A federal bill introduced this week would take the electric system of the San Carlos Irrigation Project out of government hands, after years of customer complaints about outages and rising bills in parts of Pinal County.
Rep. Eli Crane, an Arizona Republican, filed H.R. 10864, the San Carlos Irrigation Project Divestiture Act of 2026, according to his office. ABC15 reported on the bill Friday.
A power company run by a federal agency
The utility, known as SCIP, is operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It serves roughly 10,000 residential customers, including homes outside tribal land in parts of Casa Grande, Florence and Apache Junction, ABC15 reported.
SCIP has not produced its own electricity in decades. A 1983 flood at Coolidge Dam wiped out its hydropower generation, the station reported, so it purchases electricity from the Western Area Power Administration and a Southwest Public Power Agency pool, then sells it on to customers.
A BIA spokesperson told ABC15 in earlier reporting that money for repairs and upgrades is limited because the agency cannot borrow to pay for capital work.
What the bill would do
Under Crane's proposal, the Secretary of the Interior would turn SCIP's transmission and distribution lines over to other operators under a plan drawn up with federal, state, tribal, local and private partners. The dam and its generating equipment are excluded.
"For decades, career politicians on both sides of the aisle have let this issue linger, and residents have paid the price through routine outages and rising bills," Crane said in a statement. He said moving the system to operators "better equipped to invest in it" would not fix everything right away but would be "a critical step."
Crane asked the Interior Department's inspector general in September 2025 to investigate SCIP. More than a year later, his office says, that request has produced no meaningful findings, and customers, tribal leaders and utilities helped shape the bill. Crane told ABC15 he does not think the BIA was ever intended to be in the business of supplying power to homes.
The ABC15 report did not include a response from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the bill itself, and no other members were named as co-sponsors in the materials reviewed.
Sources
abc15.com
crane.house.gov
