It’s pretty cool seeing your brother’s work on the big screen. And now his book telling the story of the Tucson kid who made it in movies is on Amazon. Tucson and Southern Arizona deserve to be back in the film industry, big time.
Here’s Amazon’s review of the book:
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Here’s a link for those of you who’d like to check it out for yourself.
And one other congratulatory note for the Ward 6 family - This is the graduation ceremony held last week at Sunnyside (photo credit: Diana Amado). Our Diana’s son is seated among the graduates on the field. I want to open a big note of congratulations to him and all of our graduates this year. They and I’d add their families endured a ton during the COVID year. It’s great to see so many having the opportunity to take part in person. Good luck with your next steps. You did a great job getting to this point.
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Wear Orange – June 5th
This was the scene at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority rail yard early last Wednesday morning. A shooter killed 8 co-workers before turning the gun on himself. I’ve had the Ward 6 flag at half staff pretty much every day since we started coming back outside from the COVID coup-up we’ve been through. Gun Violence Archive reports we’ve had over 230 mass shootings in the U.S. since the first of the year.
We are gun crazy. That is not what the framers of the constitution had in mind.
Gun sales have surged throughout the pandemic. Gun stores were deemed to be ‘essential’ services. So we see scenes like these:
...followed by scenes like these.
The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is operated by the FBI. They do background checks for gun sales involving federally licensed gun dealers. We know this doesn’t capture all gun sales since person-to-person sales outside the licensed dealers goes on all the time – including out at the Pima County Fairgrounds during each of their gun shows. But NICS is one way of getting an order of magnitude on gun sales. These side-by-side charts tell the story of where we are now. Over 1.2 million background checks for sales during the week of March 15th. We’re in an arms race with our own neighbors.
Please join us for this Saturday’s Moms Demand Action (MDA) Wear Orange day event. The online segment will begin at 1 pm. I’ve been asked to do some music, but I’m not sure what I’ll do. It doesn’t feel like a song kind of time. We’ll see.
This is a collage of some of our homegrown mass shootings. Sadly, these images are so easy to find.
 You need to register for the event. Do so by emailing rene.friedkin@gmail.com. The details of the event are still being finalized. Let’s hope we can make it through a week without having to report more shootings.
As I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, a part of this event; MDA is collecting books for Emerge Center for Domestic Abuse. These should be new or close-to-new books for teens or younger. You can either drop them off or ship them to 4220 E. Cooper, Tucson, 85711, attention Rene Friedkin. Or, if you’d like, you can email besmart.tucson@gmail.com and ask for a COVID-safe pickup at your place. You can also reach out to me at steve.kozachik@tucsonaz.gov, and I’ll arrange for you to bring them to me here at the Ward office, and I’ll be sure to get them to MDA/Emerge.
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Fire Danger
Each of these agencies have joined forces to send an extremely important message – it's fire season, and due to the drought, fire danger is off the charts.
Effective right now, there are campfire and smoking restrictions pretty much all over southeastern Arizona. That includes Saguaro National Park, Coronado National Forest, and all other Arizona Wildland Fire Management areas. Here’s a list:
Bureau of Land Management Gila District, all districts of the Coronado National Forest, Saguaro National Park, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, Coronado National Memorial, Chiricahua National Monument, Fort Bowie National Historic Site, Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, and Tumacácori National Historical.
All of them have restrictions in place. And campfires are never allowed on the San Bernardino and Leslie Canyon National Wildlife Refuges. We see the images of fire destruction on tv every season. Please be a part of the solution and not a part of the annual problem. There are lives and our natural environment at stake. Here’s a list of the specific restricted activities:
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Building maintaining, attending, or using a fire, campfire, charcoal, coal, elevated grills, or wood stove, including fires in developed campgrounds or improved sites.
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Smoking, except within an enclosed vehicle or building. (And I’d add, don’t toss the butt out the window!)
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Discharging a firearm, including target shooting, except while engaged in a lawful hunt pursuant to state, federal, or tribal laws and regulations
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Mechanical and industrial prohibitions include:
- Operating any internal combustion engine off designated roadways.
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Welding or operating acetylene or other torch with open flame.
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Using an explosive.
With July 4th coming, please remember that fireworks and exploding targets are illegal on federal and state land. And the ones that leave the ground are also illegal within Tucson city limits. You’ll soon see the tents popping up selling fireworks. This is not the year to play that game.
PFAS
A couple of weeks ago, Governor Ducey wrote the Biden administration about the PFAS water issue we’re facing in both Tucson and Phoenix. The letter could have been written 4 years ago, under the Trump administration, but that wouldn’t have worked politically for Ducey. So he’s trying to lay this problem on Biden’s doorstep. The reality is the DOD, and the State of Arizona National Guard (ANG) are to blame for contaminating our groundwater. Ducey needs to own the ANG piece and set the political angle aside.
By way of brief background, PFAS is the contaminant that was introduced into our groundwater by firefighting operations at both D.M. and over by Tucson International Airport by the ANG. They used a foam that contains the contaminant and either hosed it into the soil or dumped it into the sewer. The PFAS is known to cause a variety of diseases – cancers, and the usual you’ve read about with other chemical exposures. And PFAS is known as the ‘forever chemical’ because it doesn’t degrade over time. So, the activities at the base and the ANG training site at Tucson International Airport, even though from years ago, are still with us.
We serve Colorado River water to over 90% of our customers. The other small percent gets groundwater treated at two plants that were built to address other chemical contaminants. But because of the kind of filter those plants have, we lucked out, and they’re also removing PFAS.
One of the plumes is over by DMAFB. This map shows where the pollution has been identified. More testing is necessary, though to assure we’ve got the extent of the plume before starting to invest in long-term treatment plants. The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) is fronting a bit over $3M to get us started. It’s nice to have them partnering on that site. So far, we’re flying solo on the ANG site – in terms of financial commitments to support the remediation.
The red dashed line is the plume. The green/yellow squares are test wells. The blue dots are our active water wells. Because of the contamination, we’ve had to shut down 18 active wells. That is not a long-term strategy. When we’re forced by the drought to begin relying on our groundwater, we’ll need all of them to be up and running. The $3M dedicated by ADEQ will not be anywhere close to being enough to fix the problem. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Environmental and Energy Resilience (yes, there really is such a position in the bureaucracy) Richard Kidd is quoted as saying the total cost for clean up – nationwide – will exceed $28 billion.
While all of that work is going on over by D.M., there is testing happening over by the existing treatment plants. Those plants (Tucson Airport Remediation Project – TARP and Advanced Oxidation Plant – AOP) were built to capture TCE and a chemical called 1, 4 Dioxane. Not PFAS. But as I mentioned above, one of the filters in the plant is carbon. That, by chance, captures PFAS. We are not serving water from the TARP/AOP site that contains PFAS. The carbon filters are catching it to ‘non- detect’ levels. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the saturation level of PFAS in the groundwater out by ANG is increasing, so the impact on the carbon filters is also increasing. And they’re extremely expensive to replace. This graph shows the trajectory of the increases of various PFAS chemicals out by ANG. You can see why we’re alarmed by the trend.
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Our ratepayers should not be paying a penny of these costs. Not drilling test holes, not installing treatment plants, not changing carbon filters, and not paying for the maintenance and operation of any of the plants. For the ANG area contamination, the Air Force and Hughes Aircraft paid for the plants to be built. The Tucson Airport Authority (TAA) is paying the operation costs. But remember, the plants were built to control for TCE and 1, 4 Dioxane. So if because of PFAS, we have to change carbon filters out more frequently than would be normal, that’s our nickel until we get Ducey and the ANG to step up and own their mess. It’s not like changing the air filter on your car. At some point, if the PFAS saturation becomes too extreme, the plants may need to be shut down until a solution is found.
So I’ve come full circle. Ducey wants to challenge Biden on PFAS. The state is one of the primary contributors to our PFAS problem. Our challenges to keep the TARP/AOP plants running consistently are increasing as the contamination increases. We need the state, DOD, and manufacturers to come to the table and be a part of the solution. Not just studying it, like what Ducey said in his letter to Biden.
I’ll be hosting a PFAS meeting on June 30th to discuss the issues surrounding the D.M. plume. We’ll have representatives from the DOD, EPA, ADEQ, Tucson Water, and one of our city water attorneys on the call. The meeting will run from 6 pm until 7:30 pm. Here’s the zoom link for you to join:
Meeting ID: 829 6307 3142
And on July 21st, a group called the Unified Community Advisory Board (UCAB) will be meeting to get an update on the TARP/AOP area. That meeting begins at 5:45 pm and will also be done virtually. If you’d like to join in that meeting, contact Yolanda Herrera at acuinteriors@aol.com, and she’ll get you connected.
F35s in Vermont
Over 50 people were signed into our F35 presentation last week. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of them were from midtown. That’s the area most impacted by the flight path from D.M., and therefore the residents who’d be most impacted by F35s if they came to Tucson.
This image is from Burlington, Vermont. It’s a former neighborhood that sat under their F35 flight path. The homes became unlivable, were purchased by the DOD, and demolished in favor of the aircraft basing decision. While it looks like a nice, calming, and inviting green space when the F35s flyover, it rattles you on the inside. That’s the description we heard over and over from people on our call who live in the area.
I’m grateful to our 3 panelists; Duane Peterson and Patrick McCormack – producers of the film, and Julie Macuga. Julie is on the steering committee of Save our Skies, VT. They organized in opposition to the planes and lost that battle. Julie shared the congressional inertia that led to Burlington being chosen.
Right now, the talk of a DM F35 squadron is on the back burner. More likely would be a temporary mission of winter visitors – perhaps from Burlington. We’ve seen them in the past out at TIA with Operation Snowbird. Those were F16s. There will be a need for cold-weather training on the F35s at some point. We’ll keep an ear to the ground, so to speak.
On that noise reference, if you’d like to hear the reactions of Burlington residents to the basing decision they’re now living with, use this link. It’s the 12-minute film Duane, and Patrick put together. We can speculate on the impacts. These people are sharing what they experience daily.
Bungalow Block
More great coverage on the exciting upcoming preservation/reuse project on Broadway @ Warren. This was Jasmine Ramirez’ KOLD piece. It’s worth a watch.
Conversations are finishing up with some of the neighborhoods that line Broadway. We expect to have the final Sunshine Mile Overlay proposal on our July 7th agenda. There are several small, local businesses wanting to take advantage of the benefits of opting into the overlay. And there are still some concerns over allowable heights, setbacks, and density. But we’re close. Once in place, this overlay should serve as a template for other roadway corridor projects, whether they come through an extension of the RTA or as a part of our own local transportation efforts. It’s that sweet spot we’re looking for balancing quality of life, economic development, and historic preservation.
Thanks to all of the Ward 6 neighbors who have invested your time working towards solutions on this issue. Seven years ago, we faced 150’ of asphalt. Now we’re waiting for restaurants at the bungalows and more.
Summer Safari at the Zoo / Vaccination Night at the Zoo
Every Saturday through August 15th, Reid Park Zoo is hosting Summer Safari Nights. Gates open at 5:30 pm, and the event lasts until 8:30. And coming on Saturday, June 5th, we’re partnering with both the zoo and Pima County Health to combine the safari night event with a COVID vaccination opportunity. The vaccinations will be available for free throughout the evening event.
Summer Safari includes live music, games, animal chats, food, and regular kid activities. And Tucson Parks & Rec brings our Ready, Set, Rec van to add more activity options. If you come on the 5th and take part in the vaccination, you’ll receive a free entry to the zoo on your next visit for every member of the family that gets the protection. Pima County health is planning on having all 3 of the vaccination options on site.
The vaccinations will be offered in the grassy activity site immediately behind the carousel. Follow the sounds of music, and you’ll find the vaccinations. It’s a great way to enjoy a nice cool Tucson evening, get your COVID vaccination for free, and have some family fun at the zoo.
I’m grateful to the Pima County health folks and the Reid Park zoo management for working with my office and facilitating this opportunity.
Use this link for more information on Summer Safari:
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Vaccine Update
In addition to the zoo, there are still more vaccination sites open throughout the region. Every reputable health expert continues to recommend vaccinating as a preventative measure against COVID. Even with infection numbers dropping, Pima County is listed as ‘moderate’ risk, and our neighbors in Pinal County are still at ‘substantial’ risk for contracting the disease.
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Both Casino del Sol and Desert Diamond are open as FEMA vaccination sites on Friday and Saturday from 8 am until 10 pm. And here’s a listing of the mobile clinics that’ll be operating this coming week. As you can see, they’re scattered all over town, so the county is making it as easy as possible to take them up on the free offer. You do not need an appointment, and these are all good for anyone 12 years and older.
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If you’d like to dig more deeply into the national vaccine program, use this link: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/. The map that pops up on the screen will give you the ability to click on any county in the country to see how they’re doing.
According to USAfacts.org, Arizona still ranks #12 nationwide in our 7-day average infection rate. So it’s not gone. And even though the CDC is not reporting numbers of cases attributed to the variant strains, I was able to find this map showing how many different variants are active in various parts of the country. You can see that between California and Arizona, we’ve got 9 different types of COVID now spreading around. That’s the second-highest nationwide, next to the Pacific northwest.
Here’s this week’s addition to the infection data I’ve been tracking for Pima County. It went back up over the previous week. In fact, it’s at the highest level we’ve seen in over a month. Our testing is still in the 8.3% positivity range, and testing numbers are way down. So it’s important to be cautious.
April 26th - May 2nd - 459
May 10th - May 16th – 206
May 17th - May 23rd – 333
May 18th - May 30th - 591
Not much change in the ‘spread rate in the state, our here locally. But note that the most recent data we’re being given is over 10 days old. Couple that with the increase in infections we saw last week, and we should certainly take these data with a grain of salt until they’re updated.
What the data show is that the virus is clearly still present, but it’s not spreading. Numbers above 1.0 mean there’s active community spread.
Donations – Migrants
Thanks to each of you who brought supplies by for the Period Poverty bin. Supervisor Adelita Grijalva deserves the credit for getting the program off the ground, and you all filled the Ward 6 box the first day we had it out in front of the office. You always step towards needs when given the opportunity.
There’s word floating around that in June, the policy by which migrants are kept in Mexico will be lifted. That will cause an immediate change in the housing situation out at Casa Alitas. COVID is getting better, but capacity is not at 100% yet. It will also cause an immediate change in the need for travel supplies; sunscreen, toiletries, hygiene products, kids’ toys, and new socks and underclothes. Thank you for your on-going support of this effort.
Don’t take donations to Alitas. They don’t have time to stop and sort through things. Bring them here to the Ward office or over to St. Marks's church at 3809 E. 3rd. In either case, you’ll need to call ahead – St. Mark’s is 325.1001. For us, just email me, and we’ll set up a time to meet. Use steve.kozachik@tucsonaz.gov.
Swimming Pools Reopening
Starting this week, a dozen pools will be reopened for recreational swim and adult lap swim. They’ll be open from June 3rd through August 4th. And entry will be free all summer. The hours vary at each site, so use the chart I’ve got shown below for the pool closest to you. And if you need more information on the Parks & Rec pool program, you can check out their website.
One of the constraints in getting pools open for longer hours is the difficulty we’re having in hiring lifeguards. If you or someone you know would like to get some summer work doing that, please contact our Parks Director Lara Hamwey at lara.hamwey@tucsonaz.gov. You need to be at least 16 years old in order to apply.
KIDCO Sites
As a part of the reopening, we’ve got various KIDCO sites up and running throughout the area. You can find all of the programs that are operating at www.ezeereg.com.
The programs include ages 5-11, 12-14, and then the Junior Staff Trainees – ages 14-17. For the youngsters, the fee is $125 p/month for city residents. Those programs run from 7:30 am until 6 pm. The older kids’ programs cost $70 per month for city residents, and they’re operating from 7:30 am until 2 pm. The Junior Staff Trainee program runs $25 per month.
Also, on the website, you’ll find a variety of recreational classes and facility availability information. If you have any trouble getting what you’re after, please contact the parks folks at 791.4877.
Harvard Global Health Institute
This week, Colorado is still ranked #3 nationally in COVID risk level. I only point that out because they’re our neighbors. Last week Arizona was ranked #32 nationally. Now we’re up to 23rd. That doesn’t mean we’re doing horribly; just that other states are improving at a slightly quicker pace than we are. Here’s the Pima County figure. Arizona overall is at 7.7 cases per 100,000 on the 7-day moving average, so we’re doing much better than the rest of the state is.
 The national map also continues to improve. Here’s how we look this week. Remember when Michigan was completely in red? If you’re curious about a particular county somewhere else in the country, you can go to https://globalepidemics.org/key-metrics-for-covid-suppression/ and hover your cursor over any of the areas you see outlined on the map. They represent counties. The data for that area will pop up on your screen.
 Internationally, we’re still seeing the largest number of infections, but Brazil and India continue to be suffering significantly from the virus. All of this is why getting vaccinated is such an important piece of managing what’s left of COVID.
COVID is not gone, so please stay aware of safety protocols.
Here’s our statewide map. I’ve been sharing these weekly for over a year now. In Pima County, we’ve now passed 116,000 COVID cases. Maricopa County is well over a half-million COVID cases since this began.
In Pima County, we’ve lost over 2,400 friends and loved ones since this began. When we did the memorial event in Himmel last October, the number was 622. At the time, we planted a flag for each person. Now that field of flags would cover the entire hill we gathered on.
Please keep focused on getting a vaccine and continuing to practice safe habits. We can see the finish line, but we’re not there yet.
For the N.Y. Times data sets, use this link:
The State Department of Health site is at this link: www.azdhs.gov.
Sincerely,
Steve Kozachik
Council Member, Ward 6
ward6@tucsonaz.gov
City of Tucson Resources
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