Bill Kornrich has been a member of Powell Valley Electric Cooperative (PVEC), since he and his family moved here in 1982. For 35 years, Bill never attended a co-op annual meeting and knew very little about how rural electric cooperatives work. In spring 2017, he returned home to see vegetation around his driveway had been chemically sprayed. Angered by this, he called PVEC and told them so.
A lot of other members did, too. Their complaints ranged from dead fish in ponds to dead bees in beehives to organic gardens saturated with hebicides.
In response to the spraying, Bill and a group of other affected member-owners co-founded PVEC Member Voices. In 2018, he and two others ran for the Board of Directors. They lost, but received about 30% of the votes and were able to increase awareness about our electric cooperative.
Bill continues to speak and write about issues important to member-owners of PVEC and regularly attends meetings of the Board of Directors.
In addition, Bill writes articles for the Hancock County bi-weekly paper, the Sneedville Shopper. He asked the paper if he could write a column entitled “Rural Electric Cooperatives in the 21st Century”. The paper agreed and his first article appeared in March 2019.