Audio By Carbonatix
Another Arizona Export
The giant sucking sound from out Yuma way is federal funds being flushed on behalf of the 125 powerful farmers who make up the Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation and Drainage District.
Federal largess has reached such absurd proportions that agencies now are fining each other. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced August 31 it is fining the U.S. Department of Interior $266,025 for the illegal storage of hazardous waste at its Yuma Desalting Plant.
The $256 million desalting plant was supposed to withdraw salt from foul drainage waters emanating from the 50,000-acre Wellton-Mohawk district. The district’s effluent, which is supposed to flow into the Colorado River, required desalting to meet treaty obligations on the amount and quality of Colorado River water flowing into Mexico.
But the desalting plant never worked properly; it became a quarter-billion-dollar white elephant soon after it opened in 1991. So the district’s polluted drainage has been diverted from the Colorado River into a $45 million concrete-lined canal that twists 50 miles into Mexico, where it is dumped into the desert.
Garb About the R&G
For weeks, the merger of the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette has had reporters and editors reaching for Prozac as they await word on what their tasks will be in the brave new world.
One look at the company’s September 5 in-house newsletter, Inside, brings Phoenix Newspapers’ priorities into sharp focus: fashion.
Appointments of editors and columnists are listed on page two. Page one, meanwhile, is devoted to an employee dress code for “casual days,” complete with photos of fashion do’s and don’ts. The missive reminds employees to wear socks and to choose fuller, or relaxed-cut jeans with pleats or the classic five-pocket jeans. Of course, to be assured of the corporate stamp of approval, it notes, “golf and polo shirts are a good choice.” Employees cross the line if “you feel embarrassed to join the boss or that [important] client at an unscheduled lunch”–information that sent R&G journalists scurrying to find some important clients.
To Wrong Fool . . .
Columnist John Kolbe, R-Gazette, did nothing to endear himself to women in his September 6 diatribe, in which the hoary harrumpher twice employs the term “henpecked” and variously labels the U.N. women’s conference in Beijing a “whine-in,” a “gabfest” and “irrelevant”–descriptions otherwise reserved for Kolbe and his column.