NEWS RELEASE

For Release February 6, 2009                                                          

Contact:  Jim Cooper, Key Accounts & Marketing Mgr., Traverse City Light & Power

               Phone: (231) 932-4560 or E-mail: jcooper@tclp.org

Contact:  Phil Callighan, Sr. Account Executive, Knorr Marketing

   Phone: (231) 947-9707, ext. 207; Mobile: (231) 342-7590

               or E-mail: philc@knorrmarketing.com

L&P Crew in Arkansas Helping with Ice Storm Recovery

(Traverse City, Michigan) — Four Traverse City Light & Power (L&P) employees, an all wheel drive digger derrick truck and an all wheel drive aerial lift line truck are in Salem, Arkansas, as part of a volunteer effort to restore electrical service to ice-storm ravaged Arkansas. Tim Adams, Lead Lineman; Doug McCoy Lineman; Josh Patzer, Lineman and Kyle Rector, Apprentice, left around 6 p.m. Monday evening (Feb. 2, 2009), driving the L&P trucks to Salem. They will be working with the Northern Arkansas Electric Cooperative that, as of last Monday, still had thousands of people in north and northwest Arkansas without power and needed to repair or replace at least 25,000 broken utility poles, many of which snapped under the weight of up to 3-inch thick ice that covered the area.

L&P responded to a call for volunteer help from the Michigan Electric Cooperative Association (MECA), which has reciprocal arrangements with power cooperatives in other states.

The L&P crew is expected to stay for 10 to 14 days and will be rotated with other L&P crews if necessary. “We’re very pleased that our staff is able to assist,” said Rod Solak, L&P Line Superintendent. “Restoring electric service is always a vital first step needed to support heating, food, water and health care emergency services.”

Ice storms that arrived in Arkansas January 26 and January 27, were responsible for killing nine people in the state and resulted in power outages of several days to 600,000 residents. Arkansas and Kentucky have been declared federal disaster areas.

Traverse City Light & Power (www.tclp.org) is a community-owned, community-focused municipal utility that offers reliable energy at low rates in the region to over 10,000 customers in Traverse City, and parts of Blair, East Bay, Elmwood, Garfield, Peninsula and Paradise townships.