Parent’s remarks trigger school lock down

PAGE — Elementary school officials ordered a “soft lock down” at local campuses after an angry parent made comments referring to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Northern Arizona news and features

The alleged comments were connected to the parent’s insistence that his son not be allowed to listen to President Barack Obama’s speech. Since Sept. 11 was coming back up, staff at Lake View Elementary saw it as a potential threat.

According to the Lake Powell Chronicle, about 300 children stayed home from school because parents were notified by an automated message about a possible threat. Parents perceived it was a bomb threat, the paper reported, and began inundating the local police department and FBI with phone calls.

The paper quotes Page police Capt. Ray Varner saying:

“We couldn’t really pin down what was said and who said it. It was something about 9-11 and since 9-11 was coming around, we thought we’d have a soft lockdown.”

Check out the Chronicle’s full story here. To surf more headlines from around the state, visit our interactive news map here.

Reservation Bashas’ spared

Thanks to the economic slowdown, Bashas’ Supermarkets, headquartered in Chandler, recently announced it would be closing five of its stores statewide. Left untouched, though, are the set of five stores located on Arizona’s American Indian reservations, which are part of the Bashas’ “Dine Market” subset.

Observing Mojave, Coconino counties and the Arizona Strip

That a corporate chain grocery happens to serve historically isolated and neglected communities happens to be one of the state’s more interesting economic stories. It is also, in my view, another reason to believe in local ownership of iconic state institutions instead of the absentee model which has served Arizona quite poorly in recent years (Chase Bank, Pulte, Gannett, et. al.).

An argument might be made that injecting a Western grocery, with all of its crappy processed food, is another means of destruction of a traditional way of life (and diet) on the reservation. But the counter-argument holds that consumer choice should play a role there just as it does everywhere else. Whichever stance you take, the relationship between Bashas’ and the tribe – especially the Navajo – has been largely a content one for the last thirty years.

A Dine market in Tuba City (Courtesy Tom Zoellner)

The Dine Markets got started in 1980 after the tribal council of the Navajo Nation wrote CEO Eddie Basha Jr., asking him to consider opening a store in Chinle. Basha, who would later mount a campaign for governor in 1992, was a descendant of a Lebanese shopkeeper who had migrated to an Arizona mining camp in 1910. Basha was immediately intrigued with the possibility, checked on distribution requirements, and then called the tribal council that same day.

“Hi, my name is Eddie Basha,” he said, according to the trade magazine Arizona Food Industry Journal. “I’m from Bashas’ Markets and I’d like to be your grocer.”

Today there are Dine Markets in Chinle, Window Rock, Tuba City, Kayenta, Pinion, Crownpoint, N.M., and Dilkon. More than 95 percent of the employees are said to speak Navajo.

Customer tastes and preferences vary slightly from other Arizona grocery stores, reports the trade journal. The markets sell a disproportionate amount of mutton, as well as Folgers coffee and Spam. Large bags of Blue Bird flour – long a staple in Navajo households – also do well. Even though the Dine cluster is far away from the company’s nucleus in the Valley, the stores are apparently doing well enough to avoid being shuttered.

Bashas’ spokeswoman Kristy Nied declined to discuss finances or even indicate whether the stores were a net moneymaker. The company is privately held, so there are no SEC filings to inspect. For now, though, the Dine Markets are staying.

Northern Arizona’s new voice

“You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths.” This was the judgment of John Wesley Powell, who commanded the famous expedition down the Colorado in 1869.

Observing Mojave, Coconino counties and the Arizona Strip

He might as well have been talking about the whole of northern Arizona, an amazingly multivarigated place. There is no one geology, economy, ethnicity or political ethic that holds together this colorful slice of the west. Here is one tangle is Arizona’s highest peak, its iconic canyon, the world’s largest stand of ponderosa pines, the oldest continuously occupied settlement in North America (Oraibi, from 1100 A.D.), five sovereign Indian reservations, the spiritual smorgasbord of Sedona, one of the world’s busiest transcontinental freight lines, the ghost of Route 66, the biggest polygamous church in America, and a massive checker-boarding of ranches, wilderness and desert in all the in-between places.

No blog could hope to provide comprehensive coverage of such a complicated place. Instead you’ll find here the odds and ends, the scraps and tidbits of news and scenery that form a rough bricolage of what happens north of the Valley.

News tips welcome at contact@tomzoellner.com. Anonymity observed unless you indicate otherwise.

Jacko’s giraffes go to court

PAGE – Like their former owner, giraffes from Michael Jackson’s now-defunct Neverland Ranch Zoo find themselves in legal battles.

Jacko and his attorneys may have stopped the auction of his memorabilia from Neverland Ranch as told in the New York Times (and you can read about that issue here), but will his former giraffes be as lucky in stopping their eviction?

Northern Arizona news and features

The giraffes are are in danger of being evicted from the Voices of Wildlife Foundation’s site in Page on May 17. Their foundation has been locked in a protracted public battle with the city officials over a bond and the property. You can read more about it in this past blogpost.

Freddie Hancock, spokesperson for VWF, says that attorneys were filling an injunction on behalf of the foundation in Flagstaff’s Superior Court. She wasn’t sure what would be included in the filing, but she did say she is going ahead with a perimeter fence.

Hancock told me that the final step for approval of the sanctuary from the United States Department of Agriculture is to enclose the animals’ enclosure. Hancock said that she is moving forward with the fence so that when the May 4 deadline for the inspection by the USDA comes the sanctuary will be ready.

The USDA May deadline is just 13 days before the scheduled eviction. Hancock says she has thought about what she’ll do with the animals if all of her legal wrangling doesn’t work, but she wouldn’t elaborate. She is settling in for the long haul and holding to her convictions that she and her animals belong on the property.

“Right now our main focus is on securing the appropriate enclosures and taking care of the animals’ needs,” Hancock says.

For Navajo kids, road to education is paved with stimlulus dollars

WINDOW ROCK — About $2.5 billion of the $787 billion economic stimulus package that President Barack Obama signed into law will go toward American Indian programs.

Northern Arizona news and features

According to an article in the Navajo Times, none of the money has been secured for any tribe or city. You can read about it here.

The article goes on to say that much of the established avenues for acquiring money, such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, will direct some of the funds to the Navajo Nation. However, the tribe will need to look at other federal agencies for more of the stimulus money.

Here’s a snippet from the Times:

Congressmen took this approach so to lessen the politics of “pet projects” taking over the bill, said Sharon Clahchischilliage, executive director of the Navajo Nation Washington Office.

Some of the money will be available in the form of competitive grants, matching grants, and loans, said Chischilliage.

“A lot of people are thinking (the money) is going to come directly to Navajo, but it’s not,” said Clagchischilliage. “We’re going to have to apply for it. Nothing’s for sure.”

As noted in the article, President Obama said projects for the stimulus money must be “shovel-ready.”

And the Navajo Nation has just that.

In January, they sent a detailed project package to the Obama transition team that included roads and education projects. It seems the Navajo Nation really needs the money for road repair.

A recent article in Indian Country Today points to a bill that two New Mexico Democrats, U.S Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, introduced for road improvement. Read about it here.

Apparently many of the roads that Navajo children take to school have been in need of repair for quite some time. Here’s a snippet:

The condition of roads on the Navajo Nation has long been a problem. According to the BIA, of the 9,700 miles of public roads that serve the Navajo Nation, only about one-third are paved. The remaining 6,500 miles are dirt. Nearly all of these roads are used to transport Navajo children to and from school.

What better way to spend the stimulus money than to provide children a safe journey for an education?

Navajo resistance stalls resort, energy projects

WINDOW ROCK — Public opposition and bureaucratic wrangling appear to have stopped a Texas billionaire from building a large resort and alternative energy facility on land owned by the Navajo Nation, according to press reports.

In yet another interesting post about economic development issues on the reservation, the Navajo Times sheds light on the uncertain future of projects at Lake Powell and Big Boquillas Ranch.

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The resort project, according to the paper, involves building three hotels, three casinos and an unknown number of golf courses and residential units near Navajo Canyon by Lake Powell. The wind energy project on the ranch could be worth up to $5 billion, according to one Navajo official private consultant.

Both proposals come from Texas billionaire Red McCombs, Bob Honts of Navajo Enterprises LLC and Larry Foster of Native Energy Inc. Collectively, they have been chipping away at this for almost two years.

But here’s the rub for both projects: Three separate chapters of the tribe whose lands include Navajo Canyon voted against the resort project there, and tribal officials are now saying they need to draft some “guidelines” for these alternative energy projects to follow.

Contextually speaking, this is just part and parcel to the tribe’s long-term plan for economic growth balanced against preserving its cultural fabric. Casinos are hailed as a salvation and a curse at presidential debates. And just this week, the Times highlighted an expansion project at Fire Rock Navajo Casino, which is expected to bring in $14 million in revenue in its first year. [The casino is located across the line in Church Rock, N.M.]

Posted comments don’t appear very optimistic for the latest projects.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This story contains a correction. On April 8, a reference to the estimated value of a wind energy project attributed that value to a Navajo official. The correct attribution was a private consultant. The change was made with strike-through typeface for full transparency.]

Navajo want in on Grand Canyon rafting tours

The largest American Indian tribe in the country would like to run rafts down the Grand Canyon in an effort to create some jobs on the reservation, whose unemployment rate hovers around 50 percent by some counts.

There were some pretty good stories over the weekend about his idea. I liked the one from Cyndy Cole at the Arizona Daily Sun the best. Read about all the angles here.

Northern Arizona news and features

Essentially, the Navajo Nation would like the right to run rafts down the upper Grand Canyon from Lees Ferry. The Hualapai tribe, which has a similarly bleak unemployment picture, has some rafting rights to the lower Grand Canyon. Other non-Native companies also provide rafting tours, but the Navajo plan would be the only one-day rafting service in the canyon.

Unfortunately for the Navajo, any Navajo participation in rafting activities is not mentioned in the Grand Canyon’s latest long-term planning documents. These are highly controversial and much-debated accords that can involve input from the tribe, scientists, environmentalists, business interests and the National Park Service, among others.

The agency’s chief at the canyon is Steve Martin, who has crisscrossed the country working for other parks and faced similar issues. TZR caught up with Martin last year for a rare profile interview here.

It’s good to have an understanding of the man, because it helps shed light on the Navajo’s chances. Our take is that he was a strong manager who was understanding of economic development issues but remained commited to keeping parks as close to pristine and uninterrupted as they were when then-President Woodrow Wilson created the agency in 1916.

Martin tells the Daily Sun:

“We don’t have any plans to reopen the Colorado River Management Plan…. Certainly, we want to work with the tribe and we want to help them with any appropriate uses, but you can’t just allow something that’s outside of planning and compliance and environmental impact analysis…” he said, adding that it was also his job to consider impacts to the park.

Martin says the tribe needs to give him more details about the idea. The Navajo are asserting that their claims to the land go to the middle of the Colorado River inside the canyon. This might give them some power at the negotiating table. But it looks like it’s a long shot for now.

Invasive mussels put Lake Powell at risk

Wen Baldwin, a National Park Service volunteer, checks quagga mussel growth on debris in Lake Mead. The mussels were first spotted in the lake in early 2007. (John Collins Rudolf / TZR)

LAKE POWELL — Can Lake Powell repel the invasion of the dreaded quagga mussel?

The answer from federal biologists, tasked with preventing the spread of the highly destructive European bivalve, is a qualified yes.

“I think what they’re doing at Lake Powell is about as best a job as we can do, given the resources we have,” says David Britton, assistant invasive species coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Southwest. “I can’t say it’s 100 percent protected. But I think they have a good shot.”

But others are not so sure. Among them are environmental and sport-fishing advocates, who fear that the quagga mussel could radically alter Lake Powell’s ecology, and decimate the fish populations that draw thousands of boaters to the lake each year.

The mussels, which reproduce with staggering speed, filter nutrients from the water and are credited with doing massive damage to the health of the Great Lakes after their arrival in the 1980s. The mussels are believed to have traveled from Europe in the ballast water of an oceanic freighter.

“Someone needs to step up and provide coordinated leadership to keep mussels out of Lake Powell and the Salt River system,” says Paul Ostapuk, senior board member of Friends of Lake Powell, a non-profit advocacy group. “It’s been a piece-meal effort thus far.”

Activists like Ostapuk have good reason for concern. Lake Powell is at high risk of becoming the next victim for the quagga mussel, which has spread rapidly throughout the West by hitching rides on unsuspecting recreational boats.

The mussels, which were first detected in Lake Mead in early 2007, have since infested Lake Havasu, Lake Mohave and Lake Pleasant, as well as dozens of other water bodies throughout the Southwest. A colony was recently uncovered in a water filtration plant as far south as Yuma.

Lake Powell, where an estimated 100,000 boats from around the country launch every year, has already had several close calls with the mussels. Just this month, authorities intercepted a boat from Lake Pleasant that was found to be harboring live mussels and prevented it from launching. Because its owner intended to park it at a slip in Bullforg marina, a pre-launch inspection was required. That’s when lake authorities noticed the mussels.

It was only one of several contaminated boats that have attempted to enter the lake over the past two years.

A key element of the effort to protect Lake Powell is an “honor system,” by which boaters fill out a form stating that their craft has not been exposed to known areas of contamination. The plan generated scorn from some when originally introduced, but appears to have worked so far.

“I told them two years ago it wouldn’t work,” says Len Cook, a city councilman in Page, Ariz., which sits at the southern tip of the lake. “I might have been wrong. Maybe people have more honesty than I thought.”

But even those who comply with the honor code may be endangering the lake. The form available for download on the National Park Service website lists Utah as one of several “mussel free states,” and suggests that boaters coming from Utah waters are free to launch in the lake without decontamination.

Both quagga and zebra mussels, however, have been discovered in Utah in recent months. The Red Fleet Reservoir, near the Utah-Colorado border, is infested with quagga mussels. Electric Lake, south of Provo, has a fast-reproducing population of zebra mussels. Both lakes are popular with boaters and anglers.

A website created by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources says that veligers – the microscopic larval form of the mussels – have also been detected at as many as five additional lakes and reservoirs, where further testing is underway. [After The Zonie Report notified the National Park Service that Utah boats posed a quagga mussel risk to Arizona lakes, agency officials updated the self-certification form on their website.]

The chance that a mussel-infested boat slips by inspectors at Lake Powell is only increased by the lack of vigilance at other contaminated water bodies, says Pete Klocki.
Klocki, who created a website, KeepLakePowellMusselFree.com, to help raise awareness, runs a fishing-lure business and keeps a houseboat moored on Lake Powell.

“Without a serious inspection program to intercept trailered boats traveling between infested and non-infested waterways, the spread of quagga and zebra mussels to all Arizona waterways is essentially assured,” says Klocki, who responded to questions by email. “It is simply a matter of time.”

Activists like Klocki want more effort made to intercept contaminated boats before they reach Lake Powell. A bill, introduced by State Rep. Nancy McClain, R-Bullhead City, would empower the Arizona Department of Game and Fish to establish checkpoints at water bodies throughout the state to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species like the quagga mussel. But funding for such a program, in an era of massive budget deficits, may prove elusive.

“The Game and Fish Department, which would be the logical agency to implement and manage an inspection program, is a very small agency with limited resources. It is funded almost entirely by sport fishing and hunting license revenue,” Klocki says. “Without federal assistance on a significant scale, there simply is no way Arizona Game and Fish could possibly undertake such a responsibility.”

It is not just citizen activists who are looking for more aggressive federal action on the quagga mussel.

Page Vice Mayor John Cook, who formerly served as regional director for the National Park Services Rocky Mountain region, wants the federal government to step up and play a more active role. Cook authored a Page City Council resolution along just those lines.

“I would like to see this addressed at a higher level,” Cook says. “It deserves federal coordination. It is larger than a unit-by-unit geographical problem.”

Cook suggests that the U.S. Department of the Interior take the lead coordinating the state and federal response to the quagga mussel. After all, he says, Interior officials oversee the Bureau of Reclamation, which is responsible for the maintenance of dams, power plants and other water infrastructure throughout the West. A number of those projects, like Hoover Dam on Lake Mead, are already struggling to contain the damage from the quagga mussel.

“The biggest damages are to [Bureau of] Reclamation facilities,” he says.

Lake Powell, of course, is only one of thousands of lakes and rivers in danger of invasion by quagga and zebra mussels. Yet Powell could pose a unique threat were it to become infested.

“People will drive a thousand miles to go boating on Lake Powell,” says Britton, of U.S. Fish and Wildlife. “That puts pretty much all our water bodies in the U.S. in jeopardy.”

Of particular risk are waterways in the Pacific Northwest, which are heavily dammed and could prove an attractive breeding ground for the mussels were they to become established. Given the quagga mussels’ impact on fish populations, the damage to the region’s salmon fisheries could be substantial.

“If Lake Powell gets infested, it’s one more step closer to the Pacific Northwest or the Columbia River basin,” Britton says.

One need go no further than Lake Havasu on the Colorado River to see the possible impact the mussels could have in the Northwest. Only two years after their introduction, the quagga mussel is being blamed for a fall-off in the quality of the lake’s striped bass population and related fishing scene.

“The striper fishing is awful this year,” says Mark Brown, fisheries specialist for Arizona Game and Fish. “I’ve heard a lot of anecdotal stuff – especially from the striper fishermen. They’re just having a horrible time.”

Brown cautioned that no scientific data was yet available to show the mussels were responsible for the decline in fishing. But he has his suspicions.

“There’s nothing we can hang our hat on,” he says. “I think it’s likely. You’ve got to expect that there will be some effect.”

Edgar Sandez works at Black Meadow Landing, which provides boats and guides for fishing on Lake Havasu. Winter visitors to the lake have complained of the decline in fishing quality, he says.

“There’s no more fish,” he says. “It’s not like last year.”

= = =

>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

Page officials give giraffes the boot

PAGE — A nonprofit that was leasing city-owned land to develop a wildlife preserve was evicted Tuesday because the organization couldn’t come up with $100,000 to extend its lease.

As a result, four giraffes who were living on the property under the care of Voices of the Wild Foundation are homeless.

Northern Arizona news and features

The eviction occurred after lawyers for both sides attended a forcible detainer hearing in Page Justice Court. Page is about 300 miles north of Phoenix near Lake Powell and the Utah border.

The Lake Powell Chronicle has more in this post.

Apparently the lease required the foundation to put up $100,000 for a 60-day extension. The eviction ends more than a year of work between Page the foundation to build a wildlife preserve under a rent-to-own strategy.

Lake Powell tourism wins Page council race

PAGE — A candidate who supported keeping tourism alive in the Lake Powell area won a seat on the City Council tonight, leaving an incumbent and one of the leading supporters of cutting tourism-promotion dollars in the dust.

Bill Diak is one of the new city councilmen, if the latest results from the Coconino County elections website are any indication. In interviews with the Lake Powell Chronicle, he had publicly supported keeping and/or expanding tourism promotion in the area because it is one of the leading industry for this Arizona strip town.

We brought this up in light of the recession and what opposing tourism could have meant for a small town like Page. Our post on Monday had looked at comments from Elmer Horton, who had told the Chronicle that he would cut the city’s $300,000 earmark for tourism if elected. [Read more]

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