The Solana Generating Station — the large concentrated-solar plant near Gila Bend — was knocked out by a microburst for a few days in late July and won’t generate power normally for months, a new report reveals. The severe problem comes on top of generally poor performance from the $2…
Hickman’s Family Farms’ Tonapah egg ranch stinks — in a literal sense. And that, a group of downwind residents argue, should preclude the farm’s vice president of sales, Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman, from having a say in the county’s air-quality control. Hickman was appointed to the five-member Maricopa County Board of Supervisors…
It’s no secret that Arizona is getting its first swim-with-the-dolphins (SWTD) entertainment center in the very near future, and it’s no secret that the plan is incredibly controversial: Dolphins in the desert?!? Sounds crazy, right? Ever since New Times first wrote about #DolphinFreeAZ, the large and loud movement to stop the Mexican…
The rumblings of Internet rumormongers notwithstanding, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management isn’t gearing up to euthanize 44,000 wild horses and 1,000 burros. But just to make sure, several dozen horse lovers mobbed the agency’s downtown Phoenix office Thursday, trotting a fuzzy stuffed horse up and down Washington Avenue and…
About 600 people gathered in the Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza at the Arizona state capitol on Saturday afternoon to show support for those protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), a controversial project intended to transport oil from North Dakota to a refinery in Illinois that critics say will threaten the…
Whether you’re concerned about the impact uranium mining has on the air quality of the Grand Canyon or think the issue has been blown way out of proportion, you have one week left to share your thoughts with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality before the agency renews permits for…
One year after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency spilled 3 million gallons of toxic mining waste into the Animas River, the Navajo Nation is suing the agency in federal court for the millions of dollars’ worth of damages it has incurred. On August 5, 2015, a contractor hired by the…
When Duane “Chili” Yazzie learned that a massive load of bright-yellow toxic mining waste was flowing down the Animas River toward his small farming community in Shiprock, New Mexico, he rushed home and turned on every sprinkler and hose he had. With the plume of waste about 100 miles upstream…
Today is the last day the U.S. Bureau of Land Management will accept public comment about a proposal to expand the Daneros uranium mine in southern Utah. The mine, which began excavating uranium in 2010, is located in the heart of the proposed Bears Ears National Monument, at a site…
Think it’s hot out now? Summertime high temperatures in Phoenix will average 10 degrees hotter by the year 2100 — as hot as current-day Kuwait City — according to new projections by the nonprofit group Climate Central. Worse, average daily temperatures in the hottest months will probably be three to five…
The Arizona Court of Appeals has dealt a sizable blow to environmentalists set on stopping a proposed open-pit copper mine 30 miles southeast of Tucson in the Santa Rita Mountains, just west of State Highway 83. In a unanimous decision, a panel of three judges overturned a lower court’s ruling,…
In the latest gesture of public support for the permanent protection of the Grand Canyon watershed, a coalition of environmental groups and tribal leaders announced today that they’ve delivered petitions containing more than 550,000 signatures to President Barack Obama demanding he create a 1.7-million-acre national monument around Grand Canyon National…
It was more of a nonsoon than a monsoon. It won’t make anyone’s Best Storms of 2016 list, but Phoenix saw its first rainfall of the summer monsoon season on Monday. One one-hundredth of an inch of rain fell at Sky Harbor Airport, according to the National Weather Service, while Gilbert…
The North American Monsoon is officially upon us. For the next three months, Arizona will be prone to heavy downpours, flash floods, dust storms, dry lightning, perhaps even a tornado or two. While most residents will witness the weather from the relative safety of their homes, a handful of Arizona…
Settlement talks brokered by Arizona Governor Doug Ducey between a pro-solar group, lawmakers, and the state’s largest utility have been halted for now. “They’ve been suspended,” Kris Mayes, spokeswoman for the SolarCity-backed group, told New Times on Thursday. Mayes added that the suspension is effective immediately. “Unfortunately, that’s all I can say.”…
A new Arizona Public Service rate plan would essentially kill off new solar installations by top companies Solar City, SunRun, and Vivant by next year, a Credit Suisse analyst said on Tuesday. The statements in a research report by analyst Patrick Jobin added to fears already voiced by the pro-solar…
The Gila River Indian Community this week asked a U.S. District judge to issue a summary judgment in its lawsuit challenging a planned expansion of the Loop 202 freeway. In the lawsuit, filed against the Federal Highway Administration and the Arizona Department of Transportation, the community argues that the freeway…
A solar-powered airplane designed to bring attention to renewable energy departed from the Phoenix area early this morning to continue its attempt at an around-the-world flight. The Solar Impulse 2 spent 10 days in the Valley after pilot André Borschberg landed to the cheers of a small crowd on May…
Half Life: America’s Last Uranium Mill, a new short film from the Grand Canyon Trust, highlights how the White Mesa Uranium Mill in Utah could contaminate the drinking water supply for much of southeastern Utah and northern Arizona. The White Mesa mill is a part of the uranium mining and…
The solar-powered airplane Solar Impulse 2 landed at a Phoenix-area airport on Monday night, completing a leg of its around-the-world goal to cheers from an enthusiastic crowd of well-wishers. Slowly but surely, the electric airplane is making history: It is powered solely by the solar panels that cover its wings,…
Plans for competing ballot measures on solar power were scrubbed this week as peace broke out in the battle between rooftop-solar companies, utilities, and Republican lawmakers. Both sides in the debate over rooftop-solar payments agreed to sit at the negotiating table over the next two weeks in a settlement deal…
With a bill to ban uranium mining near the Grand Canyon all but dead in the U.S. House of Representatives, supporters of the effort are shifting gears and moving to Plan B: Trying to get the President Barack Obama to use his executive authority to do it by designating the…
