Since 1981, residents from the poor, mostly Latino south Tucson neighborhoods that now are in the Tucson International Airport Area Superfund Site have had little reason to trust government officials. And this spring, their confidence eroded more, after the state killed a long-standing appropriation that paid for half of a…

Richard Anderson and Bruce Babbitt were the best of pals growing up in Flagstaff during the 1950s. They lived half a block away from each other, played childhood games together, skied together, went to school together. And one day, Anderson remembers, he punched Bruce Babbitt in the face. The youngsters,…

Fourth of July weekend is as festive as ever in the villages of Pine and Strawberry. In Pine, there is a pancake breakfast at the old school. A barbecue at the Senior Center. An arts-and-crafts display. A show put on by local fiddlers on the porch of the community center…

Who will pay to clean Arizona’s contaminated underground drinking-water reserves? Polluters? Or taxpayers? The state Superfund law says polluters should pay. But that may change soon. A state-appointed group in which lobbyists for water-polluting industries vastly outnumber laymen may try to shift the burden onto taxpayers. The Groundwater Cleanup Task…

Chester, who says he once killed someone but can’t remember why, has requested peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. The owner and operator of the Rainbow Valley Boarding Home honors Chester’s request. Eighty-one-year-old Izora Hill, probably the state’s oldest active proprietor of a fully licensed supervisory care home for…

In an unexpected move, the state Water Quality Appeals Board has delayed deciding whether the Phelps Dodge Corporation can build Verde Valley Ranch, a housing development surrounding a golf course that would be built on several acres of toxic mine tailings. The tailings are now contaminating groundwater seeping into the…

What used to be the football field at George Washington Carver High, the “all-colored” school during Phoenix’s era of segregation, is now an asphalt parking lot where giant trucks are stored. Fees paid by the truck owners help defray operating expenses for the newly opened Carver-Phoenix Union Colored High School…

Lake Havasu City did not exist in 1912, and Teddy Roosevelt did not visit a Phoenix opera house in 1902–even though exhibits at the Marley Center suggest those events did occur. And those two faux pas are hardly the only factual inaccuracies at the new state historical museum, according to…

Like many other embarrassing elements of recent Arizona history, Kemper Marley’s link to the state’s most famous assassination is not addressed in the state’s newest history museum. Officials of the Arizona Historical Society, a state agency, are extraordinarily proud of the gimmicky, $10 million Marley Center museum, which focuses on…