Friday, June 11, 2021
ORGAN PIPE CACTUS NATIONAL MONUMENT – Replanted saguaros stand like sentinels along a wide access road and a towering, 30-foot bollard barrier that’s part of construction ordered by then-President Donald Trump. But farther along the border, the new barrier ends, the road is incomplete, construction materials lay scattered and uprooted plants have long since died.
Locals, security experts and environmentalists say the half-finished project has introduced more problems than it fixed.
Now, the administration of President Joe Biden – which paused wall construction in January – faces a logistical, ethical and political quandary in determining the best way to proceed. Some groups and interests want the wall finished, others want to remove what has already been built.
Kelly Glenn-Kimbro, a fifth-generation rancher from Douglas, and Rijk Morawe of the National Park Service come from vastly different backgrounds and work along the border in different regions of Arizona. But both say the wall – as it stands – is little more than a political prop that has failed to secure the border with Mexico but has damaged landscapes and habitat in southern Arizona.
For them, the solution is to mitigate the damage caused during the building process by finishing access roads, completing flood control infrastructure and repairing as much environmental damage as possible.
“They got the fence built, right?” said Morawe, the chief of natural and cultural resources management at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which runs 30 miles along the border. “Now they need to finish the project so that they don’t leave issues going forward.”
Glenn-Kimbro, who first caught the national spotlight in the 1980s when firearms manufacturer Ruger asked her to star in advertisements as the Ruger Girl, has been an advocate for border security for 45 years.
But the wall, for which $15 billion was allocated during Trump’s tenure, is a waste of taxpayers’ money, she said, because it doesn’t stop illegal border crossings. Glenn-Kimbro feels this way even though her ranch, which abuts Mexico, benefited financially from the construction.
“Instead of doing it right, they were just going to do it,” she said. “So instead of ending up with something very effective, they end up with something that’s a total disaster.”
In areas where barrier construction has been finished, there have been multiple reports of migrants scaling the wall with homemade ladders.
Making good on a campaign promise, Biden “paused” border wall construction in an executive order on his first day in office. The order demanded top officials in relevant departments, including Defense and Homeland Security, to present a plan by March 26 to redirect funds and repurpose contracts originally drawn up to build the wall.
That deadline passed without a resolution, leaving construction and staging sites along the wall abandoned with building materials baking in the sun, sections of constructed wall flat on the ground and various tasks undone, including the completion of floodgates, road grading, and measures to prevent flooding.
Thursday, June 10, 2021
WASHINGTON – Reports that Arizona is preparing to execute death row inmates with gas similar to what was used in the Holocaust have brought responses ranging from “concerned” to “horrified,” but the most common reaction was disbelief.
“What were they thinking?” asked Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, in response to news reports that the state purchased potassium cyanide for possible use in a refurbished gas chamber this year.
“Didn’t anybody in the Arizona Department of Corrections study the Holocaust, and if so, why didn’t they object?” he asked.
The reports come as Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is urging the Arizona Supreme Court to schedule the executions of Frank Atwood and Clarence Dixon, each of whom has been in prison for more than 30 years.
Atwood was convicted in the 1984 kidnapping and murder of an 8-year-old Tucson girl and Dixon was convicted in the 1978 rape and murder of an Arizona State University student in Tempe.
Brnovich told the court that both men have exhausted their appeals and their death sentences should be carried out.
Wednesday, June 9, 2021
WASHINGTON – Tucson officials said they will indefinitely suspend operations at one of the city’s water treatment plants to keep it from being overwhelmed by an underground toxic chemical plume.
City officials assured residents in a news conference Tuesday that water from the Tucson Airport Remediation Project treatment plant is safe, and that the decision to stop operations there on June 21 is merely a precaution against high levels of the chemical PFAS that could be moving toward the plant.
“Our action to suspend treatment at TARP is a proactive step to ensuring our community’s drinking water supply remains safe,” said Tucson Assistant City Manager Tim Thomure.
PFAS, which is used in firefighting foam and other applications, was detected in the groundwater near several military bases and airports in the state, including the Arizona Air National Guard facility at the Tucson International Airport.
The chemical was first detected in TARP groundwater years ago, but levels were low enough then that they could be removed with available treatment, city officials said.
“Unfortunately, we have hit a critical moment where we can no longer confidently deliver safe drinking water from TARP due to elevated PFAS levels in the water entering the facility prior to treatment,” Tucson Mayor Regina Romero said.
The Environmental Protection Agency does not regulate the chemical, but has set a safe “health advisory level” of 70 parts per trillion. Tucson officials said they have maintained their own standard of less than 18 parts per trillion, which they said is among the strictest in the nation.
Tuesday, June 8, 2021
PHOENIX — Mo
[image-1]st youth who have played basketball at the park or in their driveway have likely done this: pretended to hit a high-stakes shot as the buzzer sounds. That could happen more often during Arizona high school basketball games if the state moves forward with a 35-second shot clock.
The National Federation of State High School Associations announced a new shot clock adoption option in May after eight states, including California, Washington state, and New York, completed an entire season testing the clock. Data and information gathered from these states through surveys were provided to the NFHS, which led to its decision. The adoption option allows state high school associations to choose whether they want to implement a shot clock as early as the 2022-2023 season.
Karrisa Niehoff, executive director of the NFHS, said the initial vote by the rules committee was 11 to 1 to allow the adoption option.
NFHS rules, historically, forbid states from using shot clocks at the high school level, and if schools did, state associations forfeit their seat on the rules committee. Now, state associations will remain on the committee regardless of what option they decide.
Since Arizona was not one of the eight states previously testing a shot clock, the Arizona Interscholastic Association plans to build from preliminary data, and do a thorough gathering of data in the next year which will be used to decide whether to add the clock as early as the 2022-2023 season.
Joe Paddock, assistant director of the AIA, said the association will look to its schools, athletic directors and coaches for insight.
“If the schools are in favor of it, you know, certainly we’re going to support our schools as we do and we’ll get the shot clock implemented,” Paddock said.
With help from Monarch Sports Arizona, a sports events-management company in Phoenix, the AIA started preliminary research on implementing a shot clock in the Visit Mesa Challenge during the 2018-19 season. The four-day event held at Mesa Mountain View High School featured 16 schools, a few from out of state and local schools like Sunnyslope, Chaparral, Rancho Solano and Corona del Sol.
TEMPE – Candidates are lining up to become Arizona’s next governor in 2022, when Republican Doug Ducey terms out under state law.
Last week, two prominent women joined the race: Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who has gained national prominence defending the state’s 2020 election, wants to be the Democratic candidate, and former news anchor Kari Lake, who resigned from Fox 10 in March, wants to represent the Republican Party.
They joined Republican hopefuls Kimberly Yee and Karrin Taylor Robson, and Democrat Marco Lopez.
Although Republicans are running on former President Donald Trump’s policies, Hobbs is addressing unfounded allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election repeatedly pushed by Trump and many state Republicans. Hobbs has denounced the so-called audit organized by Arizona state senators to review the 2020 presidential election ballots, and told CNN she thinks “this whole thing is a joke.”
“In 2020, against all odds, in the middle of a pandemic, we proved that democracy works,” Hobbs said in a video announcing her campaign. “It’s been my job and life’s work to make government work for the people of Arizona. That’s why I’m running.”
Among gubernatorial candidates, Hobbs was at the top of the power rankings by OH Predictive Insights, a market research firm in Phoenix, even before officially announcing her candidacy. The rankings are based on an online survey of 935 registered Arizona voters conducted the first week of May. Respondents were asked to rate 40 notable Arizonans, regardless of whether any of them actually intend to seek office.
In her campaign announcement, Hobbs noted her efforts to expand Medicaid for seniors and implement the Arizona Opioid Epidemic Act in 2018, which offered increased access to treatment and opioid overdose countermeasures, such as Naloxone.
As governor, Hobbs promised she would protect survivors of abuse, rebuild the post-COVID-19 economy, invest in health care and education and “ensure that your race, gender or ZIP code does not dictate your destiny.”
Monday, June 7, 2021
A long-simmering neighborhood feud turned deadly in the Catalina area on Friday, June 4, leading to two deaths, including the shooter, according to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.
Jose Carlos Valdez, 60, was shot and killed, and deputies later found the apparent shooter, Benjamin Jacinto, 72, dead of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Office offered the following details:
Deputies responded to a 911 call from a woman who said her children had been shot by a neighbor near the intersection of Coronado Sunset Drive and Coronado View Road.
On their way to the scene, deputies were flagged down and stopped to render aid to two adult male shooting victims before paramedics from the Golder Ranch Fire Department arrived on the scene. The men were transported to a hospital and treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
When deputies arrived at the residence where the shooting took place, they learned that a third shooting victim might be inside. They entered the house and discovered Jacinto. As they spoke with him, they learned he matched the description of the shooter. Jacinto then ducked behind a wall and fired multiple gunshots.
Deputies retreated from the home to create a containment perimeter. While they were securing the area, they discovered the body of Valdez, who had been shot dead.
SWAT team members, along with a bomb squad, send a robot into the home to search for Jacinto. The robot’s footage showed that Jacinto was dead of an evident self-inflicted gunshot wound.
A subsequent investigation revealed the neighbors had been engaged in a long-running feud.
