Wally Haase, general manager, Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, spoke at the American Public Power Association’s National Conference on June 19, 2018, regarding volunteering.
Wally Haas, APPA National Conference 7 from Public Utilities Fortnightly on Vimeo.
“... came forth and said this is wrong and many other folks introduced themselves to me and told me what tribes their ancestors were from. There's a large segment of line workers that have a Native American heritage. And they weren't aware of the situation, and they want to solve the situation. So we're very grateful for that, so the idea is ... and again it's a little bit of a step up here. The idea is we're hopeful that linemen and others will volunteer, maybe take vacation and come. We want people to come for at least a week at a time, 'cause that's important to travel to get to us is so hard. We needed seed dollars to be able to transport the people back and forth. We also need to rent equipment and other materials. We also hope that some communities will send equipment.
“Now I've had some communities come to me and said, "Yes, we want to drive our trucks out to help you. We're gonna volunteer. You can ... men are gonna use the trucks. They're coming out for a week and then they'll come back home and the cities are willing to pay for that. So there's different approaches. There's no one good solution for any one community. Every community has their own budgetary constraints and things that they can and can't do. So we're created an opportunity on September ... You want to go to the last one for me? On September ... I'm good. There you go. We have our first planning meeting ... That's Gill's slide, you have the new slide with Mike and …”