East River Electric 2020 Annual Report

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Focusing onWORKFORCEHEALTH & SAFETYA top priority of East River is fosteringa culture of safety leadership within ourworkforce. Our safety culture isn’t builtfrom the top down. Rather, it’s built byeach employee taking ownership of theirresponsibility as a safety leader.By taking a safety-first approach to work, ouremployees are protecting themselves and theircoworkers from the impacts of workplace accidents.No matter the task or the workload, safety mustalways come first in our industry.30Focus CommitteeEast River’s Focus Committee continued our internalFocus on Safety campaign in 2020. The campaignstresses the importance of making safety a top priorityin every task. It also reminds employees that safety iseveryone’s responsibility and that every employee isa safety leader.“Fostering a culture of workplace safety leadership isan important part of minimizing workplace accidentsand near misses. Distraction tends to be a largecontributing factor to workplace accidents and a bigpart of this campaign involves reminding employees
to focus completely on each task at hand,” said Safetyand Health Professional Nick Reiff.The Focus Committee also continued using Workletein 2020, which is a program that teaches participantsto work like an athlete and use the strongestbody position through every task. Worklete wasimplemented at East River in 2019 to reverse a trendthat the Focus Committee noticed of increasingmusculoskeletal injuries related to weak body position.Also in 2020, the Focus Committee completed areview of East River’s safety manual. The committee’smembers split into teams to complete the reviewprocess, which focused on ensuring the manualwas up-to-date and not lacking any crucial safetyinformation.External Safety CampaignsEast River’s farm safety public awareness campaigncontinued in 2020. The campaign reminds farmers toremain aware of electrical equipment when workingon the farm and teaches them the steps to take if theirequipment contacts a power line.Also this year, we released a video as part of thecampaign that tells the story of Grant McCann, afarmer who was killed in Bon Homme Yankton’sservice territory in an accident involving a sprayer andpower lines. The video has received a lot of traction sofar, with the link on our Vimeo account viewed morethan 2,300 times and posts featuring the video onBon Homme Yankton’s Facebook page shared morethan 265 times.An article featuring Grant’s story that ran in Co-opConnections magazine also received a lot of attention.NorthWestern Energy and South Dakota FarmersUnion both contacted East River about the article andreprinted it in their customer newsletters and otherorganizations have printed the article or shared thevideo with their members or customers.“Fostering a culture of workplace safetyleadership is an important part of minimizingworkplace accidents and near misses.Distraction tends to be a large contributingfactor to workplace accidents and a big part ofthis campaign involves reminding employeesto focus completely on each task at hand.”Nick ReiffEast River Safety and Health ProfessionalSimilar to the uptick in farming accidents that ourcooperative family noticed back in 2016 that spurredthe creation of our farm safety campaign, we noticed asimilar recent trend within the contractor community.Contractors working near our power lines are morefrequently contacting our infrastructure, aren’treaching out to the electric co-op in advance ofworking near power lines and also often don’t knowwhat steps to take after their equipment contactsa power line. In response to this trend, East River’sMember Services team developed a contractor safetyawareness campaign in collaboration with the FocusCommittee and our Marketing and CommunicationsCommittee.“Our external safety campaigns are designed toensure that anyone who is working near our powerlines, whether a contractor or a farmer, is takingthe proper steps to stay safe,” said Marketing andCommunications Manager Shayla Ebsen. “We areworking closely with our member systems to releasethese important messages to both the contractor andfarming communities.”31
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Page 4 and 5: Letter from thePRESIDENTANDGENERALM
Page 6 and 7: COVID-19PANDEMIC:Responding tothe C
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Page 10 and 11: In April 2020, East River transferr
Page 12 and 13: STRATEGICPLANNING:Working Together
Page 14 and 15: Advocating for Co-ops:MUNICIPALTAKI
Page 16 and 17: “The legislative committee spent
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Page 22 and 23: Adding Solar Power to OurGENERATION
Page 24 and 25: Transmission SystemUPGRADEPLANIn 20
Page 26 and 27: East River crews worked during summ
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Page 36 and 37: MEETINGMEMBERNEEDSEast River offers
Page 38 and 39: Sioux Valley Energy Key Account and
Page 40 and 41: Hosting the2019 LINEPATROLCHARITYRI
Page 42 and 43: Now former REED Fund Chair Ken Schl
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Page 53 and 54: 2019 REVENUESSales to membersOther
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East River Electric 2020 Annual Report

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