Power outages are causing concerns in parts of central Arizona and customers are demanding answers as to why they are happening and want the federal government to find a solution.
The San Carlos Irrigation Project, or SCIP, is a utility provider run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs that serves thousands of customers on the San Carlos Indian Reservation, Gila River Indian Reservation, and homes outside of reservation boundaries.
This includes communities across central Arizona from Coolidge and Casa Grande to areas in Pima County.
For Gary Terni, who lives just outside of Florence in a 55+ community, the outages impact him and others with health concerns.
“I’m asthmatic on top of high blood pressure, and I got more wrong with me than I have right,” he said. “A lot of folks here are 70, 80, close to 90 years old. At this point in life, they shouldn’t have to deal with this.”
Terni said after a recent power outage, he found that his garbage disposal was fried.
“The last major outage was like 12 hours.”