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| Falcon Valley may go to vote
by Bryon Wells
Despite an opposition campaign fueled by developers, Oracle activists delivered to Pinal County elections officials petitions with sufficient signatures to halt a planned development near a radioactive and toxic waste landfill. Pinal Citizens for Sustainable Communities filed 5,884 signatures with the Pinal County Elections Division Dec. 4 for its latest referendum drive against the planned SaddleBrooke Ranch development. If verified by elections officials, the signatures will mean a second successful referendum drive against development in two consecutive years for Pinal Citizens for Sustainable Communities. Mary Ellen Kazda, a spokesperson for the group, said the petition drive proves that Pinal County residents consider issues over the Page Ranch toxic landfill and urban sprawl a real threat, despite the opposition’s claims to the contrary. Kazda also accused Robson Communities, developers of the recently approved project, of rolling out a misleading “PR machine” to dissuade residents from signing the petitions. “We’re thrilled today that we’re able to show, with these signatures, that the people in Pinal County do not take kindly to interference with the democratic process,” Kazda said Dec. 4. Robson officials decried the petition effort, and told the citizens of Oracle through newspaper ads, mailers and hired telemarketers that $5.5 million would be pumped into the community if they refused to sign the petitions. In fact, Robson Senior Vice President Steve Soriano said the economy of Pinal County, already hurting because of last year’s closure of the BHP mine in San Manuel, is further impeded through the loss of jobs and tax revenues the project would have brought to the region. Soriano could not be reached for comment Dec. 4, but last week said, “I hope it doesn’t go through, because it will hurt all the taxpayers in Pinal County if it does”. The Pinal County Board of Supervisors approved a rezoning Nov. 1 for 2,500 acres of land, allowing for 6,000 homes, three golf courses and a meducal center to be built in an area near Oracle known as Falcon Valley, near the junction of Highway 89 and State Route 77 (Oracle Road). The development would be adjacent to the University of Arizona’s Page-Trowbridge Experimental Ranch, a site used by the university and other institutions to dispose of low level radioactive and chemical wastes from 1962 to 1986. Members of the group announced the petition drive the evening of the supervisors’ vote, saying the decision threatens the community’s health because of its proximity to the landfill. The board also approved rezonings for other properties totaling roughly 50,000 homes on 17,000 acres. The referendum would halt any action on SaddleBrooke Ranch until November 2002, when voters would be given the chance to decide the fate of the planned retirement community. The signatures were substantially less than those collected during the drive last year to stop the Rancho Coronado development, which would have placed 3,900 homes on 3,000 acres near Oracle State Park. Kazda attributed the lower turnout to less time to circulate petitions, and decreased support this time from residents of SaddleBrooke, another Robson community just north of the Pinal/Pima county line on Oracle Road. “Soriano has been driving a wedge between SaddleBrooke and Oracle,” Kazda said. Kazda said last week Robson’s campaign seemed to be working, especially in SaddleBrooke, and she added that the group didn’t expect to collect more than 500 signatures from their neighbors to the south, although they gathered more than 1,000 in the referendum drive last year. Mailers sent by Robson claimed that SaddleBrooke Ranch would be a “high quality” development that would actually preserve open space through the clustering of homes, and that the master planned community “pays for itself.” Also, the company would donate $1,000 per home built – the source of $5.5 million – for the Pinal Youth Fund, to fund the recreation facilities, and “the SaddleBrooke and SaddleBrooke Ranch resorts will combine to support nearly $2 billion in expenditures and 27,500 direct and indirect jobs,” the mailer and ads claimed. Telemarketers were also ringing up residents countywide in the weeks after the group announced the referendum. One caller, in a message recorded by Kazda, said in a halting and disinterested voice clearly reading from a prepared text, that residents should not sign the petitions, and that the toxic dump posed no danger. “I’m calling on behalf of Citizens for Pinal County’s Future. Were calling to ask voters to refuse to sign the referdum (sic) petition on SaddleBrooke Ranch,” the caller said. “The petition passers are telling voters that SaddleBrooke Ranch will poison our water. No ... nothing can, could be further from the truth. This development will add new safeguards for all — for our water, preserve over 800 acres of washes and open spaces provided — and provide funds for parks, pools and recreation centers.” A call to the number provided by the telemarketer reached a recording saying that, “due to a high volume of calls,” an operator would respond if the caller left their name and number. Kazda said last week that she believed tactics like this would backfire on the developer. Since the group, Citizens for Pinal County’s Future, is organized for the purpose of opposing the referendum, it must, by state election laws, file a statement of organization with county or state authorities. Kazda’s group, “Pinal Citizens for Sustainable Communities,” filed a statement of organization Nov. 7. Calls to the Pinal County elections Division Nov. 30 revealed the opposition had not yet filed a statement, although had been operating a week after the petition drive began, at the latest. After a reporter’s further questions Dec. 1, county officials faxed a statement of organization for the opposition group at 10 a.m. Indications on the document suggest it was created Nov. 21, but it was stamped by the county as having been received Dec. 1, 10:14 a.m. No expenditures were reported by the group last week, but Soriano, who said he did not whether the group filed, said Robson had given it $1,000, and would be contributing more. Although Soriano characterized the opponents as citizens concerned about the region’s economic stability, the recorded message and other factors suggest they were hired guns, not a grassroots movement, Kazda said. “If I lived in Pinal County, which I don’t, I would volunteer my time to work on those phones, I would volunteer my time to go door to door to tell people to not sign the petitions, it’s going to hurt you,” Soriano said. “I am not surprised that people in Pinal County have rallied together to oppose the five or ten people in Oracle that are out there to hurt the rest of Pinal County.” |
Just as many in the development industry rolled out
a $4 million advertising blitzkrieg to help defeat the Citizen’s Growth
Management Initiative before the general election last month, it appears
Robson had gotten just as aggressive in its campaign to dissuade would-be
petition signers – especially in the community it built.
Robson, one of the companies that contributed $50,000 to the consortium of developers united against Prop 202, was even using some of the leftover hardware from that campaign to ask SaddleBrooke residents not to sign the petitions being circulated by the Oracleans. When SaddleBrooker and referendum supporter Jack Walden set up a table in his garage to collect signatures Nov. 20, Robson officials were soon to set up shop on the vacant lot next door. On Nov. 21, Robson employee Mark Lewis – not to be confused with the Oro Valley property manager of the same name – placed an A-frame sign on the lot next door, and also parked his golf cart nearby to try and dissuade petition signers, Walden said.
Lewis also placed a sign on the lot, owned by Robson, which
was actually an old “Vote No on 202” campaign banner, with that message
blocked out by packing tape and paper reading, “Don’t sign the petitions,”
and, keeping some of the old sign text, “it goes too far.”
Walden and his neighbor, Boyd Bosma, said that Lewis also appeared to be writing down the license plate numbers of vehicles of petition signors. Although Lewis could not be reached for comment, Soriano dismissed that charge, saying his colleague had been writing down the times and number of people who showed up to sign the petition.
But Walden and Bosma claimed Lewis would not have had to
walk to the rear of their vehicles, where he would then jot in a notepad,
to get an accurate head count, and both said they knew of no other reason
for doing this other than a “classic” intimidation tactic.
“What would we do with the license plate numbers,” scoffed Soriano, “They
lied to you.” The signature process was slow in SaddleBrooke last week,
Walden said, and a Northwest EXPLORER reporter who arrived Nov. 28 could
count the number of supporters on one hand.
“No, we’re getting some,” Walden said, when asked how many people had been coming to his home to sign. “Robson has been thoroughly intimidating the community, I think.” Walter and Lieselotte Praeg, were two SaddleBrooke residents who did sign the petition. Walter said he is not so much against Robson as he is against
the idea of thousands of homes being built in the surrounding desert.
“I’m against the 50,000 homes - that changes the whole character of the area,” Walter said. “If we keep going this way, we’ll become another Phoenix.” And Walter is at least one resident of SaddleBrooke who is offended by what he perceives as Robson’s underhanded methods. “What I don’t like is the sneaky approach of getting it all approved at the last minute,” Praeg said. “They have something to hide if they rush.” Besides the sign next door to his neighbor’s home, Bosma
said Robson had been sending flyers to residents urging them not to sign.
Oracleans were not allowed to circulate flyers, and the
SaddleBrooke Homeowners Association put the kibosh on any door-to-door
petition circulating, Bosma said.
Bosma stirred the pot in October when he circulated the
Oracle newspaper, then The County Oracle, to his neighbors, an action he
claimed was to advance an article for his wife’s campaign for the governing
board of the area’s only school district.
The publication also contained an article with the blaring headline: “Contaminants found in Oracle and SaddleBrooke wells.” “The bomb hit after that,” Bosma said.
Robson responded with a series of meetings in SaddleBrooke
with its residents.
“They wanted to make us believe the water was safe. But no one could tell us for sure if it is or not,” Bosma said. The articles – and others followed – claimed that test results from water samples at a Lago Del Oro well in the late 1990s showed traces of volatile organic compounds. Soriano said the company at the meetings seized on the opportunity to disprove the Oracle residents by inviting SaddleBrooke residents, Oracleans, and the newspapers in on subsequent water sample tests, and that they would be allowed to choose the engineers and laboratories that would conduct them. “They circulated the newspaper in SaddleBrooke, saying ‘you’ve got bad stuff in your water’,” Soriano said. “So the people in SaddleBrooke panicked. … We’ve hired three different engineering firms and told them, do what it takes to get to the real answers on this.” “We invited the people in Oracle to participate in that. They haven’t been willing to participate in any of them.” The tests were conducted in October, and the results, which can be viewed on the Internet at www.robsonplan.com, revealed none of the substances Oracle residents were claiming was in the past test results. Oracle residents have their own website at www.poisonedwells.com. Soriano claims many of the issues related to the Page Ranch landfill are a cloak to disguise the actions of about “five or 10” Oracle activists opposed to development under any circumstances. The negative test results prove that, as does the fact that those same Oracle residents constantly refuse offers of cooperation, he adds. “They’re not interested in the answers,” Soriano said. “Every time the tests come back, proving that the claims from the people in Oracle are absolute baloney, people in Oracle, say, ‘oh, you must be in on the grand conspiracy’.” Issues surrounding the dump heated up again at the Nov. 1 meeting when the Pinal County Board of supervisors approved the rezoning. Oracle residents, citing the community’s newspaper, said Robson and other builders were trying to get all of their plans approved before the election, where voters could have passed Prop. 202. The latest charges leveled by Oracle residents claimed the UA “covered up” test results that revealed toluene, a volatile organic compound used as a solvent, had been detected in samples taken in April at one of four test wells near the landfill. Twin samples are taken under the current method, the second used to verify the first in case of detection of any contaminant – but that second test must be conducted 14 days after the first, or it’s not a reportable finding. The UA considers the toluene reading to be a non-reportable finding because lab workers did not inform the UA of the finding until 15 days after it was detected. The newspaper article claimed a resident had found proof that the UA was contacted before that through phone logs obtained by the laboratory. That resident, Cliff Russell, also related the testing incident during the Nov. 1 supervisors meeting. Steve Holland, the UA’s Risk Management Director, said last week he was never contacted for the article, and added that there are no phone logs. “I went to Turner Labs on my own and asked to see the phone logs,” Holland said. “They had a note written in the file that they had contacted my guy on that 14th day, the first indication that they had. “So there are no phone logs. I don’t know where Cliff’s getting that, we don’t know of any phone logs, neither does the lab. The only person who’s ever suggested there are phone logs is Cliff Russell.” Russell could not be reached for comment before press time. But there’s still the fact that a sample did reveal traces of the solvent, which Holland called an anomaly because, in 16 years of tests, it never showed up before. “I don’t know. Sometimes you can have laboratory contamination. Toluene is not a common lab contaminant, so I don’t have a good explanation, I don’t know,” Holland said. “If there were a column of toluene moving through 650 feet of soil, and it were in the groundwater, it would show up in every sample, it’s not like a ghost town there that’s going to hide out one time and show up the next time. You have to have — if it’s dripping into the aquifer, then there’s a ton of it in the soil between zero feet, and 650 feet.” The detection and the controversy surrounding it prompted more tests of the same well site, where six samples were taken from May to August, Holland said. “All of those were non-detect,” Holland added. “Now I can’t tell you whether or not there’s toluene in the groundwater beneath Page Ranch. But I can tell you that every sample taken subsequent to that, which is several, has shown non-detection of toluene.” There was another sample taken Nov. 17, in which the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality participated, but UA and ADEQ officials said the results would not be available until later this month. A public meeting is planned for this month to discuss testing methods, said Greg Workman, manager of the ADEQ’s Hazardous Wastes Division. “We thought it would be a good idea to get down there and talk to the folks about how samples were taken, what methods were used, errors that can occur, and about what we really feel is good data and what maybe is not,” Workman said. “That is one of the things that’s prompting us to pull together all of the data, separate what’s good data and what’s not good data and be able o talk about what the facts really are.” Oracle residents like Web Parton have developed a mistrust of the university’s handling of the site, and he listed in a report he released last year several instances where past tests revealed minute traces of contaminants since the testing began in 1984. The university petitioned to raise maximum containment levels in labs doing those tests, Parton documents in his report, which contains public records from the UA, ADEQ, EPA and a slew of other agencies dating back to the 1970s. So it’s no surprise Parton and others were skeptical when the ADEQ conducted a public meeting in August at the Oracle town hall to receive public comments for the “post closure plan,” which will monitor the site as long as it’s there, state officials said. Workman said last week the public comment period was extended, as Oracle residents had asked, and that one or two more meetings are planned for January to hear resident comments and outline the plan for monitoring the site and groundwater. Oracle residents were also suspicious because they claimed they did not have ample time to review the draft post-closure plan to add significant dialogue to the public comment period. Also, communications between county and ADEQ officials suggested the county was seeking to obtain a clean bill of health from the state agency before it approved the Robson development, residents claimed. At that August meeting, County Manager Stan Griffis approached a reporter and stressed repeatedly that the board was not a “rubber-stamp” panel. To appease residents, the ADEQ extended the public comment period until Jan. 5, Workman said last week. Until that time, the ADEQ will review the comments of the interested parties, make modifications to the post closure permit, and provide responses to the comments to be made public, Workman said. A final decision will be made in about two to three months, which will determine the framework for monitoring the landfill throughout its existence. As owner of the site, the UA is a constant partner with the ADEQ in monitoring the landfill under the post-closure plan, which will entail periodic monitoring of the site’s dirt cap, water sample tests from the four monitoring wells on site, and soil samples. “The university is the entity responsible for carrying out the plan,” Holland said. “The post closure plan, which is what’s open for public comment right now, is the recipe for long-term care for the site.” But what has not been able to ease the fears of the Oracle community, who’s water supply lies about 3 miles down aquifer from the landfill, is the fact that nobody from the UA or ADEQ has been able to make a guarantee that the site will never release contaminants into the water supply – a claim that would be based on the unforeseen. “Yes, I agree with that,” Holland said when asked. “The facts and the geology and situation seems to suggest that it’s extremely unlikely, but nobody that I’m aware of, has said… that contamination will not reach groundwater.” “We just don’t think it’s very likely, and we believe we have a good mechanism to know when it does occur - if that unlikely event happens — then we would detect it and take action at that point to remediate it.” In the end, Soriano said this all boils down to the argument that has become old hat in southern Arizona: growth versus no growth. A recent report created by Arizona State University’s Center for Business research this year suggested the SaddleBrooke community provides direct and indirect economic impact of 7,700 jobs, $283 million in earnings, and $542 million in spending. SaddleBrooke Ranch, the company maintains, will enhance those figures. Its failure, on the other hand, would place added burden on Pinal County to care for infrastructure of homes that would follow under existing zoning any way, and in the end increase property taxes of existing residents to pay for it, Soriano said. “Instead of having a subsidy, of the county’s operating needs, you’re going to have a drain,” he said. “This is about stopping development.” “The people in Oracle are using the toxic waste dump, which they invented, as their rallying cry. … The people in Oracle know that, they just don’t really care, they just don’t want to see anything new in their backyard.” But Oracleans, bringing with them a long history dating back to their first discovery of the dump in about 1978, believe that it is a time bomb waiting to happen, and invoke the memory of Three Mile Island and Love Canal when discussing it in public forums. They think that development will draw down on the area’s water supply, and thereby contribute to the spread of contaminants they have repeatedly claimed are already in the ground due to the site being open to the elements, or un-capped for decades prior to the 1990s, when a permanent clay cover was installed. And since nobody can guarantee the unexpected, they argue with county, state and university officials that why should they be the ones to gamble with their health on issues concerning the landfill, and how development could affect it. |
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