Rural Resilience Analyst Sara Millies-Lucke Reflects on Her Year at ODOE
Last fall, ODOE welcomed RARE AmeriCorps member Sara Lark Millies-Lucke to the agency to serve as the Rural Resilience Analyst to provide research and recommendations about how ODOE could better serve and communicate with the state’s consumer-owned utilities and rural communities. We’ve shared several stories from Sara Lark and the Community Navigator team on our blog and want to thank her for her work with ODOE. In her final blog post, Sara Lark reflects on her work and lessons learned from the past year with ODOE.
Bittersweet is the best way to describe how I feel as my time closes as a Resource Assistance for Rural Environments (RARE) AmeriCorps member and Rural Resilience Analyst with the Oregon Department of Energy. These past eleven months have flown by and now as things approach their natural conclusion, I am grateful for my time and reluctant to say goodbye to the wonderful people and work I experienced during my service term. Having lived in Michigan for most of my life, this was my first time visiting Oregon and I was welcomed with open arms by not only the ODOE team, but by Southern Oregonians and my local community. I have made so many incredible connections and gained invaluable understanding of local government and the role of state policy on energy projects and community resilience.
In addition to ODOE, I am so grateful for my other RARE hosts in Cave Junction, the Illinois Valley Community Development Organization (IVCanDo), who not only opened their office but welcomed me with invitations to after-work hikes, office birthday parties and potlucks, and lunch breaks cuddling the office puppy or kitten! It was great to be surrounded by driven and caring people who are making change in their communities. I was able to speak to local high school students, deliver community surveys, and create an energy profile that will assist in their Community Strategic Plan initiative that outlines the actions that will be taken in the Illinois Valley based on public needs and desires. It is great to be able to have my work reflected in an important community tool as a parting goodbye. Growing up in a rural community in Michigan, I was familiar with the challenges and resilience of rural people. Building on that familiarity, I learned about the uniqueness of the Illinois Valley and Oregon rural communities and how local organizations are cultivating their strengths to create a lasting impact in their area for future generations. I became immersed in the local culture and learned about varying perspectives and energy actions first-hand from this new rural location that became home.
I am also incredibly thankful to all the partners that I got to interview as part of my analysis for the Community Renewable Energy grant program and the federal Grid Resilience Grant program, learning how the state could better include rural voices and energy needs in current and future programs. I traveled from the Oregon coast through the Willamette valley and to Eastern Oregon, meeting with consumer-owned utilities and public officials in rural areas and learning from their experiences about the challenges that they face. In my previous careers I have worked with utilities on energy savings initiatives, but it was interesting to learn more about their action for grid hardening — a newfound knowledge I could take into my program recommendations. It is crucial to understand the perspectives and values of each partner, and I felt like I walked away from each consumer-owned utility meeting with a deeper appreciation of the work they do and how to work better together to serve Oregonians.
I was particularly blown away from the hard work and resilience these communities and consumer-owned utilities deal with during outage seasons. For the coastal communities, I saw the challenges in winter with strong coastal storms and for eastern Oregon communities, I saw the challenges of wildfires. Having come from a state with fewer recent wildfires, this was enlightening to learn and increased my respect for those workers who exhibit unrelentless perseverance during these outage events to serve their customers. Especially in conversation with Columbia Power Co-op, which last year experienced a historic fire and took shifts sleeping to be able to respond to events, spouses became caretakers, bringing meals to the office to feed the line workers.
I was privileged to sit down with various Tribes as well as city officials and external partners learning about their processes and capacity to deal with diverse problems their communities are facing. I have worked with local officials before, but it was illuminating to learn more about how decisions are made and how officials are trying their best to serve their communities. It was insightful to understand the dynamics between federal, state, and local government at an intimate level. I have always watched these dynamics from afar, but being in the middle of it greatly enhanced my understanding of the dynamic and the impact energy policy has on the local level.
As my last day nears, I also want to express my gratitude to the Strategic Engagement Team at ODOE. Community Navigator Sarah Moehrke was a great leader throughout my workplan and was instrumental in guidance and success during my time at the agency. I am also grateful to Lauren Rosenstein, Ruchi Sadhir, Christy Splitt, and Michelle Miller Harrington, who were always there to answer my questions and offer theoretical and practical knowledge that accelerated my understanding of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest’s energy landscape. Their impact has helped me craft my career ambitions and foster a deeper desire for engagement and relationship building to enact large scale change.
