The munitions-plant explosion west of Buckeye last week that decapitated one man and injured two others came as no surprise to Sandy Coe-Davis. Three years ago, her husband Steve’s face was nearly blown off in a similar accident at a plant owned by the same man, Charles M. “Chuck” Byers…
Angel was preparing to join the dozen or so children who commit suicide each year in Arizona when someone heard her cry for help. At a moment when her despair was so deep that Angel felt as if the earth was closing over her, a stranger reached out and infused…
The scorched-earth campaign against sex education in Arizona, energized by recent victories, now is cutting a swath through Governor Rose Mofford’s legislative agenda. And the shell-shocked supporters of sex-ed that goes beyond “Just Say No” are groping to understand their defeats amid predictions that teens now served by school-based clinics…
Are you mad as hell at City Hall? Are you sick of its taxpayer-funded megalomania? Are you pissed about potholes, craven politicians and taxes? Are you ready to revolt? The two are leading a voter initiative drive that is rapidly making hay of all the undirected angst simmering out there…
Zev Bufman’s amphitheatre may be yesterday’s news, but fallout from the nuking it suffered in north Phoenix is still raining on Councilman Bill Parks. Come next election day, Parks likely will face opposition from at least one candidate from the ranks of people he angered by supporting the project. Amphitheatre…
ValTrans opponents say we don’t need the mass transit system because–and here’s where everyone starts laughing–the air quality in Phoenix is improving. Laugh all you want, the opponents say, we’ve got the statistics to prove it. In fact, in one of the brochures they’re distributing around the Valley, opponents have…
While the state’s high-tech elite occupied center stage with their supercollider capers last year, there was not a word said about a luscious, and much more accessible, little toxic-waste research plum being dangled by federal officials. Arizona’s academic and political leaders spared no expense or publicity stunt in pursuit of…
he state Superfund was the undisputed crown jewel of the 1986 Arizona Environmental Quality Act (EQA), a visionary scheme to clean up polluted groundwater that won warm endorsement from legislators and lobbyists, environmentalists and industrialists alike. At last, it seemed, the state had a fast and effective way to attack…
Nobody likes to admit it, but the much-ballyhooed zoning agreements intended to forestall battles between neighborhoods and developers are riddled with loopholes that can leave residents out of luck. And probably no one knows that better than Phoenix Councilwoman Linda Nadolski, who’s pushing a bill in the state legislature that…
An obscure zoning case over a west- side garbage dump has turned into a twisted version of David and Goliath, prompting Maricopa County officials to accuse El Mirage of a double-cross that wreaks havoc with the environment. The county is steamed over a deal paving the way for Browning-Ferris Industries…
Twenty years ago, the parents of a child like Jenna barely flinched when they encountered discrimination. From the moment a sympathetic obstetrician offered to whisk their little tragedy off to an institution, the family of a child born with Down’s syndrome learned that all other doors–to schools, workplaces, society itself–would…
