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| Summer 2003 |
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| MODESTO IRRIGATION DISTRICT |
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Also in 2002, MID opened a full-function customer service center located away from the MID main office downtown Modesto. The Woodland Avenue Customer Service Center is the prototype for other branch offices MID may soon need in outlying communities.
HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS — MOUNTAIN HOUSE HAS LANDED
Like Dorothy’s house blowing in from Kansas, a whole new town is about to spring up almost overnight in the windy flatlands northwest of Tracy. Its name is Mountain House, and 20 years from now it will be a community of 15,000 homes, all electrified by MID.
In 1998, the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors chose MID to deliver electric service to this new planned community. Water treatment and wastewater treatment facilities were commissioned in 2002, and ground has been broken for a grammar school. A variety of residential housing is planned, along with a proposed marina and golf course. Approximately 1,000 lots in the first village are ready for construction in 2003.
With a substation and transmission line already in place, MID will soon be connecting new homes and adding a pay station for the convenience of Mountain House customers. As the community grows, and MID service center will follow, and crew will be stationed in Mountain House for fast response to any power outages that may occur.
What Mountain House customers will not see is a meter reader in the familiar MID blue shirt. Instead, an automated meter reading system will use radio telemetry to track how much electricity customers have used.
FLASHBACK: EVERY HOMEMAKER NEEDS ONE
In the 1920s and 1930s, MID faced a different challenge: persuading customers to have their homes wired for “ce-lectricity.” Until 1933, MID operated a retail appliance store that enticed customers with displays of new-fangled electric cook stoves and wringer washing machines you didn’t have to crank by hand. |
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