2006 is the 40th anniversary of Basin Electric Power Cooperative’s first station. Today, we look at the man for whom it was named: Leland Olds.

Olds was born on New Years Eve, 1890, in Rochester NY, but he grew up in Massachusetts, where his father chaired the mathematics department at Amherst. He was a mild-mannered young man, a cello player with a gift for writing. After graduating from Amherst, he did graduate work at Harvard and Columbia and also went to seminary.

After a stint as a pastor and a short time in the Army, Olds focused on one of his main concerns, the welfare of laborers victimized by powerful industrialists. His strong convictions were noticed by the Federated Press, which led to Olds’ seven-year career in journalist writing about the labor movement.

In 1929, Olds became an economic advisor for a New York group advocating public utility reform. While he believed capitalism was essential for a healthy market, he was against corporations influenced by greed.

Olds began advising President Franklin Roosevelt about the need for regulating energy resources and, in 1939, Roosevelt appoint Olds to his first 5-year term on the Federal Power Commission. Olds became increasingly insistent that the natural gas industry had to be regulated to protect the public – a struggle that made him nationally famous but also gained him powerful enemies.

In 1948, Olds and commissioner Claude Draper completed a study that asserted the Federal Power Commission had not only the right, but the duty, to regulate natural gas prices at the well-heads. The following year, when President Harry Truman appointed Olds to a third 5-year term, the confirmation was strongly opposed by gas producers. Olds’ chief opponent was his friend, Lyndon Johnson, who chaired the confirmation sub-committee. Johnson assigned men to dig up dirt on Olds, who was squeaky clean. But with the Cold War racing toward its zenith, the task was easier than expected. They found about 50 articles Olds wrote for the Federated Press had been re-published by the Daily Worker, the newspaper of the American Communist Party. Long story short, the committee, and then the full Senate, ultimately voted against Olds’ confirmation.

But Olds wasn’t finished. He formed his own business, as a consultant, to show public-owned power companies how they could work successfully with federal programs. Among his clients were a number of North Dakota rural electrical co-ops that ultimately joined forces with other public power systems to form an energy giant: Basin Electric Power Cooperative. Olds unfortunately died before the first unit was up and running.

Opening in 1966, the Leland Olds Station, near Stanton, became a shining example of what its namesake stood for. Leland Olds Unit Two became operational nine years later.

By Merry Helm

Risch, Kathi. Basin Electric Power Cooperative. March 19, 2004. <http://www.basinelectric.com/NewsCenter/News/FeaturedArticles/Who_was_Leland_Olds.html>
McCraw, Thomas K. Leland Olds: 1890-1960. Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale. 2006.

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