Vote for a cleaner future

I am writing as a concerned student from Animas High School, because I want to see a change in our sources of energy. I want to see us start to use more renewable, eco-friendly energy and turn away from harmful fossil fuels. I need to see this change so that our future generations will have the opportunity to experience this beautiful natural world and the clean air that we breathe.

In La Plata County, we have the great opportunity of being in an energy cooperative with the ability to elect our board members. With this power, we can decide who we want to create our energy future by electing people who will steer us toward less harmful energy sources. But to do this, we must vote, and right now only about 25% of people in LPEA vote for their Board of Directors. This must change; we cannot have a minority deciding what kind of people we want to control our energy future.

District 4, go out and vote for our energy future. Currently, LPEA gets its energy from an organization called Tri-State that gets most of its energy from coal, a very unclean source of energy. By voting for our LPEA Board members, we can find new ways to get our energy and slowly get out of our deal with Tri-State and into a cleaner future. We can all have an impact on how green Archuleta and La Plata counties are, and it all starts with small actions including our vote.

– Gareth S. Keohane, Animas High School class of 2025