Salon Newsreal | The war against sprawl, II

A L S O+T O D A Y

The war against sprawl I
By Rob Gurwitt
Think Al Gore's "smart growth" plan is a no-brainer? Think again

Reactions to the president's speech
Experts discuss Clinton's performance and what effects his proposals would have on the actual problems he identified as priorities

[ WANDERLUST ]
Can this planet be saved?
By Don George
Mark Hertsgaard discusses his new book about the human toll of global environmental devastation
[ WANDERLUST ]
Earth odyssey
By Mark Hertsgaard
A visit to Bangkok reveals the economic temptations and environmental troubles of the Technological Age

T A B L E+T A L K
Ignore the talking heads! Discuss your thoughts on Clinton's State of the Union address in the Politics area of Table Talk
___________________
Visit barnesandnoble.com for politics books on both sides of the aisle
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R E C E N T L Y
We interrupt this impeachment ...
By Joshua Micah Marshall
Two years in a row, Clinton's State of the Union address proves he won't follow the Presidential Tragedy script
(01/20/99)
Dear Henry
By Sean Wilentz, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and C. Vann Woodward
Historians talk back to House impeachment managers
(01/20/99)
What might have been
By Joan Walsh
It's hard to watch this president perform so well, knowing that he has already undermined his -- and our -- hopes for any real legislative success
(01/20/99)
Diamond in the Ruff
By Harry Jaffe
The president's lawyer, a lone figure in his wheelchair in the well of the Senate, could not have been a more effective defender
(01/20/99)
The State of the Union
Prepared text of President Clinton's State of the Union address
(01/20/99)
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THE WAR AGAINST SPRAWL, II | PAGE 1, 2
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By some accounts, the controversy isn't about owls, but schoolchildren. The Amphitheater School District operates two high schools: Canada del Oro, nestled at the base of the high, stunning Catalina mountain range, and Amphitheater High School, located in a flatland working-class district of Tucson. Rapid growth has caused overcrowding at Canada del Oro High School, which district officials report is within 18 students of its capacity of 2,800. Yet the school offers a staggering range of extracurricular activities and families maneuver to send their kids there.
While Canada del Oro stuffs kids into portable classrooms, the less swank Amphitheater High School is down 500 students, according to district figures. Amphi High could be at least a temporary haven for kids who are bursting out of Canada del Oro's seams. The problem is that Oro Valley parents don't want to send their kids there. It's a familiar story of class and ethnicity, but Arizona's development boom gives it a modern twist. This was the epicenter of the savings and loan crisis, remember: The magnificently named Conley Wolfswinkel, a former associate of jailed Phoenix mega-financier Charles Keating and a convicted felon himself, owns one of Oro Valley's biggest housing developments.
So the conflict over pygmy owls, schoolchildren, ethnicity and class is also about real estate. After plans for the new high school were leaked to the press in January 1997, the district's real estate dealings came under scrutiny. Its real estate broker, Bill Arnold, a politically connected wheeler-dealer who had made more than $150,000 in eight deals for the district totaling $2.5 million, was criticized for paying above-market prices for the school land. He also was sued, unsuccessfully, for failing to get an appraisal for the high school site, a routine procedure required by most school districts.
And critics saw the school site as an attempt to foster what is called "leapfrog" development. As its original land base has been built out, Oro Valley has been aggressive about "annexing" new land -- sort of like a hostile takeover by a municipality. It has approximately doubled in size since 1990. By building the school on the edge of Tortolita, a new town incorporated by anti-development environmentalists that Oro Valley is trying to annex, the district would be bringing in wider roads, more utilities -- and, in short order, more development, say critics.
But the district has powerful allies. Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe ushered board members into a meeting with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service chief Jamie Clark to assuage environmental concerns, and the new school began to look like a sure thing. But nobody bargained for national attention. Not long after the district-funded lobbying trip, the environmentalists sued. Tucson federal judge Frank Zapata ruled in favor of the district last May, citing the fact that a pygmy owl had been seen near the site, but not on it. Environmentalists appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which is expected to hand down a ruling any day now.
The School Board didn't wait for its day in court. Last spring, despite the fact that the lawsuit was moving forward, the board ordered construction to begin. Bulldozers and cactus "movers" arrived at the school site, along with Esther Underwood and the Yellow Ribbon Mothers, pro-construction advocates who celebrated the groundbreaking with sparkling apple cider. When Nancy Young Wright arrived, she and Underwood got into a screaming match, and the pygmy owl controversy became the Battle of the Moms. Judge Zapata ordered the work stopped.
Now the school site, one of the densest stands of ironwood and barrel cactus in the Sonoran desert, stands like a monument to the ragged edge of sprawl. A dozen palo verde trees and saguaro cactuses -- the huge tree-like cactus whose arms veer off in unpredictable directions -- sit in wooden boxes as if ready to provide landscaping for a bank or shopping mall. The remaining 70 acres is still green and lush. Ironwood trees bloom purple in the spring and the security guard hired by the district sees bobcats cross the two-lane road in the early morning hours. To complicate matters further, another pygmy owl was reportedly spotted near the site after Zapata's ruling. And while, again, the owl didn't roost on the school property, the issue is preserving what little of the owl's natural habitat is left so the species can be recovered.
The appeals court will decide the pygmy owl case any day now. But the district's troubles are not over. If environmentalists lose, Peter Galvin of the Southwest Center plans to bring another lawsuit based on the recently sighted owl. The Southwest Center recently launched a much broader assault, suing to force the Army Corps of Engineers to require wetlands permits under the federal Clean Water Act from anyone developing near an arroyo. This suit could affect the majority of natural desert in the expanding Sunbelt and have an impact in wetlands throughout the country as well. It marks the first time the environmental movement has truly engaged the biggest issue of all: the expanding U.S. population's effect on other species. And this is the ultimate zero-sum game.
As the sophisticated children of the suburbs gird themselves for a prolonged battle, Nancy Young Wright is caught in the middle, a lonely liberal agonizing over Esther Underwood's latest charge: that she is just as reluctant as her neighbors to bus her daughter to the déclassé Ampitheater High School. "I just said that I'd have to ask my daughter," said Young Wright, embarrassed by the implication that she, too, is part of the provincial snobbery of this newfangled suburb. As environmental decisions with great moral and philosophical import filter down to the backyard level, the personal becomes political in ways that 1970s feminists thought would be, well, extinct, by the millennium.
SALON | Jan. 21, 1999
Susan Zakin is a Tucson, Ariz., writer who specializes in environmental issues.

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A L S O+T O D A Y The war against sprawl I By Rob Gurwitt Think Al Gore's "smart growth" plan is a no-brainer? Think again Reactions to the president's speech Experts discuss Clinton's performance and what effects his proposals would have on the actual problems he identified as priorities [ WANDERLUST ] Can this planet be saved? By Don George Mark Hertsgaard discusses his new book about the human toll of global environmental devastation [ WANDERLUST ] Earth odyssey By Mark Hertsgaard A visit to Bangkok reveals the economic temptations and environmental troubles of the Technological Age T A B L E+T A L K Ignore the talking heads! Discuss your thoughts on Clinton's State of the Union address in the Politics area of Table Talk ___________________ Visit barnesandnoble.com for politics books on both sides of the aisle ___________________ R E C E N T L Y We interrupt this impeachment ... By Joshua Micah Marshall Two years in a row, Clinton's State of the Union address proves he won't follow the Presidential Tragedy script (01/20/99) Dear Henry By Sean Wilentz, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and C. Vann Woodward Historians talk back to House impeachment managers (01/20/99) What might have been By Joan Walsh It's hard to watch this president perform so well, knowing that he has already undermined his -- and our -- hopes for any real legislative success (01/20/99) Diamond in the Ruff By Harry Jaffe The president's lawyer, a lone figure in his wheelchair in the well of the Senate, could not have been a more effective defender (01/20/99) The State of the Union Prepared text of President Clinton's State of the Union address (01/20/99) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		THE WAR AGAINST SPRAWL, II \| PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - By some accounts, the controversy isn't about owls, but schoolchildren. The Amphitheater School District operates two high schools: Canada del Oro, nestled at the base of the high, stunning Catalina mountain range, and Amphitheater High School, located in a flatland working-class district of Tucson. Rapid growth has caused overcrowding at Canada del Oro High School, which district officials report is within 18 students of its capacity of 2,800. Yet the school offers a staggering range of extracurricular activities and families maneuver to send their kids there. While Canada del Oro stuffs kids into portable classrooms, the less swank Amphitheater High School is down 500 students, according to district figures. Amphi High could be at least a temporary haven for kids who are bursting out of Canada del Oro's seams. The problem is that Oro Valley parents don't want to send their kids there. It's a familiar story of class and ethnicity, but Arizona's development boom gives it a modern twist. This was the epicenter of the savings and loan crisis, remember: The magnificently named Conley Wolfswinkel, a former associate of jailed Phoenix mega-financier Charles Keating and a convicted felon himself, owns one of Oro Valley's biggest housing developments. So the conflict over pygmy owls, schoolchildren, ethnicity and class is also about real estate. After plans for the new high school were leaked to the press in January 1997, the district's real estate dealings came under scrutiny. Its real estate broker, Bill Arnold, a politically connected wheeler-dealer who had made more than $150,000 in eight deals for the district totaling $2.5 million, was criticized for paying above-market prices for the school land. He also was sued, unsuccessfully, for failing to get an appraisal for the high school site, a routine procedure required by most school districts. And critics saw the school site as an attempt to foster what is called "leapfrog" development. As its original land base has been built out, Oro Valley has been aggressive about "annexing" new land -- sort of like a hostile takeover by a municipality. It has approximately doubled in size since 1990. By building the school on the edge of Tortolita, a new town incorporated by anti-development environmentalists that Oro Valley is trying to annex, the district would be bringing in wider roads, more utilities -- and, in short order, more development, say critics. But the district has powerful allies. Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe ushered board members into a meeting with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service chief Jamie Clark to assuage environmental concerns, and the new school began to look like a sure thing. But nobody bargained for national attention. Not long after the district-funded lobbying trip, the environmentalists sued. Tucson federal judge Frank Zapata ruled in favor of the district last May, citing the fact that a pygmy owl had been seen near the site, but not on it. Environmentalists appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which is expected to hand down a ruling any day now. The School Board didn't wait for its day in court. Last spring, despite the fact that the lawsuit was moving forward, the board ordered construction to begin. Bulldozers and cactus "movers" arrived at the school site, along with Esther Underwood and the Yellow Ribbon Mothers, pro-construction advocates who celebrated the groundbreaking with sparkling apple cider. When Nancy Young Wright arrived, she and Underwood got into a screaming match, and the pygmy owl controversy became the Battle of the Moms. Judge Zapata ordered the work stopped. Now the school site, one of the densest stands of ironwood and barrel cactus in the Sonoran desert, stands like a monument to the ragged edge of sprawl. A dozen palo verde trees and saguaro cactuses -- the huge tree-like cactus whose arms veer off in unpredictable directions -- sit in wooden boxes as if ready to provide landscaping for a bank or shopping mall. The remaining 70 acres is still green and lush. Ironwood trees bloom purple in the spring and the security guard hired by the district sees bobcats cross the two-lane road in the early morning hours. To complicate matters further, another pygmy owl was reportedly spotted near the site after Zapata's ruling. And while, again, the owl didn't roost on the school property, the issue is preserving what little of the owl's natural habitat is left so the species can be recovered. The appeals court will decide the pygmy owl case any day now. But the district's troubles are not over. If environmentalists lose, Peter Galvin of the Southwest Center plans to bring another lawsuit based on the recently sighted owl. The Southwest Center recently launched a much broader assault, suing to force the Army Corps of Engineers to require wetlands permits under the federal Clean Water Act from anyone developing near an arroyo. This suit could affect the majority of natural desert in the expanding Sunbelt and have an impact in wetlands throughout the country as well. It marks the first time the environmental movement has truly engaged the biggest issue of all: the expanding U.S. population's effect on other species. And this is the ultimate zero-sum game. As the sophisticated children of the suburbs gird themselves for a prolonged battle, Nancy Young Wright is caught in the middle, a lonely liberal agonizing over Esther Underwood's latest charge: that she is just as reluctant as her neighbors to bus her daughter to the déclassé Ampitheater High School. "I just said that I'd have to ask my daughter," said Young Wright, embarrassed by the implication that she, too, is part of the provincial snobbery of this newfangled suburb. As environmental decisions with great moral and philosophical import filter down to the backyard level, the personal becomes political in ways that 1970s feminists thought would be, well, extinct, by the millennium. SALON \| Jan. 21, 1999 Susan Zakin is a Tucson, Ariz., writer who specializes in environmental issues. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.