Oldham area farmer Richard Abrahamson has been elected secretary of the South Dakota Rural Electric Association board of directors.
Abrahamson, a director representing Kingsbury Electric Cooperative in De Smet, S.D., has been a member of the SDREA board since 2014 and has served on his local board since 2011.
He becomes the 16th individual to serve as secretary in the association's 74-year history.
Abrahamson replaces Bill Bielmaier of Wall, S.D., who was the association's longest-serving secretary, serving from 1991 until his 2016 retirement from the SDREA board and his local board of West River Electric Association in Wall.
The associations' other officers remain unchanged: Don Heeren of Parker, representing Southeastern Electric Cooperative in Marion, S.D., is the association's president, an office held since 2010. John Long of Red Owl, representing Grand Electric Cooperative in Bison, is the association's vice president, an office he has held since 2015. D.J. Mertens of Reliance,, representing West Central Electric Cooperative in Murdo, has been the association's treasurer since 2012.
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The South Dakota Rural Electric Association, located in Pierre, is the service association for the state's consumer-owned electric cooperatives. South Dakota's 28 distribution cooperatives and three generation and transmission cooperatives provide electricity to 337,000 South Dakotans.
