
When the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration was studying the problem in advance of enacting the Rural Electrification Act, the State of Montana's Water Conservation Board was planning a number of massive irrigation projects, for which ready access to electrical power would be vital. At the same time, farmers and ranchers were organizing to extend the grid onto their properties without having to mortgage their lands.
The Missoula County Electrification was one such organization. Working through a country extension agent, the Association was able to incorporate and apply for an REA loan. The Missoula Electric Cooperative came into being in December 1936.
A cooperative is owned collectively by its members; such a utility is either run on a non-profit basis, or dividends are distributed among its members on an annual basis. Regardless of structure, electrical co-ops have the same requirements as for-profit ones; they must have power generation facilities of some type, or access to the power thereby generated.
All types power plants from coal-fired to hydro-powered have historically made extensive use of asbestos insulation. The reason is that asbestos is resistant to heat and flame as well as electrical current. While asbestos-containing materials may have saved lives and prevented massive property loss over the past century, those who contracted asbestos diseases have suffered disproportionately.
Asbestos illness have long been suspected to be a serious work-related hazard for power plant workers. Strong evidence to this was published in 2007. It described a clinical study by a Puerto Rican medical research team, who examined chest x-rays from 1100 such workers. 13% of the x-rays showed “abnormalities” indicative of asbestos disease.
The dangers of asbestos were well known in the boardrooms of the corporations that manufactured and marketing asbestos and asbestos products. However, they kept this a well-guarded secret for four decades until written evidence of the conspiracy was discovered in 1977.
In power generation plants, machinery that includes generators, boilers and turbine combustion engines as well as thermal control devices have all been insulated with asbestos, particularly the “blue” crocidolite variety. This type of asbestos is a very efficient electrical insulator; it is also strongly implicated in the development of mesothelioma and other asbestos cancers. Such asbestos-containing materials were also used in fire doors, wallboard, wall insulation, electrical cloth, junction boxes and pipe and conduit lagging.
Today, there are strict EPA and OSHA regulations to worker protection as well as the handling of asbestos in general. Violators are subject to fines that can exceed $250,000 in addition to imprisonment for up to five years.
Asbestos diseases can take as long as fifty to sixty years to become apparent, at which time the disease is usually far advanced. However, thanks to new diagnostic methods, today's pathologists can detect the early “markers” of asbestos cancer. Former power plant employees should discuss asbestos exposure with their family doctor and get frequent checkups. When caught early, the cancer can be treated with mesothelioma chemotherapy by doctors like Dr. David Sugarbaker of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA.
Up until the 1980s, it was typical for factories, mills, power plants and worksites to be constructed with asbestos because it offered high resistance to transferring heat and electricity. While asbestos' strength as an insulator undoubtedly protected people and property in the short term, the unexpected results of its use were devastating, and untold numbers of employees developed serious illness because of asbestos exposure. The reason so many employees have suffered from health conditions such as "miner's lung" and lung cancer is that when humans inhale particles of asbestos, the mineral embeds itself into respiratory passages; once there, the tiny, jagged bits of asbestos damage organs. In addition, mesothelioma, a nearly always fatal cancer affecting the lining surrounding the lungs, is known to be caused by even low levels of inhalation of asbestos particles.
Because science has shown the relationship between being exposed to asbestos and diseases like pleural plaques, modern-day employees are protected by laws that prescribe how asbestos is to be handled. Even up to the late 1900s, however, laborers all too often were told to toil in areas in which air filled with asbestos dust was unfiltered; in most cases, the dangers posed by asbestos inhalation were little understood. Spouses and children were also subjected to asbestos exposure if employers didn't provide workplace-only uniforms, because employees took asbestos particles to their homes in their clothes and hair.
Diseases such as mesothelioma can take a very long time to develop, and the symptoms of these disorders are often mistaken for those of less serious conditions; therefore, men and women who were employed at such facilities in the past, as well as their family members, should chat with their doctors about their history of exposure to asbestos.
Sources
Bowker, Michael. Fatal Deception: The Terrifying True Story of How Asbestos is Killing America. New York: Touchstone, 2003.
Cabrera-Santiago, Manuel et al. "Prevalence of Asbestos-Related Disease Among Electrical Power Generation Workers in Puerto Rico." Presentation at American Public Health Association Annual Meeting, 2007.
Missoula Electric Cooperative. “History of MEC.”
http://www.missoulaelectric.com/About_Us/History_of_MEC
