Linemen Pulled From Catron

By Richard Torres

The Navopache Electric Cooperative pulled its linemen out of Catron County and understandably, that does not sit well with residents.
In an email, Catron County resident Jill Swensen wrote, “This was a hasty decision, made very underhandedly without the consent of the Board of Directors. We need to raise a stink, kindly but firmly, letting them know in no uncertain terms that as paying customers, we will not accept this treatment or lack of service.
“Please understand that this will affect all of us in a dangerous, negative way. We will not only be without local representation in a power outage, we will have no one locally to kill the power in case of fire or maintain our very decrepit lines. In addition, when we have power outages, our closest service will be Springerville. As you can imagine with a power outage, in a winter snowstorm, when they have the Arizona White Mountains as a priority, it will be hours or perhaps days before anyone can even show up, not to mention getting the power going”
Navopache CEO David Plumb said, “Due to personnel issues which left one lineman operating out of the Reserve office, he has temporarily been reassigned to the Springerville office, which will assume field operations. This is an interim arrangement to provide service to our New Mexico customers. This situation will be fully discussed at our next meeting to take place in Lakeside on Aug. 25. The Reserve office continues to provide services to our customers.”
Ann Mengus, Board of Director representative for New Mexico, is committed to keeping the Reserve office staffed with lineman to provide service. For additional information, call 928-368-1209 or 575-533-6267.

Linemen Pulled From Catron