And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Date: Sun, 21 Mar 1999 09:16:50 -0500
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: electricity Aneth Utah
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Isolated Navajos Finally Flip Switch
On eve of 21st century, power lines begin to change lives in remote
areas
BY PHIL SAHM
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE 3/21/99
ANETH -- Three miles
away, down a tangle of
dirt roads, Darlene Claw
saw a light in the distance.
She stopped, gazing for
a moment, wondering if
her husband was
chopping wood in the
headlights of their pickup.
She drove closer. And the
light became clearer.
Rounding the last
curve, her heart jumped.
A yellow globe beamed from a power pole next to their home. The
porch
light shone and 100-watt bulbs gleamed through the windows. After four
years, their home had electricity.
The 20th century has come to the Navajo Nation in uneven strides.
Comfortable manufactured homes dot the reservation, with nice
cars and
pickups parked nearby. Yet running water and telephones are scarce
on this
desert of canyons and mesas in southeastern Utah. Less than a year
from the
21st century, the last residents are getting electricity.
For those who live by the light of kerosene lamps and keep food in
coolers, the coming of power lines is life-changing.
"It was so bright inside our house," Claw said. "I still could
not believe it
two days after it was on."
She long will remember driving home from work on Jan. 27 and
seeing a
light in the distance on Cajon Mesa where she, her husband and three
children live.
What others do without thinking -- flipping a switch to light a
room, turning
on an oven to cook dinner -- they know as remarkable.
Claw, fortyish, with long dark hair and glasses, spoke softly,
thoughtfully
about life without electricity.
"You have to light a match for everything you do," she said.
The day Utah Power crews ran a mile-long line to their house,
Claw's
husband, Julius, drove 50-or-so miles east to Cortez, Colo., to
stock up on
100-watt bulbs.
Four days later, the Claws threw a Super Bowl party. Friends and
relatives
gathered in their comfortably furnished home to cheer the Denver
Broncos,
crowded around a big-screen television not used since moving to the
mesa.
Their children, two boys, ages 16 and 13, and a girl, 11, hardly
believed
they were watching television in their home. Darlene made sure
everything
looked good for their guests.
"I vacuumed my house four times that day," she said.
The Claws are among the last 10 to 15 percent of families on the
Utah side
of the reservation to receive electricity, said Wilbur Cap-itan of
the Aneth
Chapter of the Utah Navajo.
Although Glen Canyon Dam and the Navajo Power Plant supply
electricity
throughout the West, and lie within 150 miles of the mesa, bringing
power to
the last dark pockets of the Utah reservation has been tortuous.
The project that brought power to the Claws includes 22 families
scattered
from Cajon Mesa a few miles north of Aneth to the Colorado state
line to the
San Juan River that snakes through the reservation.
Running power lines through canyons and desert will cost
$230,000 when
the current project is finished, Capitan estimated. For individual
homes, the
cost can reach almost $30,000, depending on the distance and work
required.
To bring a 2-mile line to Evelyn Billie's home, for example,
cost $18,000
and entailed blasting through rock, Billie said.
She lives about four miles east of Aneth, near the San Juan
River. After
applying for power, she waited three years.
Her 13-year-old son, Winston, lived 12 years without electricity
before the
family received it last year. Her 4-year-old daughter, Austin, is
thrilled with
simple things, such as making toast in the morning.
"There's a whole lot of people who need electricity here,"
Billie said.
To get electricity, families first must receive home-site leases
from the tribe.
The leases give families the right to locate a home on the
reservation.
Then they apply for electricity, which means paperwork. Getting
applications through the tribal bureaucracy and the Bureau of Indian
Affairs
can take years.
After that, the tribe must find money to pay for the power-line
extensions,
usually through a combination of federal grants, the Navajo trust
fund --
money set aside for the tribe from oil royalties and other sources
-- and
contributions.
After that, land disputes between tribal members can delay
applications for
years.
"People don't understand the process," Capitan said. "They think it
happens overnight."
Those who waited, and are waiting, know that.
Brenda Haskan applied for electricity four years ago. But every
year it's
put off because money is not available, or for other reasons, Haskan
said.
Meanwhile, her family lives with the time-consuming chores of
life without
electricity.
She and her husband, Edgar, spend hundreds of dollars a month on
unleaded gas for a generator that lights only part of their house.
They cannot keep fresh food at home because they cannot run a
refrigerator. She makes daily trips to her mother's house, which has
electricity, to pick up food.
On winter mornings, Haskan rises early to start a propane heater
to warm
their manufactured home before the children get up. But the heater
does not
warm the entire house and her children, she said, get sick because
of the cold.
"In the morning, I would like for my kids to at least eat
cereal," she said.
"But I don't have the milk."
The Claws did not own a generator.
They cooked dinner on a propane stove, lighted the house with
kerosene
lamps and warmed their home with wood.
Darlene counsels students at the Aneth Community School, and Julius
works for Mobil Oil on the reservation. After spending the day at
work, they
often came home winter evenings and chopped wood in the headlights
of the
truck.
The mesa has little running water, forcing the Claws and others
to drive to
Cortez to fill 50-gallon barrels to bring home. For showers, they
heat water,
five gallons at a time, then mix it with cooler water in a tank.
Until 1995, the Claws lived in Montezuma Creek, not far from the
mesa
near Aneth, where electricity was hooked up. But, like other young
couples,
they wanted to buy a home, and moved to the mesa.
After receiving a home-site lease, they applied for electricity.
But another
member of the tribe fought the application, saying they located
their home
where his cattle graze. They finally prevailed, and almost four
years later got
the power line.
Darlene Claw's sister, Cora Tso, received electricity at her
home almost a
year ago.
The mother of three children, ages 3 to 10, she still rents an
apartment at
the Aneth Community School where she washes the dishes and her
family can
shower.
Tso is saving to buy a water pump, water tanks and septic system
for her
home so she can stop renting the apartment. Before getting
electricity, she and
her children ate a lot of canned food and used an ice chest to keep
food cool
in the summer.
"I got tired of canned meat," she said.
Despite the hardship, Tso, the Claws and others laughed about the
difficulties. Tso joked about driving to Cortez for water, saying,
"We get it
just for coffee."
She cited one advantage of living on the mesa: Miles away from
mountain
ranges, buildings and other interference, they get great TV
reception -- now
that they have electricity. They say stations come in all the way
from Chicago
-- and they don't even have to pay for cable to get them.
For some, electricity has arrived. Lights shimmer where only the
moon and
stars once shone down.
But of all the changes those power lines brought, what is the most
important?
The answer is always the same: It is easier for our children to
study and
learn than it was for us.
San Juan County Commissioner Mark Maryboy grew up on the
reservation without electricity.
Studying under the light of a kerosene lamp, he was careful not
to burn too
much fuel. Maryboy went on to earn a history degree from the
University of
Utah.
"Today I have running water in my house," he said. "I have
electricity, and
my daughter can study."
Education, parents say, will give Navajo children the
opportunity to be
whatever they want, and to go wherever they want, even if it means
leaving
the reservation.
Each Sunday the Claws' two boys catch a bus to go to private
school in
Arizona. Every Friday their parents pick them up for the weekend.
Their daughter, Eudora, is enrolled in the gifted-and-talented
program at
the Aneth Community School. In their home on the mesa, amid elegant
Navajo rugs and family pictures, her paintings hang on the wall.
Her mother tells of a school project for which Eudora made a
timeline of
30 important events in President Clinton's life. When the work was
finished,
she sent a copy to the White House. A short time later, a card came
back
with a note from the president.
She even received e-mail at school from the White House.
The night electricity lighted their house for the first time,
her parents let
Eudora watch movies -- "Titanic" and "Beauty and the Beast" -- on
the VCR
until past midnight. But before the movies, Eudora switched on the
computer
in the living room.
She played an educational game.
"She waited four years to turn on that computer," her mother said.
"Let Us Consider The Human Brain As
A Very Complex Photographic Plate"
1957 G.H. Estabrooks, Creator
of the Manchurian Candidate
born New Brunswick
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.aches-mc.org
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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