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Wheatland Electric Cooperative has won a national award for educating its communities about electric vehicles and installing public chargers to help close a 100-mile gap between stations in southwest and central Kansas. 

The 21,000-member, Scott City-based co-op beat out three large investor-owned utilities in Michigan, New York and New Jersey in the final round to win top honors in the utilities category of the 2025 Drive Electric Awards. The awards are given by Plug In America, a national, nonprofit organization that advocates for affordable, accessible EVs and charging stations. 

“Though small, Wheatland Electric Cooperative leads with innovation—bridging the gap in rural America and proving no community is too small, too rural, or too remote to be part of the clean transportation future,” the group said in announcing the award. 

Since 2021, WEC has installed three ChargePoint® Level 2 public charging stations—with two charging ports each—across an area where no chargers existed within a 100-mile radius. As of October, the stations have supported more than 1,500 charging sessions by nearly 670 different drivers. The co-op created them at its own expense.  

“We’re in a part of the country that’s often overlooked, simply because we’re so rural,” said Shajia Donecker, the co-op’s multimedia specialist. “We are always striving to put our region on the EV maps, and I think Plug In America recognized that.” 

 The co-op also invites community members to test drive EVs at special events, which included a “Dine and Drive” lunch in 2024 in Great Bend that attracted 150 people for a free lunch and a chance to get behind the wheel of three different types of EVs.  

The co-op brought its own two electric vehicles—a Hyundai Kona and a Ford F-150 Lightning—and an employe shared his Tesla Model Y. The co-op’s member services team won NRECA’s 2025 Service Excellence Gold Award for creating the “best external event.” 

This year, the co-op held “EVs & Espressos” events at or near several local coffee shops, providing free coffee to help entice people to explore EVs as part of National Drive Electric Month.  

“Our whole goal is to make EVs more approachable,” said Alli Conine, WEC’s director of member services and corporate communications. “When we give people those hands-on experiences, their perspectives change. We want them to have fun while learning more about EVs.” 

EVs are still relatively scarce in the area and no local car dealers display them, making the co-op events the only chance many residents have to test drive an EV, Donecker said. 

“We try to meet people where they are,” she said. “You get all kinds of reactions. Some people will say, ‘no, absolutely not, I don’t want anything to do with an EV.’ But you also get, ‘wow, I had no idea how much power an EV has.” About 99% of the time, the reaction is good after they get a chance to drive.” 

WEC’s grassroots efforts have focused on EV “accessibility, reliability, and cost savings to resonate locally,” Plug In America said. 

“Beyond consumers, Wheatland has provided training and education to first responders, chambers of commerce, and civic leaders. The co-op is also electrifying its fleet, mentoring cooperatives in Kansas and Oklahoma, and providing a replicable playbook for other rural coops across the U.S.” 

Erin Kelly is a staff writer for NRECA.

Researchers have proposed a new mechanism of acute kidney injury to account for patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) who have an inferior vena cava (IVC) tumor thrombus, according to findings presented at the 26th Annual Meeting of the Society of Urologic Oncology (SUO).¹ By analyzing perioperative renal function in these patients, the researchers identified a distinct, reversible pattern of kidney injury linked to venous congestion—suggesting that timely thrombectomy may be critical to preserve renal function.

“The mechanism reframes how we think about renal failure in IVC thrombus. The injury is hemodynamic, not structural. Congestive nephropathy offers a unifying explanation, and it supports timely thrombectomy to relieve venous pressure,” said presenting author Lorraine Scanlon, MD, of London Health Sciences Centre Research Institute in Canada. “Ultimately, it introduces a fourth mechanism of renal dysfunction, and it may change how we counsel patients and design perioperative studies.”

The Clinical Issue

Patients with RCC and IVC thrombus often present with a poor baseline renal function in terms of estimated glomerular filtration rate. This has traditionally been attributed to tumor burden, chronic kidney disease, or comorbidities. But many patients recover their renal function after thrombectomy, which does not fit with structural or irreversible chronic kidney disease.

“This suggests a gap in how we conceptualize renal dysfunction in these patients,” Dr. Scanlon explained.

Acute kidney injury is classified as prerenal with lower perfusion rates, intrinsic with nephron injury, or as postrenal with obstruction leading to hydronephrosis. “This framework is incredibly useful, but none of these mechanisms explain what we see in IVC tumor thrombus,” she commented.

Instead, patients with IVC tumor thrombus have normal arterial inflow, no parenchymal injury, and no ureteric obstruction, so they cannot fall into any one of the three existing acute kidney injury classifications.

Hypothesis and Study Design

Dr. Scanlon suggested that there was a fourth possible mechanism of renal dysfunction: renal venous outflow obstruction, whereby IVC thrombus elevates the venous pressure, increases the interstitial pressure, and lowers the filtration gradient. This leads to a reversible injury that she called a congestive nephropathy.

“It reframes renal dysfunction as venous, not as arterial or as intrinsic,” she commented. “Our hypothesis was simple: if venous congestion is the driver, then relieving it via thrombectomy should preserve renal function, even in patients with worse baseline function.”

Researchers conducted a retrospective cohort study using data collected from 2002 to 2023 with three groups of patients: patients who underwent radical nephrectomy and IVC thrombectomy (n = 23), open radical nephrectomy alone (n = 35), and those who had a laparoscopic radical nephrectomy (n = 23). The primary outcome measurement was the change in the estimated glomerular filtration rate after more than 90 days.

Findings and Clinical Conclusion

The patients with IVC tumor thrombus had larger tumors, higher American Society of Anesthesiologists grades, and worse baseline estimated glomerular filtration rates. However, these patients also showed the best renal preservation.

Across all three groups, all patients experienced a decrease in their estimated glomerular filtration rate for the first day or two after surgery, but the rates recovered and converged at more than 90 days only for the patients with IVC tumor thrombus. “This cannot be explained by nephron loss. It’s most consistent with the reversible and venous congestion,” Dr. Scanlon stated.

At 90 days, the absolute change in estimated glomerular filtration rates were –10 for the patients with IVC tumor thrombus who underwent radical nephrectomy and IVC thrombectomy, –25 for patients who underwent radical nephrectomy alone, and –25 for those who underwent laparoscopic radical nephrectomy. The percentage decline in estimated glomerular filtration rate in the IVC tumor thrombus group was –21%, compared with –38% in the other two groups, even though these patients had worse function at baseline.

Additionally, the researchers found that prior to surgery, venous obstruction led to increasing pressure in the patients with tumor thrombus, which caused filtration rates to fall. But after thrombectomy, the outflow rate was restored and the filtration gradient normalized, leading to a recovery in the patients’ renal function, confirming the expected signature of reversibility.

Disclosure: Dr. Scanlon reported no conflicts of interest.

REFERENCE

1. Scanlon L, Cendejas J, Kailavasan M, et al. Relief of venous congestion as a modifiable cause of renal dysfunction in RCC with IVC tumor thrombus. 2025 SUO Annual Meeting. Presented December 4, 2025.