Residents and business owners of June Lake, California, face an ongoing and exasperating crisis: frequent, disruptive power outages caused by the failing infrastructure of Southern California Edison (SCE). Every year, despite SCE’s repeated promises to harden the grid, our community endures both scheduled and unscheduled blackouts. These blackouts plunge our town into darkness, threaten the economic viability of local businesses, disrupt critical emergency services, and severely diminish the quality of life in our beloved home. We can no longer wait for SCE to fix a broken system. Because June Lake's unique terrain, heavy winter weather, and strict scenic regulations rule out options like solar or wind, we must pursue rugged, localized energy alternatives designed specifically for our mountain environment.

We call upon Mono County leadership  to aggressively explore, fund, and implement innovative, out-of-the-box infrastructure solutions that shield June Lake from SCE’s perpetual failures. We demand that the Board of Supervisors investigate all viable alternative pathways to energy resilience, including: * Biomass/Bioenergy Generators: Leveraging local forest residues and fire-safety clearing materials to fuel a clean, continuous, municipal-run biomass power station that runs regardless of weather or sunlight. * Localized Battery Storage Hubs (BESS): Deploying large-scale, climate-controlled backup battery storage facilities inside the village to instantly pick up the town's electrical load whenever SCE's main line fails. * Small-Scale Micro-Hydro Power: Evaluating small, low-impact hydroelectric options that utilize local water flows without disrupting our protected natural lakes and streams. * Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) or Public Utility Districts: Partnering with neighboring Eastern Sierra communities to take control of our energy purchasing or restructuring to move away from SCE in favor of a localized public utility district. Data from organizations like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) proves that localized energy independence enhances reliability, reduces long-term costs, and protects mountain communities from centralized utility failures. Rural towns across the West and Alaska have successfully implemented these exact systems to break free from corporate utility neglect. June Lake can do the same.

OUR DEMAND: We, the undersigned residents, business owners, and supporters of June Lake, demand that the Mono County Board of Supervisors prioritize this crisis. The County must allocate formal funding to conduct a comprehensive Feasibility and Energy Independence Study specifically focusing on non-solar, non-wind energy resilience alternatives tailored to our mountain environment. Sign this petition to stand up for a resilient, sustainable, and independent June Lake. Let’s build a stable future together.