In 1928, United Light & Power sold its distribution system to the then Muscatine Electric Light Board. Before 1929, the Muscatine water and electric utilities operated as separate entities. That year, the Iowa legislature passed legislation allowing the two utilities to merge as Muscatine Water and Light under a five-member board of light and water trustees.
Despite the Great Depression ravaging Iowa and the nation, Muscatine Water and Light continued to develop solid financial performances during the 1930s. Receipts stayed healthy throughout the period. An irony of the electric power business during the Great Depression is that electric power consumption continued to grow. Those industries remaining in business converted to electricity for their manufacturing processes, and people with jobs bought electric stoves, refrigerators, and washing machines.
From 1930 to 1933, electric light and power income averaged $250,000 a year and generated an average of 11.5 million kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. The trustees saw to it that the money was invested back into the community. In November 1935, the board agreed to transfer $42,000 from its surplus to retire principal and interest on the 1929 sewer bonds, on which the city was perilously close to defaulting. Throughout the period, the municipal utility provided free street lighting and maintenance to the city.
The utility was able to finance the construction of Unit 4 — a 5,000-kW addition to its power plant — in 1930 without raising rates. Understanding the Depression’s impact on customers, the board lowered rates by an average of 15% in 1931. Five years later, the rates dropped again, this time to six cents per kWh for the first 25 kWh and two cents per kWh for electricity consumed above the minimum.
Forward thinking even in the worst of times, Muscatine Water and Light erected two 1.5-million-gallon reservoirs at its West Hill site in 1935 and named them in honor of William Molis, the long-time water superintendent. Electric superintendent Jake Tuttle resigned that year, and the board hired W.R. Thorson of Kansas City, Missouri. Thorson had worked on Muscatine’s power plant construction in 1925 and, 10 years later, was charged with undergrounding electric lines in the downtown area and building a new substation at Second and Pine.
Toward the end of the decade, Muscatine Water and Light had come through the Depression with flying colors. The challenges, however, were far from over.
