News Nuggets: Air Force flights, libraries stay open, mining permits
County supervisors have a light agenda this week ... But lots of long-term issues on their radar ... Harris makes case at border.
The U.S. Air Force wants to fly at lower altitudes in Pima County as they deal with new training needs, which means louder flights for more county residents. The Air Force is reaching out to the public for feedback, County Administrator Jan Lesher wrote in a September 27 memo, which includes maps of where the Air Force plans to fly at lower altitudes, along with ways to provide feedback. County officials also are reviewing the new plans “for any possible new potential adverse impacts.”
The plan to shut down several library branches this year has been tabled, Library Director Amber D. Mathewson wrote in a September 26 memo. Mathewson said the the plan to “close and reimagine services for three lightly used and troubled libraries” was “rolled out without the previously planned public discourse.” The move came after the library advisory board acknowledged last week that the county’s outreach needed a revamp, as the Arizona Luminaria reported.
Although county officials want to protect aquifers near the Copper World mining project, they likely don’t have a “substantive basis” to appeal a new permit, Lesher wrote in a September 26 memo. The county submitted 55 comments after the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality announced earlier this year they planned to issue an aquifer protection permit for the mine. One county suggestion that was included in the permit, which was issued last month, was to add two groundwater monitoring wells east of the Rosemont Pit.
A century ago, Tucson’s newspapers couldn’t stop talking about the rise of the automobile. Car clubs, new roads, tourism dollars. You name it, if it had to do with cars, it was newsworthy. One of the big names back then was O’Rielly. At tomorrow’s meeting, the Pima County supervisors are planning to celebrate the dealership’s 100th anniversary. The item was put on the agenda by Supervisor Steve Christy, a former car dealer himself.
Just like at last week’s meeting of the Tucson City Council, homelessness and public safety are up for discussion at the supervisors’ meeting tomorrow. The agenda doesn’t give much detail, but the county has a lot of irons in the fire.
One of those irons is how to spend millions of dollars from a nationwide settlement with the pharmaceutical companies that helped set off the opioid crisis. Tomorrow, the supervisors are going to decide whether to spend $267,000 of the settlement money on mobile treatment efforts for hard-to-reach communities, such as unsheltered people, county residents who live alone or have a disability, and rural communities.
Taking a tough stance: Vice President Kamala Harris drew a hard line on unlawful border crossings at a speech Friday in Douglas, the Arizona Daily Star’s Emily Bregel reports. Harris said her administration would pursue more severe criminal charges against repeat offenders and bar people from receiving asylum if they cross the border unlawfully.
Border theatrics: While Democratic officials lauded Harris’ speech, the National Border Patrol Council blasted her visit to Douglas as a stunt, the Herald/Review’s Lyda Longa reports. They also took issue with her claim that she played a role in helping raise overtime pay for Border Patrol agents and criticized her for not spending more time at the border as vice president.
Looking farther afield: The Rio Nuevo board is branching out of the downtown area and looking to invest in businesses farther along Broadway, all the way to Park Place Mall, Tucson Sentinel columnist Blake Morlock writes. The board was set up years ago to revitalize downtown, and now they’re working through a plan to support the mall area.
Rocks galore: The City of Tucson is putting more rocks along highway underpasses, a common area for unsheltered people to seek shade, the Arizona Luminaria’s Yana Kunichoff reports. City officials say the riprap rock will stop people from spending time in the underpasses, which will improve safety for pedestrians and unsheltered people who otherwise would be inhaling fumes from vehicles or risk being hit by a vehicle.
Dragonfly time: Tucson conservation groups are celebrating the sixth annual Dragonfly Festival in recognition of the dozens of dragonfly species that are thriving in the Santa Cruz River after local officials started putting treated wastewater into the river in 2019, Arizona Public Media’s Katya Mendoza reports.
Where it all began: All that water going back into the Santa Cruz River helped spur Tucson and Pima County officials to support an urban wildlife refuge along the river in recent weeks. Down in Santa Cruz County, the effort to establish the refuge was kicked off more than a year ago when a local landowner, Andrew Jackson, tried to sell and donate 8,000 acres that include 12 miles of the Santa Cruz River to conservation groups, the Nogales International’s Daisy Zavala Magaña reports.
5: The days in a row Tucson has broken a record for daily high temperatures.
