ANETH, San Juan County (AP) -- The 20th century is finally arriving to a corner of the Navajo Reservation.
Comfortable manufactured homes dot the reservation. Late-model cars and pickups are parked nearby. Yet running water and telephones are scarce in this desert of canyons and mesas in southeastern Utah.Now, the last residents on the Utah side of the reservation are getting electricity.
What others do without thinking -- flipping a switch to light a room, turning on an oven to cook dinner -- the Claw family knows as remarkable.
The day in January that Utah Power crews ran a mile-long line to his house, Julius Claw drove 50 miles east to Cortez, Colo., to stock up on 100-watt bulbs.
"It was so bright inside our house," Darlene Claw said. "I still could not believe it two days after it was on."
The Claws celebrated by throwing a Super Bowl party. Friends and relatives gathered in their comfortably furnished home to cheer the Denver Broncos, crowded around a big-screen television not used since they moved to the mesa four years ago.
Their children, two boys, ages 16 and 13, and a girl, 11, hardly believed they were watching television in their home.
The Claws are among the last 10 to 15 percent of families on the Utah side of the reservation to receive electricity, said Wilbur Capitan of the Aneth Chapter of the Utah Navajo.
Although Glen Canyon Dam and the Navajo Power Plant supply electricity throughout the West, and lie within 150 miles of the mesa, bringing power to the last dark pockets of the Utah reservation has been tortuous.
The project that brought power to the Claws includes 22 families scattered from Cajon Mesa a few miles north of Aneth to the Colorado state line to the San Juan River that snakes through the reservation.
Running power lines through canyons and desert will cost $230,000 when the current project is finished, Capitan estimated. For individual homes, the cost can reach almost $30,000, depending on the distance and work required.
To get electricity, families first must receive home-site leases from the tribe. The leases give families the right to locate a home on the reservation.
Then they apply for electricity, which means paperwork. Getting applications through the tribal bureaucracy and the Bureau of Indian Affairs can take years.
After that, the tribe must find money to pay for the power-line extensions, usually through a combination of federal grants, the Navajo trust fund -- money set aside for the tribe from oil royalties and other sources -- and contributions.
After that, land disputes between tribal members can delay applications for years.
"People don't understand the process," Capitan said. "They think it happens overnight."