The ironwood tree, long a symbol of desert abundance, may soon be protected by a new national monument in southern Arizona. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt toured an ironwood forest near Tucson in mid-March, and expressed interest in protecting about 71,000 acres of BLM land. A recent report by the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson says […]
Tony Davis
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Wildcat subdivisions fuel fight over sprawl
Arizona argues over how to rein in runaway development
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
Endangered species must learn to wait
Conservationists worry wildlife will be stuck in bureaucratic limbo
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
Bulldozers roll in Tucson
TUCSON, Ariz. – As a bulldozer rolled across a patch of desert, Esther Underwood smiled. It was a brisk, windy December day at the edge of one of Tucson’s rapidly growing suburbs as the dozer scooped up desert scrub and knocked over prickly pear and cholla cacti. “Isn’t that pretty?” Underwood said of the bulldozer. […]
Posted inNovember 8, 1999: A new road for the public lands
Score one for the owl
A federal judge has clamped down on permits for new subdivisions, roads, power lines, shopping malls, and other projects in the habitat of the endangered cactus ferruginous pygmy-owl in and around Tucson. Many of Tucson’s suburbs continued to approve subdivisions after the pygmy-owl was listed in 1997, despite a county-wide effort to preserve the owl’s […]
Posted inOctober 25, 1999: Monumental chaos
Water starts fires in Tucson election
TUCSON, Ariz. – Late one fall night in 1992, car dealer Bob Beaudry awoke to the sound of water gushing from a burst pipe. The water spilling into his basement, bedrooms and his front and back yards came from the Colorado River via the Central Arizona Project (CAP), a long-awaited, $4.7 billion concrete canal that […]
Posted inAugust 30, 1999: Who's stopping sprawl?
A pocket-sized bird takes on Sunbelt subdivisions
Note: two sidebar articles accompany this feature story: “A tiny owl with a big name” and “An ESA cheat sheet.” MARANA, Ariz. – An eerie calm hangs over Dove Mountain, a mega-development spilling out of the saguaro-lined canyons about 30 miles northwest of Tucson. Here in the foothills of the Tortolita Mountains, developers have spent […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Tribe buys a ranch
Thanks to casino earnings, the fast-growing Pascua Yaqui Tribe has spent $3 million to buy a 5,300-acre cattle ranch. The purchase expands the tribe’s land base to 6,300 acres. Tribal Chairman Benito Valencia said he would not rule out building a second casino on the ranch. Under gaming compacts with Arizona, however, tribes cannot put […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Nuclear waste dump opens
Twenty-five years after it was first proposed, and a decade after its construction, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad, N.M., received its first truckload of nuclear debris. The world’s first geologically engineered nuclear waste dump opened early on March 26, right after a federal judge lifted a seven-year-old injunction that had kept the facility […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Plans for a new park in Arizona
In 1966, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall drafted a plan to turn more than 1 million square miles of desert in his home state of Arizona into a national park. But the idea for a Sonoran Desert National Park died at the hands of a lame-duck President, Lyndon Johnson. Now, the park idea has resurfaced, driven […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 1999: Uncommon Bounty
Tucson draws a line on sprawl
TUCSON, Ariz. – A crowd of several hundred people burst into applause at a public meeting here, as the Pima County Board of Supervisors killed a developer’s plan to turn a cattle ranch into 6,100 homes, two golf courses, a hotel, shopping areas and an airstrip. The Jan. 12 vote, the first denial of a […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Environmentalists are ‘doing nothing’
Note: This is a sidebar to a feature story headlined ‘Desert sprawl.’ Bill Arnold is a real estate broker and former county planning and zoning commissioner. “The environmental community doesn’t want the desert destroyed, but what the hell do they do to promote infill? They’re doing nothing. In May, we had a textbook case of […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Selling sizzle and steak
Note: This is a sidebar to a feature story headlined ‘Desert sprawl.’ David Taylor is a veteran planner for the city of Tucson. “I got asked at a meeting once, “When did the town peak?” I said, “If you are a rich, old, white lady living in the Catalina Foothills, it peaked in 1940. If […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
‘Let’s get it resolved’
Note: This is a sidebar to a feature story headlined ‘Desert sprawl.’ Ron Asta, an environmentalist and Pima County supervisor from 1973 to 1976, is now a zoning consultant to small landowners. “After I lost my seat on the Board of Supervisors in 1976, I was offered a job by KUAT-TV (the local public TV […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
A statesman steps off the stage
When House Interior Committee Chairman Morris K. Udall of Arizona flew north in 1977 to hold hearings on a bill to protect more than 100 million acres in Alaska, locals in the town of Pelican hanged him in effigy. Ten years later, when Udall returned to Alaska to make a speech, an audience of chamber […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Desert sprawl
Note: This feature story is accompanied by seven sidebars listed at the end. TUCSON, Arizona Last spring, tens of thousands of people strolled the Street of Dreams subdivision to gaze at a $749,000 mansion. Behind the house, man-made waterfalls flowed past prickly pear and saguaro cacti. Inside, a television set popped up from a nightstand […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
‘It was God’s country’
Note: This is a sidebar to a feature story headlined ‘Desert sprawl.’ Dee Dee Arnaud is once again a resident of the Catalina Foothills north of Tucson. “My family moved here from the Chicago area in 1946. My sister had respiratory allergies, and the dry air in Tucson took care of it. We lived in […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
‘The party is over’
Note: This is a sidebar to a feature story headlined ‘Desert sprawl.’ Doug McVie and his wife, Christina, live on five acres in the heart of the ironwood forest on Tucson’s northwest side. They are active in the environmental group, Desert Watch. “Once you see the surveying tags, the party is over. I called up […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
‘People have a voice’
Note: This is a sidebar to a feature story headlined ‘Desert sprawl.’ Gayle Hartmann is a longtime environmental activist in Tucson’s growth wars and a former Pima County Planning and Zoning commissioner. “The first time I spoke before the County Planning and Zoning Commission, it was 1971. I was living in the Tucson Mountains (west […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
The roll call of sprawl
Note: This is a sidebar to a feature story headlined ‘Desert sprawl.’ People per square mile in metropolitan Tucson in 1953: 5,000 … in 1998: 2,400 Acres of Sonoran Desert land cleared for new homes, offices and commercial buildings each day: 12 Average annual temperature in Tucson in 1900: 67 degrees … in the mid-1990s: […]