West Central Electric gets $12.8M loan from USDA for upgrades - Kansas City Business Journal:

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million loan from the to pay for system improvementsd and facility upgrades during the next two WestCentral Electric, based in was one of the four Missouri-basexd cooperatives approved for $237 million in loans from the West Central Electric services 14,000 customeras in Jackson, Cass, Lafayette, Johnson and Henry counties. The loan will enablwe the cooperative to replace 800 defective polesd and rebuild about 50 milexs of electric line ineach county, cooperative General Managed Glenn Alsup said Tuesday. About 30 percenr of West Central Electric’s customers will receivse direct benefits fromthe improvements, Alsup said.
“q lot of our lines were built 40 to 50yearas ago,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of so the lines are too small and He said the use and numbeer of meters has grownn between 2 percent and 3 percent each year for the past 10 West Central applied for the aid towardd the end oflast year, and the USDA notifiede the cooperative in early May that it woulf receive the loan. The cooperative will pay for the projectsd and ask for federal reimbursement as the projects are The loan already has created eighyt new jobs for electric workers for Western which expects to add five more workers by the end of the loan Alsup said.
Alsup said he won’ t know the interest rate of the loan until the cooperative completes the projects and files for reimbursementf from the federal which he expects it to do laterrthis year.