About the Author
Mark Johnson
Construction Manager
Share This Article
Food is a great way to connect with people. It’s also, to state the obvious, one of our most basic human needs. That’s why National Grid Renewables loves doing food drives in our project communities. They’re a great way to connect and support with the local residents, businesses and organizations. Recently, I had the opportunity to be part of a very successful food drive in the New Underwood community near our Wild Springs solar farm in Pennington County, South Dakota.
Showing up to help the community
We ran the food drive for two weeks in October, which coincided with a very busy time on the Wild Springs project site. We’re getting ready to go live in early 2024, so we’re doing final inspections, testing, and reviewing documentation to make sure all the work we’ve done in the past year has been done right and we’re ready to go.
Nevertheless, we had great participation from both our National Grid Renewables employees and the roughly 150 people on-site from Ames, our EPC contractor. People really showed up to help the community. We gathered roughly 1,000 food units — enough to fill up the back of two pickup trucks.
Helping people in need
We were able to deliver the donated food in person to the New Underwood City Hall where the local food bank resides. We’re coming up on the holidays, and the employees at City Hall were happy to have these donations come in at the right time.
New Underwood is a small town — about 600 people — so word travels fast. I’m proud to hear that people in the community know what we’re doing to help.
Yet at the end of the day, we aren’t doing it to get credit — we’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do.
We just want to make sure people and families have food on the table. That’s enough for us.
