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Lawsuit aims to block uranium mining near Grand Canyon

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK — Three large environmental groups are suing the federal government for allegedly dragging its heels to protect almost 1.1 million acres near the Grand Canyon from uranium mining and other such projects.

The 19-page complaint in federal court in Tucson comes from the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity. The nonprofit has more than 40,000 members dedicated to the preservation and restoration of ecosystems and biodiversity worldwide.

It is joined by the Sierra Club and the Grand Canyon Trust, a Flagstaff-based nonprofit whose 3,500 members are bent on protecting the Colorado River Plateau.

Together, the three groups are asking U.S. District Court Judge Neil V. Wake — the same judge who upheld Arizona’s controversial employer sanctions law — to force the nation’s Interior department to seal off sensitive lands near Grand Canyon National Park, thwarting mining outfits’ plans in the process.

They claim a recently approved federal law grants these lands the proper protection, but that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has ignored it.

In March, the Grand Canyon Watersheds Protection Act of 2008 was introduced in Congress. It removes more than 1 million acres of public lands adjacent to the park from certain mining activities, the complaint states.

On June 25, the House Committee on Natural Resources issued an emergency resolution to compel Kempthorne to preserve these lands immediately. At the time, word was trickling out through news reports that a uranium-mining project near Grand Canyon National Park had been approved by the U.S. Forest Service.

Demand for uranium was skyrocketing due to an increased interest in nuclear power worldwide – especially in fast-growing developing countries. About 1,100 mining claims were believed to exist within 5 miles of the park, and forest officials had approved drilling for seven sites within three miles of the park boundaries.

“The Committee found that previous uranium mining operations near Grand Canyon National Park have left a legacy of debilitating illness and death among Native Peoples in the area, and resulted in contaminated soil and ground water that remains unremediated,” the complaint claims.

Three weeks after the committee declared the emergency, Kempthorne sent a letter in response indicating he will not protect the lands, according to the complaint. The Center for Biological Diversity waded into the fight, but Kempthorne did not respond to their petition either, the complaint claims.

On June 27, the federal Bureau of Land Management, an agency that oversees public lands, allowed the mining company to start drilling.

The resulting lawsuit asks Judge Wake to force Kempthorne to protect the lands immediately, shut down the remaining uranium-mining projects and prevent other such projects from popping up inside the 1.1 million-acre zone in the future.

The Center for Biological Diversity is being represented by lawyer Marc D. Fink of Duluth, Minn.; the Grand Canyon Trust is being represented by lawyer Neil Levine of Denver; and lawyer Roger Flynn of Lyons, Colo., is working with them on behalf of Western Mining Action Project.

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

Hualapai man seeks $1.5M in police brutality case

HUALAPAI INDIAN RESERVATION — A Native American man claims officers beat, gagged and put his face close to the muffler of a running police car after arresting him for a potential traffic violation, according to a recent lawsuit.

The suit stems from an incident that occurred on May 21, 2006, in which Gregory Russell was driving on the reservation in northwest Arizona. Hualapai Nation Police Officer Francis Bradley Jr. allegedly pulled him over for driving recklessly about two hours earlier, according to the complaint.

Soon the officer’s father and Hualapai Nation Police Chief, Francis Bradley Sr., arrived in street clothes. Together, the Bradleys arrested Russell and his fiancée, Natalya Marshall, who was a passenger in Russell’s vehicle. They put them in the back of the squad car with a third man, Delvin Jones, who was already cuffed and in the back of the car at the time of the arrests.

When they returned to the police station, the detainees waited 30 minutes before a third officer, Brian Miller, joined the group. Then Chief Bradley allegedly pulled Russell out of the car and took him behind a storage shed. His son turned up the volume on the squad car’s police radio, then joined the other two officers with Russell behind the shed.

That’s when the three men allegedly kicked, punched and slammed a shackled Russell into the storage shed repeatedly. Afterward, Russell was placed back in the car and transported 120 miles to the Coconino County Jail by Officer Miller, the complaint states.

But during the drive, Russell told Miller he was having trouble breathing and possibly suffering an asthma attack. So Miller allegedly drove back to the Hualapai police station and ordered EMTs to check Russell out.

When he was cleared and the group was back on the road, Miller allegedly pulled the squad car over, took Russell out, pulled Russell’s T-shirt over his head and wrapped packaging tape around his head several times, the complaint states. Then he put Russell back in the car.

Jones, another detainee in the squad car, was able to tear off some of the tape and pull the shirt down so that Russell could breathe more easily. Miller allegedly pulled the car over again and left it running. The complaint states he took Russell out of the back seat and pressed his face up close to the car’s exhaust pipe for several minutes.

Eventually, the trio was taken to the Coconino County Jail in Flagstaff, where detention staff noticed Russell’s injuries. His face, head, nose, left hand, eye and an ear were swollen, and he was ordered to shower. Then he was whisked away to a jail in Gallup, N.M., the next day.

Upon his release, the complaint states, Russell was taken to Kingman Regional Medical Center for treatment. As a result of the beatings, he had lost his hearing in both ears and now wears hearing aids.

Russell filed a $3.7 million claim against the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the U.S. Department of the Interior in November 2006. When the department denied the claim without comment last March, Russell filed a lawsuit in federal court in Tucson.

Flagstaff lawyer Lee Phillips is representing Russell and asking a federal judge for a $1.5 million judgment.

Insurer contests payouts for fatal Prescott plane crash

PRESCOTT — The families of three men who died while flying over Prescott should not be compensated because the flight was not part of the Prescott Air Show in 2006.

That’s the claim from Houston-based U.S. Specialty Insurance Corp., which signed a deal with air show organizers to cover accidental injuries, deaths and property damages associated with the Sept. 30 event.

Two weeks after the air show and the contract ended, event organizers were doing test flights with a MiG, a Russian fighter plane. Pilot Robert E. Ray agreed to fly the plane in exchange for in-air pictures of the MiG, the complaint states.

But due to mechanical problems, the MiG was grounded for repairs. In the meantime, air show organizers asked a second pilot, William S. Friedman, to fly a small Piper with four passengers in formation with the MiG to take the photos.

When the MiG eventually took off, Ray noticed the landing gear wouldn’t fold up and asked Friedman to fly over for a visual inspection. When Friedman zoomed in for a closer look, his Cheyenne III got caught in the jet’s exhaust. He lost control and crashed, killing everyone on board.

A wrongful death suit was filed, and the families sought compensation under the air show’s insurance contract.

The insurance company is now contesting that in federal court in Tucson. Its lawyers claim that because the air show was over when the crash occurred, the coverage didn’t apply. The people involved were no longer affiliated with the air show, the complaint states, and the contract had expired.

Phoenix lawyers Timothy Hyland and Connie Gould are representing U.S. Specialty Insurance Company.

Energy outfit seeks oil in Mohave County

TUCSON — A Denver-based energy company is suing for the right to mine up to 1.2 million acres in northwestern Arizona for oil, gas and other hydrocarbons.

The case involves Mohave County land owned by Santa Fe Pacific Railroad Co. It signed a lease with Santa Fe Energy Co. in 1987 that allowed the energy outfit to drill for oil and ask for an extension once the lease expired.

But several mergers and transactions have occurred by the time the 20-year deal expired. Now the new energy company, Prize Energy Holdings, is staking its claim to the old lease.

In its seven-page complaint, Prize accuses the railroad of reneging on the lease even though it filed all the right paperwork. It also accuses the railroad of trying to sell the leased land to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in 2004 and Arizona Acreage LLC in 2005.

The company is asking a federal judge in Tucson to honor the lease and order the railroad to pay all costs and attorney’s fees.

Phoenix lawyer Jennifer Dioguardi and Denver lawyer James Kilroy, both of Snell & Wilmer, are representing Prize Energy Resources.

Arizona trash empire draws ire of Waste Management

ST. JOHNS — Lawyers for the state’s largest waste company are asking an Apache County judge to grant them access to public records that show the size and scope of the region’s highly successful, publicly funded trash-hauling consortium.

Waste Management’s lawyer, Brian Campbell, says the company wants more details about Blue Hills Environmental Association after receiving reports that Blue Hills workers were hauling out-of-county trash — including medical waste and contaminated soils — into local landfills.

Campbell says the company also wants more information on the history of Blue Hills’ employees, which include relatives of government officials who created the consortium.

He says Waste Management, a publicly traded company with trash-hauling contracts all over Arizona, wants to make sure everything at Blue Hills is on the up-and-up.

Apache County Manager Delwin Wengert, however, says the lawsuit seeking public records is nothing more than a fishing expedition by a powerful, deep-pocketed competitor.

"It’s all about money of course," Wengert says. "It’s all about territory. That’s the bottom line."

RURAL GROWTH CREATES NEW TRASH SERVICE

Apache County is one of Arizona’s most storied regions. Originally formed in 1879, it was one of the state’s four original counties. The county hosts Arizona’s first military outpost, Fort Defiance, and several other attractions including the Hubbell Trading Post, Window Rock, Sunrise Ski Resort and the White Mountains.

Today, Apache County covers an area 20 percent larger than Maricopa County. About two-thirds of the area is comprised of Native American lands.

Over the years, the Arizona Legislature designated all of Apache County as an "enterprise zone" to spur business across its rural expanse. State laws encouraged and protected startups here — private or otherwise. That’s where Blue Hills Environmental Association got its start, Campbell says.

In 1990, Apache County’s population had grown to about 62,000 residents. As state and federal environmental regulations got tougher, local officials banded together to form an entity that would take out the trash because private enterprise wasn’t filling the void.

When it came to commercial trash services, the rural job was a tough sell. It was difficult for large-scale companies to justify driving dozens of miles out of their way to empty that one lonesome trash can out on the prairie. Rural Arizona’s needs took the back seat to red-hot growth areas around Phoenix.

So local governments in northeastern Arizona formed Blue Hills Environmental Association in March 1991. Over the next 15 years, the coffers of this tiny nonprofit filled up as Apache County added almost 13,000 more residents and second homes popped up in the White Mountains.

TRASH GARNERS CASH

Arizona’s latest housing cycle was a boon for Blue Hills. In June 2004, the nonprofit made $1.3 million, of which $99,605 were government funds and the rest came from "tipping" fees and other trash-hauling charges. It finished that summer with a fund balance of $583,069, according to tax documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

By 2006, IRS records show its revenues had jumped to almost $2.1 million — even though government subsidies of Blue Hills had remained relatively unchanged.

Today, Blue Hills is quite healthy, says Wengert, who has been a member of its board of directors. The organization handles the majority of waste in Apache County and also accepts waste from some parts of Navajo County, which is handled largely by Waste Management.

BLUE HILLS A ‘UNIQUE CREATURE’

Growth in Phoenix may have helped Blue Hills too, Campbell says. He claims Waste Management has evidence that it was hauling trash — such as untreated medical waste from Phoenix and oil-contaminated soils from construction along Interstate 40 — to local landfills in Apache County.

"That’s when we got concerned," says Campbell, who represents Waste Management. "It’s one thing to have a circumstance where you are trying to provide waste services through the advantage of being a nonprofit and not paying taxes. But it’s another thing when you have such tremendous advantages that you can afford to haul waste hundreds of miles."

Its nonprofit status and government involvement make it kind of an "unusual creature," Campbell says. So he went fishing.

Starting in October 2007, Campbell sent the same public records request to the major stakeholders of Blue Hills: Eagar, Springerville, St. Johns and Apache County. It requested records on everything from financial statements and nonprofit status to director information and environmental compliance going back as far as 1991.

As their responses trickled in over the next nine months, Campbell noticed a strange thing: None of the officials he approached had the same records. Eagar officials sent him 64 pages, Springerville officials sent him four pages, Apache County officials sent him 90 pages and St. Johns sent Campbell eight pages. [When Campbell followed up, Springerville sent him 63 more pages; the others insisted that was everything they had on Blue Hills.]

Now Campbell is asking an Apache County judge to intervene.

"We’re familiar with these rural challenges," Campbell says, referring to Waste Management’s presence in Navajo and Mohave counties. "But by the same token, we think there needs to be a level playing field."

Blue Hills is now 100 percent self-sufficient on trash-hauling charges, Wengert says, and it has plenty of room to grow in a sprawling, rural county. A state audit from 2003 showed that the landfill was about 5 percent full, and that officials were saving up to cover the costs of closing it in 2040.

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

Lawyer may cruise to victory in Navajo Co. contest

SHOW LOW — The race for the Navajo County Attorney’s Office may not be much of a race at all, now that one of the two challengers is asking a judge to remove his competitor’s name from the ballot.

The complaint stems from petition signatures that challenger Christian Ackerley, a Democrat, collected to get his name printed on the ballot. He needed at least 478 valid signatures from registered voters in the county to enter the race. Ackerley collected 814.

But the other challenger in the race, Democrat Brad Carlyon, claims otherwise. He is contesting the validity of 571 signatures which, if election officials agree with Carlyon, would ultimately spoil Ackerley’s chances.

Carlyon is currently the deputy attorney for Apache County. He and Ackerley are competing for a seat that was opened after incumbent Navajo County Attorney, Mel Bowers, did not seek re-election.

Kingman gold mine garners $500K lawsuit

KINGMAN — Four Californians claim they poured money into a gold mine near Dolan Springs, only to have the mine sold out from under them without compensation, according to a recent lawsuit.

The 12-page complaint in federal court involves two groups: the Teter family, which lives outside Denver, and the outside investors that have allegedly fed money to the family’s gold mine since 1996.

Court papers indicate that Dolan Springs Mining & Development was originally owned by Fleck Mining & Investment Co. In 1997, Marvin Teter acquired it in a lease/purchase agreement with the intent of striking it rich outside Kingman.

Around that time, investors came along and bought equipment and made in-kind contributions to the mine. The four men — Bryan Brigham, Donald deBoer, Byron Kurosaki and Michael Vanderveur — eventually got a piece of the action under an agreement with Teter. None of their shares in stock exceeded 20 percent; Teter held a 40 percent stake.

After Teter died in April 2007, the operation changed, the investors claim. The company and its lawyers were unresponsive to questions about the mine and its financial condition, even though the investors noticed that the activity around the mine had increased significantly.

After their letters in March and April were rebuffed, the investors decided to sue, using a lawyer from Lewis & Roca, one of the most prominent law firms in Arizona.

Phoenix lawyers Randall Papetti and Emily Cates are representing the investors. They are seeking $503,996 in compensatory damages, punitive damages and an accounting of who owns what at Dolan Springs.

Hells Angels target NYC fashionistas

NORTHERN ARIZONA — The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club is suing a New York-based clothing company and its distributor for allegedly misusing one of the club’s logos on products sold throughout Northern Arizona.

The squabble centers on the number 81. Twenty years ago, the gang adopted the “81” logo for things like hats, beanies, shirts, jackets, bikinis and other items that were sold to the public by club chapters. The logo stands for the Hells Angels because “H” and “A” are the eighth and first letters in the alphabet.

Clever, eh?

Less clever, the gang’s lawyer claims, was the alleged ripoff for unrelated apparel that Company 81 was making in New York and selling through Houston-based Stage Stores in Bullhead City and Show Low.

In its four-page complaint, the gang is claiming trademark infringement. It says the sale of these goods could “mislead and confuse the public” that the goods were approved by the gang or local chapters. It has asked both companies to cease, but neither obeyed.

Fritz Clapp, a California attorney based in Maui, is representing the Hells Angels.

Feds seek money, cleanup from Winslow

WINSLOW — If you’re standing on the corner in Winslow, Ariz., pick the one furthest from the site of that legendary Eagles tune.

That’s because a recent lawsuit claims city officials and the owner of a dingy apartment complex failed to report or contain asbestos after the building was torn down.

Attorneys for the Justice Department say Winslow officials and apartment owner William R. Christie Sr. did not notify them of the project while burning chunks of asbestos-laden walls without watering them down.

They believe it resulted into a massive release of asbestos into the air.

The case began in early 2002, when the city declared Christie’s Apache Apartment complex uninhabitable. Officials said the nine-unit building was a “public nuisance” that needed to be torn down.

Demolition lasted from June through September 2002. Authorities are seeking thousands of dollars in fines as punishment.

SRP, Navajo square off over hiring practices

PAGE — Utility companies are battling the Navajo Nation in federal court over the tribe’s power to push for preferential hiring of Navajos at a key power plant in the Southwest.

The legal wrangling involves the Navajo Generating Station, which sits on native-owned lands near Page, Ariz. The plant burns coal mined nearby to produce 2,250 megawatts of electricity for customers in Arizona, Nevada and Los Angeles. It also powers the pumps that bring water to Phoenix through the Central Arizona Project canals.

In the 1960s, utility companies approached the Navajo Nation about building a regional power plant in the area. In 1969, a group of utility companies led by Tempe-based Salt River Project signed a lease that opened the $1.1 billion facility for business.

The lease specifically states that the tribe “will no directly or indirectly regulate or attempt to regulate [the utility companies] in the construction, maintenance or operation of the Navajo Generating Station,” according to the 16-page complaint SRP filed recently.

In 1985, tribal leaders passed a new law that required all employers doing business on or near their lands to give certain hiring preferences to Navajo employees and the spouses, plus prevailing wages. It also allowed the tribe’s own labor office to investigate labor disputes at the plant.

Then in September 2004, a plant employee who was Navajo filed a wrongful termination claim against SRP. In March 2005, another employee filed a claim over the same issue.

In both cases, the Navajo Nation’s labor office backed the employees, the tribe’s lower courts backed SRP, and the tribe’s supreme court backed the employees on appeal.

SRP sought help from the U.S. Department of the Interior, the liaison agency for Native American affairs, and asked Navajo judges to wait for its testimony. But judges refused, according to the complaint, and hearings for both cases are now set for the first week of April in Tucson.

SRP claims a Navajo victory could undermine the operation of the power plant. The company is seeking help from U.S. judges, and has hired lawyers from two of the Valley’s most prominent law firms to argue the case.

Phoenix lawyers John Egbert, Paul Johnson and Lisa Coulter are representing SRP.

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