Ninety-six years of public power — to a wireless pause.
One spine, start to finish: how Okanogan County built public power and then rural broadband over nearly a century, at real risk and real cost — and how, in a few months of 2026, the District moved to pause the wireless network and hand back the grants. Every date here is documented elsewhere on this site.
The people overrule the power trust
Washington voters pass a Grange-led citizens' initiative authorizing public utility districts — 152,487 to 130,901 — over the organized opposition of the private power industry and its out-of-state holding companies.
Okanogan votes to form its PUD
County voters create Public Utility District No. 1 of Okanogan County. A vote, though, is only permission — the private utility still owned every wire in the county.
The lights go local
After years of court fights, the District buys Washington Water Power's entire Okanogan system — Enloe Dam included — for $2,314,240.33, and begins running it for the county. Nobody handed it over; it was voted for, litigated for, and paid for.
A pioneering bet on open access
Okanogan helps found NoaNet — one of about ten Washington utility districts building open-access fiber, precisely because private ISPs served the I-5 corridor and skipped the rural east.
Wireless reaches the valley
The District builds an 82-mile backbone from Pateros to the Canadian border and lights up fixed wireless for homes, farms, and businesses across the valley floor.
Federal partnership, local risk
A USDA Broadband Initiatives Program $5.5M grant and $3.7M loan build roughly 170 wireless sites — the network that still serves the county today.
County and Tribes plan together
Okanogan County and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation launch a joint Broadband Action Team, meeting monthly — "broadband knows no boundaries."
A $30 million grant — and a roadmap
USDA awards the PUD a $30.2M ReConnect grant to build fiber to the northeastern communities. In June, the County–CCT Broadband & Digital Equity Action Plan is published, naming the PUD network as the foundation to build on.
The money sits
By the end of the year, the District has drawn $0 of the $30.2M ReConnect grant. The fiber to the dispersed rural northeast is the part the District can't get out the door.
A second grant slips away
OCEC and the PUD lose a $19.7M federal BEAD grant when the program is reworked to be "tech-neutral," steering rural funding toward satellite and away from their fiber bid.
The pause
In a letter to local retail providers, the General Manager states the District will keep operating the wireless system but has "no plans to make additional investments in wireless infrastructure improvements." The providers — the District's own customers — say they were never consulted.
Invest in the core, walk away from the last mile
The Board takes up Resolution 1863 to rescind the $30.2M ReConnect grant — the same meeting it moves to buy hardware for a 400G backbone. The District invests in the high-capacity core while declining the ~$1.2M to modernize the wireless that carries it the last miles to rural homes.
A network like this isn't built in a budget cycle — it took the better part of a century, and it can be given away in one. The question in front of the Board is whether ninety-six years of public stewardship continues, or quietly ends.