Volunteer Crews Refurbish Lines in Guatemalan Town
(International Foundation, March, 2010)

Like most other utilities in the world's impoverished villages, the municipal electric authority of Guastatoya, Guatemala, does not have a surplus of operating income. They get by on ingenuity and what they have on-hand.

This means no hardhats or gloves for the local linemen, who are often tasked with clearing brush, trees and even cacti with machetes. There are no digger trucks; post holes are made by hand. They often haul poles using pickups borrowed from family members. And when thieves stole a kilometer of copper wire recently, linemen used the only thing they had that would suffice: barbed wire.

NRECA International sent volunteer crews from Illinois and Tennessee to the town in January to help refurbish four kilometers of the municipal utility's line, including the barbed-wire stretch, provide safety training, and begin the repair and reconnection of the city's hydroelectric power plant.

"These guys helped the Guastatoya crew rebuild a three-phase line that had poles made of railroad iron and no neutral," said Bruce Giffin, CEO of Illinois Rural Electric Cooperative. Giffin went with three of his co-op's linemen and a foreman from the Tennessee cooperative to work on the project. "They also installed a neutral in a single-phase line, and replaced a pole with heavy woodpecker damage in a field full of cactus and cattle."

Giffin said his team, working with the Guastatoya linemen, completed all the tasks on their list, including a new three-phase line to the city’s hydro plant.

The International Foundation also furnished the Guastatoya crews with new hard hats, which the volunteers showed them how to use. And work gloves were quickly sent by Illinois Rural to Atlanta, where the assistant general manager of the Guastatoya utility was attending the NRECA Annual Meeting in February. They were in use by the Guastatoya crew by end of that month.

Giffin praised the work of NRECA International's country director in Guatemala, and expressed hope that he and his linemen would be able to do more work in Guastatoya.

"Hugo Arriaza and his staff are particularly competent, and we’d be happy to work with them and the folks in Guastatoya again," he said.

Giffin said Illinois Rural is currently making arrangements to send one of its spare digger derrick trucks to the utility in Guastatoya.