As firefighters continue to battle the Wallow fire in eastern Arizona, the starter of half of the monstrous 2002 Rodeo-Chedeski fire is scheduled to be released from prison tomorrow. Leonard Gregg, an Apache who lived in Cibecue, admitted he’d started two fires — Rodeo and Pine. The former wildland…
Two likely very unhappy campers are getting questioned today in connection with a campfire left burning on May 29 that apparently started the largest wildfire in Arizona history. Media reports state that the feds aren’t releasing names, nor have they arrested anyone. Meanwhile, the nearly half-million-acre Wallow fire is…
The enormous Wallow Fire continues to rage in eastern Arizona, and it has rekindled the debate over whether environmentalists are to blame for wildfires.Over the years, environmentalists have filed lawsuits that put restrictions on loggers who clear a lot of the dry brush from the forests. They say “old-growth” logging puts…
With half of Arizona homes worth far less than the mortgages owed on them, some homeowners may be secretly wishing the wildfires would pay their property a visit. We ran that idea past a couple of real estate agents today, and both agreed it makes sense. “A fire could be a blessing in disguise…
Senator Jon Kyl was overheard today expressing concern about a summer home he claims to own that might be in the path of the Wallow fire raging in eastern Arizona.Given the senator’s history with “factual statements,” we decided to check it out…
Greer lost six structures last night to the still-growing Wallow fire, but weather conditions are expected to improve today for firefighters.A U.S. Forest Service spokesman said the blaze, for now, is holding to its eastern borders.”It did push into some structures last night, but we were able to push it…
NASA satellite photos released today show just how much of Arizona’s precious forests are being lost to fire. Remarkably, for fires this big, there have been no reported deaths or injuries. We saw something about burn injuries while Web-surfing for fire news, but that story was about a worker at a…
A Pittsburgh natural-gas exec and his wife will donate $2,500 to a central Phoenix school on Friday as part of their cross-country trip in an alternative-fuel-powered Hummer H3, which they say pollutes less than a Smart Car. Murry Gerber served as CEO for EQT, a major natural-gas producer in Pennsylvania, for 12…
A new Web site launched by the state of Arizona emphasizes the problem of litter from illegal border crossers and seeks volunteers for cleanups. AzBorderTrash.gov was funded by state and federal money, according to the site, leaving one of our Facebook friends to wonder why Arizona considers trash-dumping by illegal immigrants to be more…
Hundreds of people called Maricopa County this year to complain about people violating restrictions on wood-burning. Despite the Valley’s ongoing problem with bad air, though, those calls resulted in almost no action by the county. The county’s Air Quality Department announced 11 no-burn days in 2010, and received 559 complaints based on…
Nobody can label the folks over at Maricopa County’s Air Quality Department a bunch of Scrooges. After a warning last week that no-burn days on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day would be enforced, exactly zero warnings and citations were issued, a county official says. Oddly, all this non-enforcement happened despite the…
If you see a toilet in Chandler’s new City Hall, fight the urge and don’t drink from it. Seems fairly obvious, but if you forget, the city’s been kind enough to post signs as a reminder.In almost every bathroom in the new, uber-“green” facility are signs saying “Urinals and Toilets…
This is a desert. Nobody likes to see a billion gallons of water flushed down a hole in the middle of summer, which is what happened July 20 after one Tempe Town Lake’s inflatable dams popped. But let’s keep this in perspective, folks — something today’s Arizona Republic article about…
One of the principals behind a company that claims to be bringing a 175-megawatt solar plant to southern Arizona was accused in the 1980s of running a bogus gold-mining scheme. Christopher E. Pannos, one of his brothers, James, and two other people were among those charged by the Federal Trade…
Maricopa County is celebrating Earth Hour this year by shutting off “non-essential” lights for one hour at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday. We decided to spend part of our Friday afternoon bugging county officials about this feel-good event, because our past research shows it typically costs governments and big companies more…
Global warming threatens to sink Santa’s workshop and push reindeer toward extinction, a renowned climatologist tells New Times. As we’ve read in recent months, climate change could melt the ice cap at the North Pole during the summer in 10 to 20 years, according to some estimates. Scientists aren’t sure…
Lisa Jackson, the head of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, has been so focused on saving the world from America’s greenhouse gases that she seems to have forgetten about serious pollution in the Phoenix area. Jackson is in Copenhagen this week for the international talks on carbon reductions, and on Monday…
Two Tucson men were sentenced recently for stealing Saguaro cacti from inside Saguaro National Park, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced today. Joseph Tillman, 50, will serve eight months in federal prison. His buddy, Gregory James McKee, 42, was sentenced to six months of home confinement and 100 hours of community service. A park…
The feds are going to study 670,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land in six western states — but only 16,000 of those acres are in Arizona. What an oversight! Those gloomy skies over Washington D.C. must have dimmed bureaucrats’ minds. It’s typically said that we get…
The city of Phoenix announced today it will receive $830,000 in federal stimulus funds to “reduce diesel emissions by retrofitting and replacing city-owned equipment.” Forgive us if we don’t stand up and cheer. This money, half of which the feds are borrowing the future, isn’t going to make a wisp…
At first glance, the Arizona Republic’s business-section article today on windmills in La Venta, Mexico, looks like more happy news about “clean” energy. It’s headlined, “Living off the wind,” and shows a bucolic scene of cows grazing near towering windmills. A graphic about the ultra-windy Isthmus of Tehuantepec is titled,…
Touchy, touchy. A representative of Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection called us this afternoon to ask why our June 8 post about a roundtable being hosted by the group was so “negative.” The woman started off by telling us that she’s a journalist who was working for the…
