Beaver dam on Upper Verde
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Yavapai Group, Grand Canyon Chapter, Sierra Club
Newsletter January '09
Freeway Bridge Across the Verde?
by Gary Beverly
Last month I described two agencies planning freeway bridges across the Upper Verde River. This issue arose again on Jan 8 at a CYMPO Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) meeting, where the Sierra Club issued a strong and clear statement that no road should cross the Verde River, that this is "a line in the sand" according to Tom Slaback. CYMPO Board members Carol Springer (County Supervisor) and Bob Luzius (Prescott Councilman) also stated that they were strongly opposed to new roads crossing the Verde. We are pleased that two board members have received the message.
Unfortunately, the engineering consultant has only partially received the message. The CYMPO Corridor Study (www.cympo.com) has now been submitted to the CYMPO Executive Board as a Draft Report by the TAC that oversees the study. In that draft, we were told by the engineer that the controversial route CV8 crossing the Verde has been amended by stating that it would also be acceptable to terminate the freeway into Hwy 89 north of Chino Valley, near Road 5-6 North, as we had proposed. The TAC refused to release the report to the public, so we can't see exactly what they've done or comment on it. We regard this secrecy as outrageous and anti-democratic.
We are pleased that we have made some progress in blocking a freeway route across the Verde. The CPMPO Board will review the draft report at their next meeting (see event announcement above), and we will insist at that meeting that the full report be released to the public for comment before the Board accepts it. We need supporters at that meeting.
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Area Population Projections Gone Wild
by Gary Beverly
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Since ADOT and CYMPO have been planning for new roads everywhere, we have been amazed at the enormous population growth estimates used to justify all these new roads and freeways. We're just starting to dig into this issue, but it is worth noticing the concerns of some citizens opposed to widening Williamson Valley Road to 5 lanes, who have also keyed in on the inflated population growth numbers.
The Williamson Valley Community Organization website is
http://www.wvcpinc.org/Home.asp
Just scroll down the page to the heading "What are the Population Study Numbers Telling Us?" and read, or go directly to
http://www.wvcpinc.org/WHAT%20ARE%20THE%20NUMBERS%20TELLING%20US.pdf
Their idea is that the CYMPO population projections used for road planning are inflated over 10x compared with the numbers used by the Yavapai County Water Advisory Committee and DES for water resource planning, or the projections used by APS for electricity.
Now, why would CPMPO do this?
Why is the Sierra Club concerned with this issue? Because roads consume and fragment wildlife habitat, accelerate growth and sprawl, consume public lands, plus unnecessary roads waste taxpayer's money that could be used to improve our quality of life.
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Update: Prescott's Pipeline Plan
By Gary Beverly
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I'm going to make this a regular feature of the newsletter because it is a local controversy with weekly changes in status.
All the objectors have appealed the ADWR ruling granting Prescott's application to modify it's water supply by transferring water from the Big Chino via the pipeline. The AZ Administrative Law Judge will hold hearings on our appeal in Prescott on Feb 9-11.
To learn more:
- Attend the forum (see event announcement above)
- Hike the river with us!
- Contact Citizen's Water Advocacy Group (CWAG) at
http://www.cwagaz.org/aboutus.html#member
- Read the newspapers: The pumping/pipeline project has had piecemeal coverage from local daily newspapers. A local independent news magazine, Read It Here (now defunct) published an excellent series of articles on the pipeline plan written by Candace McNulty. These stories are still available online here: http://www.readitnews.com/component/option,com_comprofiler/task,userProfile/ user,65/
- Read excellent article in High Country News: http://www.hcn.org/issues/346/17001
- Support the Sierra Club (http://arizona.sierraclub.org) and the local Yavapai Group. The current and past issues of the Canyon Echo can be downloaded at http://arizona.sierraclub.org/echo/index.asp.
- Support The Center for Biological Diversity (www.savetheverde.org)
This page was last updated on May 26, 2009