(bright upbeat music) - Efforts to contain the state's largest act of wild Fire.

- He said it was just pure hell for the last three days.

- Plus what dropping water levels at Lake Mead mean for Arizona's water future.

- Things are getting bad or worse faster than we thought.

- And which institutions can and can't make the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory?

- There's actually been a strong trend in universities across the country mandating COVID-19 vaccines.

(bright upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "Arizona 360."

I'm Lorraine Rivera.

Thanks so much for joining us.

Across Arizona record highs and the triple digits are becoming the norm.

And several active wildfires have scorched more than 250,000 acres combined.

The largest is a Telegraph Fire, which has burned more than 165,000 acres alone outside the Town of Superior.

That makes it one of the 10 largest fires in state history.

Tony Paniagua traveled to the area where he saw its impacts on nearby communities.

(moving vehicle engine roaring) - [Tony] The Telegraph Fire is leaving a path of destruction over tens of thousands of acres in central Arizona.

Pockets of ash resembled dustings of snow in the hot dry desert.

Hardy yuccas are charged to their basis and countless saguaros scorched in place.

- I was really nervous.

I was glad I left.

(moving vehicle engine roaring) - [Tony] Rick Williams and his wife have owned and operated memories and more antiques for decades.

Their business and Home are in the small community of Top of the World on highway 60 between the Towns of Superior and Miami.

Due to the nearby fire, the couple decided to evacuate when firefighters told him the Telegraph was creeping dangerous, they close to this property.

- They did do the backburn, but it wasn't until two days after we were in the shelter.

But my neighbor, he stayed up here, Doug and Doug said, "You're lucky you left."

because he said it was just pure hell for the last three days up here, he said there right behind the house, there were 60 foot flames 'cause his house was back there too.

- [Tony] Evacuees found shelter at high desert middle school in Globe.

Ken Edelblute does a volunteer with the American red cross.

- Right now we've cycled 107 people through our center here provided them lodging and food.

- [Tony] So this has been a pretty serious fire recently?

- It has, and it's probably one of the longest running ones as far as it continues to keep dragging out there's new events every day.

- [Tony] The officials say the fire is human caused and remains under investigation.

It was detected on June 4th near the Town of Superior in Pinal County and has spread quickly east to Hale County and that area they were forced to close state, route 77 which connects Globe to Winkelmann more than 30 miles away.

David Albo is the public information officer for this fire.

He spoke to us alongside Joanna Malenka on emergency response interpreter for the deaf and hard of hearing who are required by state law.

- Very fast moving fire.

And then it got established here behind us in the the Pinal Mountains and to date I believe there's been 22 structures lost the five to seven of those are primarily primary residences.

The rest have been outbuildings.

That dry air and heat and low humidity just kind of amplifies or did it dries out these fuels even more and makes them more receptive makes them fire burn with greater intensity and move faster.

- [Tony] Miami High School serves as the incident command post.

It looks like a small city with more than a thousand personnel.

They're here from communities in Arizona and New Mexico.

Ricky Pinto is a member of the Raman Navajo Indian Reservation west of Albuquerque.

He and his crew have assisted a different command posts through the years.

- We've been up to Washington, Huston, all the way from California, all the way up to Washington and Oregon.

- [Tony] And how do you like it?

- I like it.

This is hard but now know, got to do something for your family here.

- [Tony] For public information Officer David Albo, this fire is like no other in his 10-year career at the forest service.

- You know this one it's, you know, it hits home, little choked.

(laughs) You start over, you know, this is a important place to me.

I grew up here in the Globe-Miami area local here on the Tonneau National Forest.

So these communities and these values are really important to us.

- Do you want this now?

- Yes.

I'd like to pick that up.

- [Tony] They are people like Rick Williams, his wife and their neighbors, their possessions were saved and Williams, he is counting his blessings.

- They manage to divert the fire around Top of the World.

So I'm pretty certain if it hadn't been for them, firefighters their shop wouldn't be here right now.

So we're really grateful to anybody that had anything to do with the fighting the fire.

Oh, I'm grateful.

We have a house and she'll have a shop 'cause I didn't think we would.

And I thought it was gonna burn.

- We're coming off one of the worst wildfire seasons in the last decade fire managers in Arizona say in 2020, more than 2,500 fires burn, nearly a million acres right now more than half the state is experiencing what's considered exceptional drought where conditions are ripe for fires year round.

We discussed what that means for fire activity in the coming months with Michael Crimmins and expert in climatology at the University of Arizona.

- Well, we've got a couple of things going on right now.

We have a very acute short-term drought missing out on the summer.

Precipitation in this last winter is kind of in the foreground.

We have a longer-term drought that we're now sort of seeing show up.

We've been seeing show up in Lake Mead and some of our water situation.

And then on top of it we're here right in the middle of June.

And we have one of these somewhat typical heat waves.

That's just really been supercharged and is bringing a record temperatures and heat to the region.

- Now, what we read is that global warming has caused all this.

So give us a sense of how it's come to this point.

- Yeah.

So this is a pretty typical setup for a heat wave.

You know, I kind of joke with some of my colleagues it's right around father's day that you really see the big heat wave hit Arizona.

And we're pretty much on track or occurred a little bit earlier.

The days are really long.

We're seeing this Ridge of high pressure set up across the Western US, which is the precursor to the monsoon season setting up across Southwest.

But this is, you know, we're seeing rare temperatures at the upper levels of the atmosphere at the surface.

So the strength of this Ridge is really unusual and we've been seeing more of these occurring over time which we really have to link back to climate change.

- So the monsoon typically, kicks up could be late June, early July.

It really depends lately though.

So if we get notable precipitation, will that make a dent in the drought that we're experiencing?

- Well, you know, the adage is every drop counts and every little bit will help here.

And so, yes, it's really, really important for us to at least it average precipitation this upcoming season.

So, you know, I'm hoping that we come in somewhere around average.

The thing with the monsoon too, is that some locations, even during an average monsoon season are kind of in between storms and miss out on presets.

So the monsoon season, isn't gonna solve all of our problems, even if it's fairly wet.

We're really gonna look to next winter next summer this is kind of a long-term battle we're fighting now.

- What's the glimmer of hope right now?

- Right now, well, the couple of the outlooks looking at the end of the month start to suggest that the Southern part of the states sees some precipitation, which is pretty close to on time for the very Southern part of the state.

So the weather models are kind of aligning.

They seem to suggest that the typical monsoon high pressure system, which is what we're under right now, it's in a good spot and moisture is kind of falling up through Mexico.

We're seeing some of that activity.

So, you know, I'm at this point, cautiously optimistic that we'll see something kind of the first week of July.

- Should the monsoon not deliver the precipitation that's expected to what sort of situation does that place us as we move forward into the winter months?

- I don't wanna really think about that but it puts us in pretty uncharted territory, you know an instrumental record you don't see too many situations that we just experienced.

If any, quite honestly, you know, missing a monsoon having a dry winter missing another monsoon we don't have anything in the instrument of record that looks anything like that.

There are some instances in the paleo record, we see some really extreme drought situations sort of emerge.

So if that happens, we're also really keeping a close eye on potential Armenia re-emerging this fall and Armenia typically give us drier than average conditions in the winter time.

So that would be almost four seasons where we would be suffering through lower average precipitation.

So the current impacts that we're seeing right now would just continue to get worse and would take much longer to ameliorate over time.

- Dr. Mike Crimmins, a climatologist from the University of Arizona.

Thank you.

- Thanks so much.

- Meanwhile, longstanding drought and ongoing development are strained resources from the Colorado River, the water level at Lake Mead the country's largest reservoir dropped to a record low earlier this month to 10 71 feet above sea level.

The drought contingency plan includes Arizona and six other states.

In 2019 it laid out how states would have to cut back should levels at the lake drop below 10 75 feet.

For insight on what this means for Arizona's water future.

We spoke with Sharon Megdal, director of the water resources research center at the U of A.

- The situation we're in right now is that one that we knew we would get to the dryness of the past year plus has really been worse than we've experienced in a long time.

And so what's concerning is that the level is dropping.

It's dropping pretty rapidly and we don't see great prospects for it filling back up in the near term.

And so this is a different situation from what we've been in, and that's why I think people are paying more attention to it.

And in fact, the level will be that low, that we will have a shortage and tier one shortage officially declared.

- The Tier 1 shortage.

Can you describe essentially what it means in layman's terms?

- Yeah, sure, sure.

So the Tier 1 shortage, which we will know in August for sure whether it will go into effect in January but we think it will.

All signs are that it will.

Means that the central Arizona project will deliver about a third less water than it usually does, but not to the cities, mostly to the farmers.

And some other uses such as banking for the future for water that would have been used to replenish some of the groundwater use.

- The states population is growing.

Is there a way to achieve a balance when you talk about people who live here but also living in the desert responsibly?

- You know, there's something that maybe we need to do a better job of, and that is connect our land use planning with our water planning, and people may think that's happening all the time, but I'll tell you I'm a co-chair of a national conference in a month's time exactly, that is trying to get or foster a better connection between the land use planners and the water planners and figure out how was the best way to grow because you know, you're right, Lorraine, we are still growing and we will grow.

Arizona remains an attractive place to live and do business but we have to figure out how to accommodate that growth in ways that use less water.

And I'll give an example, Las Vegas, I think maybe the state of Nevada, I'm not entirely sure recently adopted an ordinance, banning ornamental grass.

Grass that has no purpose other than being there as green grass.

And that could be in the median of a street, which we don't here see here in Tucson.

But I see grasping water that does not serve any useful purpose.

And so we just need to think about the kinds of things that we can do differently.

And that doesn't mean we can't grow.

It just means how our new communities look, how they're designed, what people expect in terms of grassy areas and common areas.

Maybe we rethink that.

- How did it get so bad here in the state of Arizona?

Because you point to places like Nevada but here we're talking restrictions and shortages which is uncomfortable in a state that is growing.

- The reason Arizona is impacted by shortage and talking about shortage more goes back to 40 or more years ago actually longer ago.

And it has to do with the building of the central Arizona project in order to get the funding, to bring that new water source into central Arizona.

We had to compromise in the political sphere.

We had to get the agreement of California legislators to appropriate the money, to build a project that negotiation led to Arizona's agreement that the central Arizona project would be lower priority than any water going to California.

But the truth of the matter is that the health of the Colorado River system, upper basin lower basin is not good.

And the concern is to make sure we take actions to avoid a collapse of system.

And that's what the drought contingency planning of 2019 was.

So an important message is that the decision makers and the planners and the water professionals nobody's been sitting around twiddling their sons, you know we've had water banking going on.

We've had a lot of discussion in negotiations trying to mitigate the impact of the shortage, but things are getting bad or worse, faster than we thought we have to do, let's say tougher planning, tougher decision-making sooner than we might've expected.

And we have to hope for rain, but that's the best we can do.

You know, you hope for the best, but you have to plan for the worst and things are not put right now.

- All right, we appreciate your transparency, Dr. Sharon, Megdal the director of water resources from the research center at the U of A.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

(bright upbeat music) - An executive order from governor Ducey this week says Arizona's public universities and community colleges cannot mandate students get a COVID vaccine or get tested or wear masks if they want to attend classes in person.

It came about after Arizona State University announced, unvaccinated students would need to take a test twice a week.

Now ASU says it will comply with the governor's order but the entire situation raises questions about what rights institutions and businesses have when it comes to issuing their own vaccine and mask requirements.

We got answers from Tara Sklar an expert in public health law at the U of A.

Can a business legally tell the patrons they have to be vaccinated or wear a mask when they're on their property?

- Right.

So it's been really interesting what's been happening in Arizona with governor Ducey and a number of executive orders that have come out.

So with that in mind, businesses that work with the state of Arizona that receive public funds they are under a different, they may be restricted in ways that you wouldn't be a keyboardist, a private business not contracted with government in any way.

So technically right now private businesses not doing work directly with the state of Arizona, they can have a map and they can have a sign that they can hang outside their building that says, "No Mask, No Service."

They can't require proof of vaccination.

But I think while businesses are trying to navigate this things it's important to also ask how would they implement this policy?

And also how would they enforce it?

So would they apply policy to anyone that comes through the door vaccinated and unvaccinated people both have to wear mask or where they try to follow the CDC guidelines specifically which only really those who are unvaccinated to continue to wear a mask indoors.

So it gets very tricky within determining work.

And how do you know if they've been vaccinated?

- You mentioned the university.

So you're referring to higher education and public funds.

What's going to be the balance when we talk about K through 12 education?

Can school districts that are publicly funded require students or even parents, for example, who are volunteering or teachers to wear a mask and/or be vaccinated.

- In terms of K through 12 and also healthcare institutions they were not part of that recent executive order.

So today I'm hearing K through 12 education could still require proof of vaccination for the COVID-19 vaccine.

And also healthcare institutions are still following under our previous executive order that could allow them to ask for proof of vaccination.

- Now during the height of the pandemic we saw the governor issue, executive orders, and many people in some cases would say, "That's fine, but I'm going to do what I want anyway."

How much weight does an executive order actually carry?

- These executive orders are very specific in some cases, like particularly the one that was issued on June 15th and as a result, the University of Arizona for example, my employer was thinking about a policy that would require students to be vaccinated upon returning to campus.

And they now are going to follow the executive order which very specifically detailed that if you're already a public University in Arizona our community college then you can not make that requirement.

So it carries a lot of weight.

If I could highlight what's been happening nationwide with universities compared to what recently came about this week in Arizona there's actually been a strong trend in universities across the country, mandating COVID-19 vaccines and not just for students, for staff and faculty as well.

In fact, by over 500 campuses now have mandates that require COVID-19 vaccination and 200 of those are with public institutions.

And so they really ranged from requiring everyone involved with campus life, the faculty, employees, and students, to have a vaccine, to shoot some policies 11 campuses to be exact only require if students who with in dormitory to student housing to be vaccinated.

So it's really quite an outlier that's recently unfolded in Arizona to not allow public university staff any requirements regarding vaccination, vaccination testing requirements, masks, and such.

It really is obviously with what's happening around the country.

- At one point Arizona actually led the nation in vaccines.

And then also in vaccinating rural Arizonans, the numbers though at point seemed to show that it could be skew in a different direction.

What do you attribute that to?

- Well, initially there was (indistinct) vaccinated.

Arizona also has an older population and trying to keep safe, staying at home staying away from public places.

So I think those who wanted to get vaccinated got vaccinated right away.

And now we have a lot of folks who are either in the wait and see group.

They still wanna make sure that the vaccines are safe and effective.

And then also have those that just absolutely don't want to be vaccinated.

But I think of those two groups the larger image, the wait and see and that's why I think it's still important to keep up this public messaging, that it's safe to have these vaccines.

It's very effective.

It's not just for you it's also for your community.

And that we could see the numbers continue to increase with cases and deaths.

So there is an impact there.

- Professor Tara Sklar from the University of Arizona Rogers college of law.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

(bright upbeat music) - For Pima County commuters dealing with road construction can seem like a way of life.

The regional transportation authority has had a role in a number of projects that have shaped how we get around the area.

Voters approved its formation in 2006.

And with it a half cent sales tax over 20 years to improve infrastructure across nine municipalities and tribes.

It's managed by the Pima Association of Governments also known as PAG.

As the board figures out its next steps the city of Tucson is considering splintering off and launching its own plan.

It says the RTAs next iteration needs to do a better job of meeting the city's needs and give it more representation in its decision-making.

To get some perspective on the RTAs goals we discussed with U of A urban planning professor Arlie Adkins.

So tell us what is the benefit of having a regional transportation system in a community like this one?

- Regional transportation planning is really critical as you know metropolitan regions across the US are made up of many different local jurisdictions multiple counties often and our transportation systems don't stop at the boundaries of those cities and towns and counties.

So we really need to be thinking about broader systems and how we can be planning for a future at that regional level.

- Based on what, you know, as a professor of urban planning does the current model that exists within Pima County sort of meet those expectations?

- I think it does in many ways.

And I think the federal government started requiring these metropolitan planning organizations back to the 1970s and the primary charge to those was distributing federal sources of funding as well as making sure that transportation planning was happening in different regions.

- Those sources of funding that you reference, it can be controversial because you have people in certain communities looking at other regions, I'm wondering, was this fair?

Was this equitable?

Did they get what they needed when we've been paying perhaps the bulk?

What do you say about those sources and how exactly it works?

- It's appropriate for people to be asking these questions?

What we want is a transparent process that allows people to have confidence that these funding decisions are being made in an equitable manner.

And I think that that is sort of the spirit of some of these questions that are being asked right now in terms of how this process is working, both in terms of where those federal funds are distributed, but also in terms of the regional taxes that are collected and distributed for transportation projects, especially as we near the end of the current RTA and start thinking about a vote to reauthorize and go ask voters for more funding.

- To be clear though, there are instances where the larger population centralized in a Metro region, those taxpayers could be paying more but perhaps not seeing the same level of projects is that fair?

- That is possible though that we do have some accounting that we've seen from the regional authorities that show they're trying to keep that fairly balanced.

I think the bigger question to me is one about decision-making and so we have the city of Tucson makes up just over 50% of the population of the region that's represented by PAG.

Yet when we look at the decision-making structures, both for PAG and for RTA, the mayor of Tucson is our one vote on the nine member council.

So that works out to about 11% of votes in these decision-making bodies.

- Which doesn't seem balanced, does it?

- No, it doesn't.

And I think, especially when you start to look at some of the demographic, the distributions of where people live in the region, we have an even larger under-representation of low-income people of the Hispanic, Latino communities of transit writers, of younger people, people living in poverty.

So I think we do have some real questions that need to be asked.

- If, and when this goes before the voter again, what sorts of questions should they be asking themselves about transportation systems like this one?

- So I think the most critical question that I would encourage people to ask themselves when considering whether to vote for something like this is whether the the transportation projects being proposed align with that voters vision for our community in 10, 20, or 30 or even 50 years, you know, these are big funding packages and they really do help to shape the future of our city and our region.

And so, you know, if you're a voter who, you know like I do thinks that climate change and reducing carbon emissions, improving safety on our streets, when we're seeing you know, many years over the last decade record numbers of pedestrians being killed, if you think that transportation equity on making sure that our system is serving those who have the least opportunity among us on our communities.

Making sure that the transportation proposals that are being put forward in such a package really are aligning with your own priorities and that community priority.

- Dr. Arlie Adkins, a professor of urban planning at the University of Arizona.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

- And that's all for now.

Thanks for joining us.

To get in touch visit us on social media or send an email to arizona360@azpm.org and let us know what you think.

We'll see you next week.

(bright upbeat music)