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So just how did the San Carlos Irrigation Project (SCIP) become the electric utility for a small section of southern Pinal County including the towns of Oracle and Mammoth?
“Mission creep,” said Bryan Bowker, Arizona regional director of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which operates and managers SCIP.
As the name implies, SCIP was formed in 1924 to provide water for agricultural irrigation on the Gila River and San Carlos Apache Reservation. A dam was built on the Gila River in Pinal County, creating a source of water necessary to farming and ranching, on and off the reservations. And irrigation was SCIP’s main service until the late 1930s.
The Rural Electrification Act enacted by Congress in 1936 provided support and low-cost loans for the creation of electrical cooperatives in areas that were of little or no immediate interest to the electric utilities that had sprung up earlier in urban markets. One such electrical co-op started in southern Pinal County in 1936 but severe financial problems nearly caused the co-op to close. Rather than have the area go dark, SCIP took over the operation.
After World War II, BIA sought to divest the electric service, but finding no takers continued to operate the utility in what was still a highly rural area. In the mid-1950s using funding from the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), SCIP upgraded its electrical grid with new lines that could carry more electrical load capacity. The system was “oversized” to account for future growth in the area, Bowker said.
While SCIP originally sold electricity generated on a small hydroelectric dam, in the early 1980s when the generation equipment became obsolete SCIP began to source electricity from the New Mexico-based Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) through the Navajo Tribal Electric Authority in Holbrook, Bowker noted.
With SCIP becoming the electricity provider, the area around Oracle and Mammoth finds itself in a unique situation. Being controlled by BIA, SCIP is a federal program not subject to state or local control like most other electric utilities in the state. The Arizona Corporation Commission has no regulatory control over its rates or infrastructure. And being only a very small part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, it has not received much of a financial budget, especially in these austere times of federal budget cutting.
And this has posed a problem as the lack of federal funding has hurt SCIP’s ability to keep up with the needs of its customers.
In recent years, demand for electricity in the area served by SCIP has grown to use nearly all of this “oversize” capacity, making new service connections to new homes troublesome. And the age of SCIP’s infrastructure has resulted in increasingly frequent power outages and brownouts, which have cost company’s business and homeowners through food spoilage.
Several local officials have suggested that bringing SCIP into the 21st Century may require a special appropriation by Congress (or earmark). Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick is looking into this at the request of some Oracle business people. It also was suggested local government officials and their constituents address their concerns to Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake.
James J. Hodl is a career journalist who has worked for newspapers, magazines and trade journals. A graduate of Southern Illinois University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism, Hodl began his career as a reporter with the Palatine (IL) Herald and the Morton Grove (IL) Review before becoming editor of the trade publication Appliance Service News. In recent years, Hodl has had articles published in Consumers Digest, Good Housekeeping, Home Remodeling, Kitchens & Baths and Salute; and has contributed to trade publications serving the home furnishings, restaurant and casino markets. A native of Chicago, Hodl relocated to San Tan Valley in 2013.
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