Gallego Demands Immediate Federal Action on Power Outages Endangering Arizonans
Letter builds on Gallego’s work to lower energy costs and protect Arizonans from extreme heat
PHOENIX – Last week, Rep. Ruben Gallego (AZ-03), a senior member on the Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs, sent a letter to the Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) demanding the agency take immediate action to improve reliability and lower costs for Arizonans who receive power through the San Carlos Irrigation Project (SCIP). The letter comes after reports of frequent power outages and skyrocketing electric bills.
“SCIP’s lack of reliability is not only inconvenient, but during the summer months it is downright dangerous,” Rep. Gallego wrote. “As you know, Arizona is one of the hottest states in the country…Improving SCIP’s reliability is vital to keeping Arizonans safe, and any outage could prove to be a matter of life and death especially for the area’s elderly and tribal populations. It is highly concerning to me that SCIP allows service disconnections during the summer months when lives are at stake, and I urge you to change that policy.”
SCIP is a utility provider run by BIA that provides electricity to the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, the Gila River Indian Reservation, and many of the surrounding communities. Because SCIP can no longer produce its own energy, its customers are subject to rates that depend on open market energy prices. As a result, customers have reported seeing tremendous increases in their bills, to the point that it is straining finances and risking utility shutoffs.
“As I continue to fight for robust funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which provides individual utility assistance, I request that you take all possible steps to decrease customer costs due to factors outside their control,” wrote Rep. Gallego.
“I appreciate our past communication around SCIP reliability, especially in the wake of the outage in early August,” he concludes. “I request that you move forward with plans for duplicate transmission lines, rapid response to outages, lower rates for customers, and protections against disconnections during extreme heat events.”