Utility companies and organisations from ten states are now participating in the Light Up Navajo III (LUN III) initiative, a mutual aid project that aims to extend service to Navajo homes without electricity.
The states include Arkansas, Arizona, Delaware, California, Connecticut, North Carolina, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas, Utah and Washington D.C.
The project, which is set to run until mid-June, seeks to connect 300 families’ homes to the electric grid for the first time. Project sponsors are the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA) with support from the American Public Power Association (APPA).
“Working together is how things get done. NTUA and the APPA have demonstrated that through the successful electrification of hundreds of homes for Navajo families through Light Up Navajo,” stated Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez.
Four crews work each week at different locations throughout the Navajo Nation.
“We commend the NTUA and the APPA for leading this project to help improve the standard of life for our families. Financing the cost to construct electric service can be a burden for many, so the Light Up Navajo initiative will serve as the foundation to allow people to connect to the internet and modernise a way of living,” stated speaker Seth Damon (Bááhaalí, Chichiltah, Manuelito, Red Rock, Rock Springs, Tséyatoh).
“The Navajo people are grateful for all the volunteer line workers and the utility companies involved to make this happen.”
First launched in 2019, the LUN project represents a partnership between a tribal utility company and APPA, which represents 2,000 community-owned electric utility companies in the United States.
“Public power utilities have shown over the years that they are incredible at stepping up to help each other,” said APPA President & CEO Joy Ditto.
“We are well practiced in sending aid in the wake of natural disasters, and we are leveraging these skills to help bring power to those who still don’t have it in our country in the year 2022, a situation that must be rectified.
SRP experience
It took four weeks of up to 16-hour workdays, but Salt River Project (SRP) linemen successfully connected more than 50 Navajo families to electric service despite rough terrain, high winds, snow and mud in unfamiliar land, the utility said on May 11.
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In all, 56 families on Arizona’s Navajo Nation now have electricity powering their homes for the very first time.
“The first home we connected was the most touching for me. It was a mom who was living in a trailer with her children, and they had no power or running water. They had gotten sick with COVID-19 and had to quarantine at home. They were excited (to get power) and telling us how tough it had been the last few months,” described Art Peralta, SRP construction crew foreman, who resides in Mesa.
The SRP line crews returned home on May 8 after working on the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona since early April.
SRP line crews constructed about 12 miles of distribution lines. SRP crews also set 193 poles, strung 13 miles of overhead wire and worked 4,500 hours of donated man-hours. It marks the second time SRP line workers, based out of the Tempe Service Centre, volunteered to participate in LUN.
When the project wraps during the third week in June, a total of 200 Native American families are expected to have electricity in their homes.
SRP is a community-based, not-for-profit public power utility and the largest electricity provider in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, serving approximately 1.1 million customers.
