Dear Editor,

It is disturbing to find out that our rural Kosciusko REMC co-op signed a nondisclosure agreement with Prologis long before it was announced that they were seeking farmland in the middle of an agriculture zoned area. Dalton Caley “representing” KREMC spoke in favor of the farmland being rezoned to Industrial 3. I am sure this wasn’t supported by the membership of the co-op since no communication was ever done about the proposed project.

KREMC is a nonprofit organization unlike the for-profit, investor-owned utilities like Duke Power, NIPSCO and Indiana and Michigan Power and Light, which is owned by AEP. They answer to global stockholders rather than a local rural membership that actually owns the company. These companies own the transmission lines, not KREMC, so I have to wonder how KREMC can say it can support a hyper data center in this agricultural area that will consume 100 megawatts to 250MW per day, which can run 25,000 to 50,000 homes. Prologis will not pay state sales tax on its consumption of electricity because of a law from 2019 that exempts large consumption “customers,” unlike the membership does, which contributes to the state income.

KREMC membership has the right to know the implications of a project of this magnitude as it relates to an increase in rates to pay for the new infrastructure, reliability of power and priority of outages as it pertains to residents versus data center. These are important issues to the rural membership since the purpose of KREMC is to service the rural and agricultural base, which was established by the Rural Electrification Act of 1939, not the outside interests of global shareholders of Prologis.

When KREMC released its seven cooperative principles on its Facebook page, that was further concerning because it has violated most of them by its actions of supporting this zoning change:

1. Voluntary and open membership
2. Democratic member control
3. Members’ economic participation
4. Autonomy and independence
5. Education, training and information
6. Cooperation among cooperatives
7. Concern for community

KREMC is a member-owned cooperative, which means that members technically own the co-op. This gives the membership a supposed say in how it functions. KREMC currently serves 18,500 households that consist of small businesses, farmers and residents within the service area. Prologis is not a local business, doesn’t reside in the area, doesn’t interact with the local community, nor will it be a part of the community activities.

There needs to be accountability to the membership, not Prologis.

Cathy Folk