Navajo family gets electricity in time for the holidays

Associated Press

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.

For years, Thomas and Annie Hamm walked around their southern Utah home with flashlights at night, heated water on a wood burning stove and kept their food cold on ice.

Sometimes, they ran an extension cord from a car battery to power a television. They had a small solar panel installed to provide power but ran out of it whenever clouds rolled in.

This year, the couple finally has gotten electricity just in time for the holidays. They are planning a Thanksgiving dinner with their three sons and their families, including several grandchildren, that won’t have to end when the sun goes down.

“Now they’re coming no matter what time,” Annie Hamm said.

The Navajo Tribal Utility Authority recently brought power to the Hamms’ home in the tiny community of McCracken Mesa and plans to connect 240 other homes nearby. It’s part of a project to expand infrastructure in a desolate region of the country where basic services such as electricity, running water and telephone service are not available for thousands of people on the reservation that extends into Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.

For the Hamms, years of not having electricity were even more frustrating because they live less than one mile from an existing power line. Another utility company required Navajo families to pay much of the cost to extend the lines, and the Hamms couldn’t afford it.

The Navajo Tribal Utility Authority bought a system of rural Utah substations and electrical lines last December under a decades-old deal with the Rocky Mountain Power utility.

The tribal utility now is the sole power provider in the Utah portion of the Navajo Nation.