Arizona

Arizona's aging government computer systems are making life miserable for the legions of newly unemployed. Chad Graham of the Arizona Republic reports on a series of missteps that has left the Department of Economic Security unable to handle claims for tens of thousands of unemployed workers at the height of the country's worst recession in recent memory.  Before the recession, the department typically processed about 30,000 claims a week. Now it handles nearly 150,000, Graham reports. And not well. Long waits and errors are so common that many Arizonans are being pushed to the brink of financial desperation and collapse by the very department that is supposed to prevent it.

Arizona is considering whether attorneys should be required to understand tribal law to pass that state's bar exam. Although there are 22 tribes and tribal land occupies one-quarter of the state, Arizona doesn't require its attorneys to understand the nuances and complexities of tribal law in order to practice, writes Felicia Fonseca of the Associated Press. In contrast, New Mexico, South Dakota and Washington states, all of which have tribal populations, do put American Indian law on their state bar exams.

"You need to know the rules that apply in case some incident arises on that 25 percent of the land, Rebecca Tsosie, executive director of the Indian Legal Program at Arizona State University's law school.

That seems like a given, especially with rising concerns about drugs, violence and gang activity on Native American land.

Arizona State University has just launched a three-year program to train more American Indian teachers. Teachers at reservation schools have been primarily non-Native American, an issue that has contributed to a cultural disconnect, reports Rhonda Bodfield of the Arizona Daily Star.

Educators hope the  new program, funded with a $1.2 million grant from the U. S. Department of Education's Office of Indian Education, will improve recruitment and retention of teachers. Reservation schools have had a hard time keeping teachers in part because of their remote locations, and also because they historically have not paid as well. School districts have struggled as a result. Indian Oasis Elementary Principal Jonathan Eddy told the paper, "It takes a lot of different elements to turn things around, but turnover definitely has an effect."

Our reporting trip to the Salton Sea is over, and we're headed back over the mountains to LA catch a plane. I'd love to stay a few more days, because it's turning out that the Salton Sea is a man-bites-dog story in another sense from the one I cited yesterday.

Here's why: After years of hearing about how the agriculture that surrounds this key stop on the Pacific Flyway is harming the sea, it now turns out that ag and the Sea's defenders are making common cause.

That's because what the farmers need is water. And what the Sea needs is water. And they're both going to lose it.

As part of a massive reordering of the way water is used in Southern California, something like 2oo,000 acre-feet of water a year -- that's roughly 100,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools -- will be withdrawn from use by farmers whose Imperial Valley fields surround the Sea.

Now, you need to understand that water flows into the sea, but not out. Something like six feet of water evaporates every year. And why is it a "sea" if it's inland? Because the Colorado River water that's diverted into the farm fields around here carries with it a small amount of salt, along with pesticides, fertilizer and selenium. Over the years, water dumped on the farm fields flowed eventually into the sea, carrying its light load of salt. But as the water evaporated, it left behind a larger and larger load of salt. (Update/clarification 9/12/09: I realize in re-reading this that it might not be clear that a lot of the salt ending up in the sea is actually leached from the farm fields immediately surrounding it. I guess I also should have mentioned that the Salton Sea already is saltier than seawater.)

So long as water continues to flow into the sea, and continues to evaporate, the water gets saltier and saltier.

Rural Arizona is searching for a stable source of water. The existing patchwork system of wells and reservoirs is wearing thin, Shaun McKinnon writes in the Arizona Republic. Flagstaff water-resources Chief Brad Hill told the Republic that the rural parts of the state need to plug into the Colorado River. But competition for that water is also fierce. In the meantime, rural communities wrestle with how best to balance growth with water needs.  In urban centers, new developments must verify they come packaged with a 100-year water supply before they are allowed to be built. Rural towns have no such restrictions.

There's been as steady drain on underground water reserves in the state, McKinnon writes in an earlier extensive story. Excessive reliance on groundwater supplies could prove "potentially disastrous," resulting in wells running dry and aquifers collapsing. Such failures could alter the landscape itself, creating fissures and sinkholes. Drought and climate change are also straining surface-water supplies at the same time that groundwater resources are shrinking. Herb Guenther of the Arizona Department of Water Resources told McKinnon: "What we have to do is get out of denial."