FLORENCE, AZ — Neighbors in a rural part of Pinal County are describing the fix to some of the power poles they live next to as being pieced together like ‘Frankenstein.’
Susan Shearer says she could not believe how a utility provider fixed a broken power pole this past summer, only describing it as “mind-boggling.”
Shearer is a customer of the San Carlos Irrigation Project (SCIP) which is run by the federal government and provides services to about 13,000 customers in mostly rural parts of Arizona.
Her concerns are around fixing a power pole near her property off Highway 79 about 30 miles outside of Florence.
Shearer describes the fix as a "Frankenstein pole" because of how it is pieced together after breaking.
“It's like kids put it together,” she said.
The ABC15 Investigators have been reporting on concerns with SCIP for months, including frequent power outages during the summer and questions about the reliability of the infrastructure.
SCIP is run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the San Carlos Indian Reservation, Gila River Indian Reservation, and homes outside of reservation boundaries including areas like Coolidge, Casa Grande, and Florence.
Along with outages, customers have told the ABC15 Investigators that they worry about the increased costs they are seeing for power.
SCIP has not been able to generate its own power for decades, citing a significant flood event at Coolidge Dam in 1983 that eliminated the hydropower generation facilities.
The BIA does not have access to enough water to generate hydropower anymore, so they have to buy power from the Western Area Power Administration and the Southwest Public Power Agency power pool and re-sell it directly to customers.
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The Bureau of Indian Affairs has cited broken poles this past summer to monsoon storms, car accidents, and other disasters that may occur.
Over the summer, SCIP did admit they need to improve the resiliency, redundancy, and repairability of their infrastructure, like power lines.
The infrastructure concerns became a scary reality for Cindy Cons, who watched as a SCIP power pole that broke sparked a brush fire near her property over the summer.
Cons saw smoke near her guest house this past July.
“By the time I got to our gate the fire had jumped the highway and was racing down our property toward our homes,” she said.
She is concerned for the power poles along Highway 79 as you can see some poles leaning, weathered, and a few that are bolted back together.
Cons said fire crews were able to stop the fire from burning her guest house, but parts of her property are still charred along with neighbors.
The investigations by ABC15 have led lawmakers, and Arizona’s attorney general to demand action.
In September we reported that Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is calling on the federal government to address reliability concerns, calling repeated outages ‘unacceptable.’
Congressman Ruben Gallego has also called on the Bureau of Indian Affairs for answers and immediate action. Over the summer, he sent a letter to the BIA asking the agency to improve the reliability of power by building new, duplicate transmission lines and setting up rapid response systems for frequent outages.
For Shearer and Cons, they want answers on these repairs, and for more accountability around the reliability of the infrastructure.
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Indian Affairs tells the ABC15 Investigators that the repair to the pole in our report was a temporary fix because of a busy monsoon season.
"SCIP line crews have been directed to replace the pole as soon as possible," a spokesperson wrote in an email.
The BIA adds that most of the 100 poles that needed repair from this past summer have been fixed, however, they did not provide a number of how many are left.
As for the divestiture of SCIP, the BIA said they have no updates on its plans at this time.
