At their last meeting of the year, the Wallowa County Board of Commissioners approved a plan that could pave the way for a brighter energy future for the county.

This probably wasn’t the toughest decision the commissioners faced during 2023: The Wallowa County Energy Strategic Plan comes with very low risks and, potentially, sky-high rewards, leading to a county that is smart and resilient about energy, in ways both small and large.

The plan, created by a leadership team that labored for more than a year, comes with a strategy to help ensure that it doesn’t get filed away in a dusty nook in the courthouse: An Implementation Advisory Group will work on projects and foster community support and awareness.

Nevertheless, the plan won’t trigger immediate results: As the commissioners kept reminding us during the public discussion on it, there’s no money now to move forward on the plan’s key objectives, but having an approved plan could help nab grants to help pay for the work.

It’s worth noting that the plan’s top priorities focus on both big actions — developing so-called “microgrids” throughout the county — and ones that seem small at first glance but could reap big rewards, such as making it easier to winterize houses.

(If you haven’t read the plan yet, you can do so by clicking here.)

If you go to the website listed in the sidebar to this editorial, you can read the plan for yourself.

Reading the plan might help immunize you from some of the misinformation about it that has been circulating in the community — misinformation that, to some extent, fueled opposition.

And anger.

Joe Basile, the community energy manager for Wallowa Resources (and likely the person most familiar with the plan), said he was troubled by the anger he witnessed as the discussion about the plan evolved; in particular, he was on the hot seat throughout a November community meeting about the plan.

A month or so later, at the meeting where the commissioners approved the plan, that experience clearly was still on Basile’s mind: “I am concerned about our community,” he said. “I am concerned about the divisiveness we have felt throughout this process. There was lots of anger that was totally unexpected.”

Unexpected — and misplaced.

The news is full of stories about communities that have come unhinged in the face of some divisive issue.

Wallowa County has faced its share of those issues over the past few years — the very tight votes on Greater Idaho measures are good recent examples — but county residents thus far have dealt with them in civil, neighborly ways.

But we can’t take that for granted. The fight over the energy plan showed just a hint of how quickly that can dissolve.

At the commissioners meeting on Dec. 20, Basile offered the remedy: “We’ve got to trust each other a little more,” he said, quoting an earlier speaker. “We work together … and get away from working separately against each other and look for ways to work together.”

It sounds simple — and, actually, it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to do, especially in these polarized times.

Communities work when people, despite their differences, find ways to talk with each other, to work together.

All that helps build the sort of trust that binds communities together. It takes generations to build. Now we know it can be wiped away seemingly overnight.

It would be a tragedy if that happened in Wallowa County.

Here’s the good news: We can all help make sure it doesn’t.

County Energy Strategic Plan

To read the plan for yourself, go to this website and click on the “View Now” box: https://www.communityenergyprogram.org/energy-plan