By Ryan Randazzo | Arizona Republic
Solar-energy advocates expanded their influence at Salt River Project by winning additional seats on the utility’s board of directors, where they hope to push it to use more renewable energy.
Three members of a “Clean Energy” team won election to the board Tuesday, according to unofficial results.
Those candidates, working on shoestring budgets to get the word out about the obscure election, now have five votes on the 14-member board of directors for the power utility. For the first time, they also have one vote on the 10-member board for the SRP water association.
The low-key elections have many quirks beyond the separate boards for the water and power operations. They are open only to property owners. They are acreage based. The election is in April and doesn’t coincide with any other races. Hundreds of thousands of people who get power from SRP don’t qualify to vote.
But the elections are consequential: SRP directors oversee an annual budget exceeding $3 billion, water storage on the Salt and Verde rivers and a power system with generators across the Southwest.
