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October 1, 2003

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
·Williams Gateway Airport
·Arizona's Forests
In-Studio Guests:
Mesa Mayor Keno Hawker
Diane Vosick, Ecological Restoration Institute at NAU
Sandy Barr, Sierra Club

>> Michael: Tonight on "Horizon," it has been ten years since Williams Air Force base in Mesa became Williams Gateway Airport. We'll look at what's happening there now and on into the future of the airport.

>>> Michael: Plus, throughout the State, the evidence is unmistakeable, our forests are in bad shape. We'll discuss some of the research that's being done to restore these areas to health.

>>> Michael: Good evening, I'm Michael Grant.

>>> Michael: First up, some breaking news. Arizona Court of Appeals this afternoon ruled for Bailey's Brake Shop and against the City of Mesa in a redevelopment public use/private property right's conflict. The court ruled that the city's plan to condemn the property in favor of a hardware store was not a permissible public use. Joining me to talk about that is Mesa Mayor Keno Hawker. Mayor, good to see you.

>> Keno Hawker: Pleasure to be here.

>> Michael: You know, I want to hold you on for the next segment, too, but you've got one up on me. I haven't read the opinion yet, but as I understand it, the Court has said to the City of Mesa, your general redevelopment plan there was not a sufficient public use for the condemnation of the brake shop.

>> Keno: In fact, the date was March 15th, 1999, the council voted on a 5-1 vote to expand our redevelopment area which included 5-1/2 acres that Bailey Brake is currently located on. I voted against that because I didn't want redevelopment expansion to have the power of condemnation. The council moved forward on it. We did a request for proposal on that site. Lynn Hart Hardware was the best of the three proposals. It was moved forward to secure the rest of the property so that -- he owned quite a bit of the property, but there were several private owners on the site, and we tried to relocate them by giving them offers. Mr. Bailey and the Maaco Auto Body Shop did not come to an agreement with the city. In fact, Mr. Bailey took it to court saying it was not a proper action, that government should not have the power to take from one private owner and give it to another private owner. And that's the ruling today.

>> Michael: And the Court of Appeals seems to be agreeing with that. I guess from this standpoint, if the City of Mesa, for example, was using the power of eminent domain to set up, let's say, a fine arts center or perhaps a convention center or a more public use such as that, that would be permissible, but picking one private property owner use over another is not sufficient?

>> Keno: As I read the decision, there has to be a preponderance of the evidence almost in favor of the city that in fact it is a public use that the public at large benefits and not just a few public individuals at the expense of other individuals. And in this case, the city as a whole would have had to benefit from that redevelopment site and the Court is saying that there was not enough evidence produced by Mesa to justify increased sales tax revenues or cleaning the site and better setbacks and a better visual appearance did not overweigh the right of Mr. Bailey and the Maaco Auto Body to stay in place as our constitution says you have private property rights, and that's kind of how I interpreted the reading today.

>> Michael: Okay. Mayor, stick with us.

>>> Michael: Williams Air Force base closed in 1993 after 52 years in operation. Since then, the airport has been redeveloped into one of Arizona's newest business and economic engines. More than 3,000 people are employed there, and more than 5,000 people attend college classes at the Williams campus, including Arizona State University East. Merry Lucero takes a look at some of what is driving airport development now.

>> Reporter: You want to be a helicopter pilot? You can learn how at Silver State helicopters at Williams Gateway Airport in Mesa. Silver State is one of several new tenants at the airport. They set up shop here in mid-summer partly because the space around the airport provides a good safety cushion for training. Brett Boyd, Silver State General Manager:

>> Brett Boyd: We looked at Falcon and some of the other airports. They are already grown out. There's housing developments around every part of it. The nice thing about Williams, the majority of the property around here is zoned commercially. So we're not going to have to worry about a lot of housing being close to the facility, and that's where a majority of the problems come when you are doing helicopter operations or training operations and stuff like that is when you have housing next to the facility.

>> Reporter: Not that encroachment was never a problem here. It's one of the reasons why the base was closed 10 years ago, but the good planning around the former base is the result of cooperation between the cities of Mesa, Gilbert, Queen Creek and the Gila River Indian community. Lynn Kusy, Executive Director of Williams gateway.

>> Lynn Kusy: That level of cooperation has made us one of the successful -- the most successful of the Air Force base conversion projects in the U.S. and there are other cases where communities have sued each other, they have been arguing with each other in other states. That hasn't happened here with that great cooperation, and that's been a major reason that we've been able to be competitive and be successful.

>> Reporter: Kusy also credits that support with helping the Airport overcome its biggest challenge, regaining the economic impact lost when the base was closed 10 years ago, over 3,800 employees and over $300 million in economic activity.

>> Lynn: Between the airport, the university and the community college, the Gila River Indian community and the other users here on the facility today, we have replaced those 3,500 jobs. And I think we have well in excess of $300 million in annual economic activity today.

>> Reporter: And when one tenant comes, others follows like when Boeing came in 1996.

>> Lynn: Boeing selected this airport as a site for their T-38 retrofit project, and there are several companies here now doing business with Boeing. Some on the airport, some in the community, because that Boeing project is here. That's a half a billion project that Boeing brought to this airport that we competed for against other airports in the U.S

>> Reporter: Silver State Helicopters provided the same benefit on a smaller scale.

>> Brett: The nice thing about the publicity we brought to the Air Force base, we had a seminar that brought approximately 2,000 people out here, and with that, there's going to be a natural draw, and as soon as we came out here, Airevac also joined us out here and their helicopter evacuation. I've heard of several other companies on their way out here.

>> Reporter: Silver state is one of 30 companies now making the airport home. They also do photo flights, tours, executive transport, heavy lift operations and plan to build their own new facility here. More than $300 million in construction is currently underway at Williams Gateway, making the airport's future likely to continue to soar.

>> Michael: Let's take a look ahead at Williams gateway for the next 10 years or so. Still with us is the mayor of the City of Mesa, Keno Hawker. What role do you see, actual flight operations, playing in gateway's future?

>> Keno: I think the whole military base reuse with the three runways, each of which is 10,000 feet anchors that whole area. It will be predominantly a cargo. Half of the flights will eventually be cargo because that area has been designated about 15,000 acres surrounding the 3,000 acres of Williams Gateway as a job center for the southeast valley. So we're looking for about 100,000 jobs to spring up around the air base and the manufacturing and the just-in-time deliveries with the cargo tie-in. That's the relationship.

>> Michael: And actually, there is fairly good compatibility with Sky Harbor in that regard, because it would like to move some of the cargo operations away so it can move into some other passenger-type operations?

>> Keno: Correct. Skip Rimsza and David Kreitor and their council have actually approved $100,000 match with Williams Gateway for joint marketing. So we're going to go out and market not only Williams Gateway, but Sky Harbor simultaneously, so if there is a passenger flight, it's probably more appropriate that it go into a hub and spoke such as Sky Harbor. If it's cargo, Sky Harbor is eventually going to be out of room. They are looking for a reliever airport to push off some of those flights. We think there is a positive synergy between the two.

>> Michael: Give us a specific feel on the other kinds of business operations locating there and expecting to locate there.

>> Keno: All kinds of high-technology aspects. The other aspect that doesn't get played out is with Mr. Crow trying to have ASU East as a polytechnic or as a job -- practical job center. When we get new locations, depending on what picks Williams Gateway with the amenities that we have. We have an on-site training facility to train their workers for that very type of industry. So we just know that at buildout Mesa has been known as a bedroom community, we want to switch that reputation to be known as a board room and have jobs available for our residents. We haven't designated particular industries yet, different clusters around the aerospace and the Boeing 77 possibility is always looming there. We think there will be several possibilities.

>> Michael: Legal commentator and airport commentator, Mesa Mayor, Keno Hawker, we appreciate your joining us.

>> Keno: My pleasure.

>> Michael: As our drought continues, the issue of forest health remains critical. Threatened by fire and insects, there is widespread agreement that something needs to be done, but the debate continues over the best way to address the problem. In Flagstaff, an ongoing research project is demonstrating one approach to restoration.

>> Reporter: Arizona's pine forests are in deep trouble. Following a long history of wildfire suppression, these lands are vastly overgrown, making them especially vulnerable to drought, bark beetle infestation and catastrophic fire. At Northern Arizona University, researchers have spent decades studying these forests and examining ways of restoring them to health.

>> Wally Covington: What we see behind us here is part of this unnatural population eruption of Ponderosa pine seedlings that began shortly after the beginning of the 20th century. These trees for the most part are about 90 years old. They are very old but very small and very well beyond the capacity of the land.

>> Reporter: As forest density increases there is less water and nutrients to go around. The overall health of the individual trees declines, leaving the pines more vulnerable to disease and insect damage. In the complex forest ecosystem, it is not only the trees that are affected.

>> Wally: The grass and wild flower production crashed because there is only so much water available on a site and so much light available to support plants. As grasses and wild flowers disappeared, so did the vertebrates, the animals and insects that depend upon those grasses and wild flowers for their livelihood.

>> Reporter: On a study area on the outskirts of Flagstaff, Covington and his colleagues have developed a living laboratory which replicates the Ponderosa pine forest prior to fire suppression efforts.

>> Wally: What we see here is an ecological restoration experiment that we began in 1994. What we did before treatment is we mapped every tree and every seedling on the spot. We did soil sampling and all of the pretreatment measurements that you'd need to do so you could test the impact of these treatments.

>> Reporter: The idea was to establish the same density and pattern of trees that occurs naturally across the landscape. All of the old growth yellow pines, which were scarce to begin with were preserved, while a large number of younger trees were removed.

>> Wally: Then we introduced fire. We put prescribed burning on the landscape. So these plots are being burned at a natural interval, a four-year interval. This area had, we know, a little over 23 trees per acre in the 1870s. In the intervening years, the pine population erupted and increased tree densities to almost 1,200 trees per acre. We had to remove a lot of trees from this area. What we found from this is a tremendous response of the ecosystem. The old growth trees started growing like teenagers. These trees that were just barely producing any pitch, all of a sudden started producing pitch at the levels that they could resist bark beetles.

>> Reporter: Covington observed an increase in soil moisture and nutrients which led to an increase of productivity throughout the ecosystem.

>> Wally: We've seen tremendous increases in grass production and wildflower production and shrub production across the site. We've also learned that this cascades throughout the animals as well. We've seen increased songbird diversity, all sorts of insects and animals.

>> Reporter: Despite the positive results found with these kinds of thinning treatments, there remains some resistance among members of the public when it comes to widespread applications and other overcrowded forest areas.

>> Bruce Greco: In many cases here in northern Arizona, someone that perhaps doesn't have a trained eye or a lot of experience in forest management policy and methods would say this is a natural forest. There is nothing or very little that's natural about these forests. There are some here in the state or in Arizona that believe that if we just leave the forest in the natural setting, we just leave it, and eventually things will work out that it will become a healthy environment. They are wrong.

>> Reporter: As the debate continues over how best to address the problems of Arizona's pine woodlands, Covington and his colleagues continue their work, optimistic about its potential benefits to this trouble resource.

>> Wally: I come out here in the morning sometimes and see elk and deer just drifting an the fence that we've got around this site, longing to get in here. It's like a Baskin Robbins ice cream parlor to them. So the results of this experiment have been so striking that it's led us to advocate for applying it across the landscape. We think we know enough now, to start trying this in the course of trying to restore forest health widespread throughout Arizona.

>> Michael: For more on forest restoration, I talked earlier with Diane Vosick with the Ecological Restoration Institute at NorthernArizona University and Sandy Barr with the Sierra Club. Diane, how practical for large-scale applications is the technique that we just saw experimentally?

>> Diane Vosick: Well, we have a lot of science. It hasn't been applied at the scale quite yet that we hope to see it applied at, but we have a lot of knowledge. We have 100 years of science on Ponderosa pine forest that we can draw on. More recently in the last 15 years, we've been doing these large experiments to see exactly the responses of the trees and the grasses and bugs and wildlife to these treatments, and we feel fairly confident that we can move forward. And I guess our biggest concern is that no action is at this point more perilous. We can't sit by because the conditions for another Rodeo-Chediski fire and the bark beetle situation necessitate that we start doing big work.

>> Michael: Can you give us some feel for what sort of effort went into getting that experimental patch that we saw to that condition from where it had been?

>> Diane: That was an experiment that was funded by the National Science Foundation, and part of that experiment included the thinning and complete removal of trees, and the raking of the duff layer, the needle layer, and because it was a highly prescribed scientific experiment, replacement with grass material harvested elsewhere. That was very rigorous and has appeared in scientific literature as an example of response.

>> Michael: Can you give me a dollar number?

>> Diane: A couple hundred thousand at least to do that experiment. However, when we're operational, when we're talking about Fort Valley which you saw pictures of, the cost of doing restoration in those areas varies between, oh, $300 to $700 per acre up to $1,000 per acre. But when you consider what we're paying per ache tore fight fire which nearby the Leroux fire cost about $2500 per acre to fight. It makes a whole lot more sense to restore forests and try and prevent these fires.

>> Michael: Sandy, let me pull you in. Is no action the position of the Sierra Club?

>> Sandy Barr: Not at all. In fact, conservationists across the west are very supportive of doing things where there is broad agreement among the scientific community, broad agreement among the public, and also among conservation interests, and we think the -- of course, the first thing, the number one priority relative to wildfire policy needs to be community protection, and focusing on the area near people's homes and within that quarter to half mile area near communities. You know, there's never going to be enough money to do everything that people want to do, so what we need to do is focus on that number one priority of protecting communities. There is plenty of work to be done there. Unfortunately, the congress and the Bush Administration don't get that, and they are still continuing to fail to fund those programs. The other issue where there is broad agreement is protection of the remaining old growth that we have in the southwest. We're down to 5% of old growth remaining. That's, you know, that's not a lot to quibble over, yet, the Forest Service continues to put out old growth timber sales like the one up on the east rim on the Grand Canyon.

>> Michael: Diane, this thinning technique protects old growth, does it not?

>> Diane: Yeah, we as ecologists believe it's not a wildland-urban interface problem. If you look at where fire is coming from, for example, in Flagstaff, we can have a fire start miles out of the city of Flagstaff and come right into the city. That's what happened in Rodeo-Chediski. It's not just a wildland-urban interface problem. We've got old growth all throughout the forest. What we believe is that there are ways that you can actually treat around old growth and protect those highly valuable elements of the landscape as well.

>> Michael: Sandy, I understand that there is general agreement on the urban interface aspect, but I want to go back to the question, though, that does the Sierra Club support or oppose this kind of thing where you go deeper into the forest and thin and let's further offer the assumption, protecting old growth.

>> Sandy: Well, I guess we don't support a no action alternative, but what we -- what I would say, we support something that is more conservative in nature, more of a precautionary approach. There are some areas-- There isn't broad agreement on restoration. There is broad agreement on the other areas, and with restoration, there may be areas that you can restore with fire alone. There are other areas where you can go in and thin, do some minimal thinning and then reintroduce fire. So, we're concerned about taking, you know, one point in time and applying it across the landscape, because you get varying results depending on what's going on.

>> Michael: Growing evidence, though, that the urban interface clearing alone isn't going to do the job. For example, the Mt. Lemmon fire threw embers three quarters of a mile, a mile and more and in fact some urban interface had been done on Mt. Lemmon but it turned into a blazing inferno.

>> Sandy: If you look at Jack Cohen's paper, he went and looked at the Aspen fire, and he said based on the on-the-ground evidence, most of that fire -- most of the homes that burned, burned from a ground fire. So indeed, it does make the case. You can do all of the work out in whatever area you think the next lightning strike might occur or the next person who isn't very careful with fire who sets it, you can do all of that work out there, but if you don't protect the communities, if you don't protect your own home, it's not going to mean anything.

>> Michael: The point being made, though, is that urban interface standing alone won't protect the communities. Do you agree with that or not?

>> Diane: I absolutely agree. I think communities have more value than just their homes. I live in Flagstaff. I live in Flagstaff, and I chose to live in Flagstaff because of the surrounding forest. People recreate in the forest. Flagstaff's economy is a tourist-based economy related to Snowbowl and other areas that are recreation based. People depend on that forest, that wildlife habitat and that human habitat to have livable communities. Also, our water in Arizona originates -- much of our surface water originates from the mountains of northern Arizona, and if you lose those forests, much like we did in the Rodeo-Chediski area where the soil starts to move you create water quality problems.

>> Michael: On the other hand, from a practical standpoint, we haven't got the resources to do this on any sort of large scale, do we?

>> Diane: We do have -- what we can do is start prioritize in the landscape. What we do at Northern Arizona University, the forest ERA program has developed a program where we can analyze the features on the landscape that we care about, for example, old growth. We can identify and map those areas, and we can think about perhaps we don't want to do treatments in the old growth. Perhaps we want to do strategic placement of treatments around that old growth. There is emerging evidence by a researcher, Mark Finney, where his mathematical models are showing that if we treat 20% to 30% of the landscape with good fuel treatments and restoration treatments, that means that fire will be on the ground in those treatments, that we can get ahead of the fire problem and change fire behavior significantly. So we're talking 20% to 30% of the landscape.

>> Michael: What about the experience on the reservation as opposed to the Forest Service areas last year with Rodeo-Chediski where the Indian tribe had done some of these thinning techniques, and when the fire hit those areas, it dropped from 40-50 feet to a more natural fire of 5-6 feet. Doesn't that demonstrate that these techniques can be effective?

>> Sandy: The fire burned in a mosaic pattern across the landscape. Some places it burned more intensely, some places moderately, some places light and in some places not at all, if you look at the map of the fire. Some of those places had been treated and some had not. What we do know is the vast majority of all of the land had been heavily logged over the last 100 years.

>> Michael: Sure, there is nothing you can do about that.

>> Sandy: If the fire is suppressed significantly -- well, but the problem we see with a lot of what's being proposed by the Bush Administration, and they use restoration as, you know, an excuse or fire protection as an excuse, to bring back the same practices that put us in the current state. Logging old, large trees because it's not economically feasible for the loggers to go in and take the small ones. And suppressing fire.

>> Michael: Is that really your and the environmental communities' real concern, that the Forest Service can't control commercial loggers, that you can't write a statement clear enough to make sure that they do what they are supposed to do as opposed to an objection to the technique itself? Is that your concern?

>> Sandy: It's a big part of it. What happens on the ground is a big part of it. What Diane said earlier, what they are doing is experimental. There are some of the plots on Mount Trumble, and I've been to some of those plots where they had 90% mortality. You learn things over time. And so taking something that is experimental and applying it across the landscape, I think there are a lot of questions about it. But the Forest Service indeed, while we're all talking about community protection and old growth protection, they are proposing the East Rim timber sale on the North Kaibab.

>> Michael: Is that true? Is that what they are proposing?

>> Diane: I'm not sure what's going on with the North Kaibab. I would like to correct a percentage, though, that's difficult for us to handle sometimes. That is when you talk about 90% of the trees dying or going away on a site, when a site traditionally had, based on what we know happened at that site prior to fire interruption, 25 to 30 trees and you have 1200 trees, you can take away 90% of the trees and still have too many trees for that site. A site in our high desert forests like in Flagstaff have only so much -- they are like your checkbook. They only have so much money or water or nutrients in them. We're talking about a forest health problem, and what's happened is we have too many trees for the budget of that site. What happens when you have too many trees? Well, the trees are weak that you have there. You have bark beetles, because the trees are weak. There is not enough water, as Dr. Covington mentioned to keep the sap flowing in a robust way in these trees to resist bark beetle. All of these are health issues related to too many trees at a site.

>> Michael: Diane Vosick, We are out of time. Thank you for the information. Sandy Barr, good to see you.

>>> Michael: Tomorrow on "Horizon," the Governor's monthly visit on first Thursday. We'll talk about the upcoming special session on Child Protective Service recommendations. If you have a question for the Governor, e-mail it to us at horizon@asu.edu, and we'll try to get to as many of those as we can. Thanks for joining us on this Wednesday evening. I'm Michael Grant. Have a great one. Good night.

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