Archive for the ‘Currents/Currents Feature’ Category
March 4th, 2010
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Author: An invasive moth that feasts on prickly pear species is moving closer to Arizona
by Leo W. Banks
It sounds like a horror movie: A hungry moth marches across the country, attaching itself to prickly pear cacti and feeding until the plant looks as if it has been destroyed by dynamite. With all the plants in a particular landscape devoured, the moth moves on to the next prickly pear landscape, the next, and so on. Something like this is happening with the South American cactus moth. It was introduced to Australia in 1926 to reduce the number of…
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Lawmakers enjoy low-cost benefits while they take potshots at the poor
by Tim Vanderpool
During her State of the State address in January, Gov. Jan Brewer announced a budget-cutting blueprint that included drastically scaling back the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, or AHCCCS. She said that program’s expansion—approved by voters in 2000—was costing more than expected. “While we agree we must provide essential services for those with no place else to turn,” the governor said, “we must only offer those benefits when necessary.” State Senate President Bob Burns concurred. The Peoria Republican hinted…
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The Forest Service fights to keep collecting its fees
by Tim Vanderpool
In a case that has chewed up untold tax dollars and time, the U.S. Forest Service is still fighting to keep opponents of its fee program out of court. The agency’s challenge grew even bigger last year, when four people filed a class-action lawsuit against the Coronado National Forest, after they’d been fined for refusing to pay up. (See “Fee Fight Fattens,” Currents, May 15, 2008.) Calling for an injunction against entrance fees on Mount Lemmon, the plaintiffs argue that…
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Downtown businesses being displaced by a proposed restaurant begin to move on
by Aleksa Brown
Erin Bradley doesn’t know what the new year will bring for Preen, the vintage boutique she owns on Congress Street. In late October, Bradley and her business partner, Emilie Marchand, got the news that they would be evicted from their storefront near Fifth Avenue to make room for a new restaurant and bar run by Kwang C. An, of Sakura fame. Just keeping up with all of the alterations and other tasks that come with the business are tough enough,…
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Tucson holiday news from 50 and 100 years ago
by Dave Devine
In 1909, numerous poor children receiving food items made for a major event on Christmas in Tucson. Fifty years later, teenagers were wondering whether the holiday had become too commercialized—or whether they should wish for a Corvette underneath the tree. To help impoverished kids, employees of the Arizona Daily Star a century ago contributed funds to purchase candy, mixed nuts, oranges and apples to distribute on Christmas morning. “There are no other people in all the community,” the paper explained,…
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A proposed county change could lead to the commercial growth that River Road residents have been fighting for years
by Mari Herreras
Evan Kligman fears the semi-rural feel of his River Road neighborhood is about to disappear. Kligman and his wife bought their home in 1998. Back then, the stretch of River Road between Dodge Boulevard and Hacienda del Sol had almost no commercial development. However, when the Kligmans received a letter from a property-management company in October 2004 that invited area property owners to sell, they worried that a commercial hub was inevitable. On Tuesday, Dec. 15, the Pima County Board…
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Primavera remembers the men and women who died homeless in 2009
by Erica Nannini
“John Doe” and “Jane Doe” are the generic names you see used as examples at the top of various forms. Imagine if the name “John Doe” were on your birth certificate. The Pima County Public Fiduciary deals with real-life John and Jane Does every day. Those are the names they assign to the bodies of people who die homeless with no identification and no known relatives. The Pima County Health Department does not keep statistics on the number of local…
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The number of Tucson foreclosures will remain high through 2010, according to most of the experts we polled
by Dave Devine
The number of foreclosures in Pima County hit a record high in 2009. The number of trustee-sale notices (a step in the foreclosure process) will approach 12,000, while the number of homes actually sold at auction will reach approximately 5,500, up about one-third from 2008—and almost nine times higher than the number in 2006. The number of foreclosures will remain at record levels next year, according to some. Others, however, are more hopeful. Using an analogy fitting the season, Bob…
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Is the Buenos Aires/No More Deaths controversy really about litter?
by Tim Vanderpool
In their ongoing struggle with the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, members of the humanitarian group No More Deaths have offered to unleash a huge trash-gathering operation on the border-area preserve. The group wants to offset the effects of their efforts to place 1-gallon water jugs along migrant trails. But the offer has been flatly refused by refuge manager Mike Hawkes, and by upper-echelon administrators in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. To the activists, Hawkes’ refusal came as a…
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A group wants to create a Tucson science center that has no link to the UA or the city
by Mari Herreras
In the industrial neighborhood south of Ajo Way, just down the street from Tucson Electric Park, imagination and science are coming together inside the walls of a plain-looking steel structure. This is Joe O’Connell’s Creative Machines, where designers, precision machinists and carpenters work on projects destined for children’s museums and science centers far, far away from Tucson. On one end of the machine shop are several ball machines, which look like super-large bird cages with tunnels and contraptions for balls…
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