SAIPAN — The Commonwealth Utilities Corporation will extend the deployment of Guam Power Authority line crews assisting with Sinlaku restoration by another 30 days, CUC Executive Director Kevin Watson said Friday.
Watson, speaking at a recovery briefing at CUC headquarters in the Joeten Dandan building, said the GPA crews are nearing the end of a 45-day deployment that concludes around June 12, and that the extension would carry their work into roughly mid-July. He said the crews would rotate out and be replaced by a fresh group.
“They’ve been working 16-hour days, seven days a week,” Watson said. He said the rotation was a matter of the workers’ health and wellbeing, with the current crew returning home to their families and a new group rotating in.
Watson said CUC will also begin releasing projected work areas for line crews twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, so customers can see where GPA and CUC teams will be deployed. He said the projections are not a guarantee that a given area will be completed on schedule, in part because material shortages persist, but that they would let residents know whether crews are expected in their area.
“The customer will know if they’re in that area that they have hope,” Watson said, adding that customer service representatives had asked for the information so they would have something to share with callers.
On Saipan, Watson said nearly all primary lines have been restored and crews are now working on laterals to push power out to customers, though more than half of customers remain to be connected. He said materials remain a challenge, with no new transformer shipments received yet and staff refurbishing damaged transformers at the power plant for redeployment. He said a single home may lack power while neighbors have it for reasons ranging from a damaged transformer or weather head to stolen service wire, and asked residents to understand they are not simply being skipped.
On Tinian, Watson said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers brought in engines next to the power plant that, combined with backfeeding power across feeders, have provided enough generation to meet the island’s demand. CUC’s Jonathan Camacho, who oversees transmission and distribution power, had described the backfeeding approach, in which one feeder carries power to the others. Watson said significant work remains, with poles, transformers, and conductors still to be replaced. He said 61 concrete poles have been delivered to Tinian and that two crews of retired GPA linemen are due to arrive next week to assist.