PHOENIX — From the bustling streets of Scottsdale to the red rocks of Sedona more than an hour away, a NASA research balloon had some Arizonans wondering whether they had spotted an alien spacecraft.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said he got calls about the object all afternoon on Monday.

He said the object did not show up on FAA radar and was likely a balloon.

Later, Bill Stepp of the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas identified the object as a 4,000-pound research balloon released from a NASA organization used to measure gamma ray emissions in high altitudes.

The balloon was launched at about 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning from Fort Sumner, N.M., and was grounded at about 9 p.m. Monday just south of Kingman in western Arizona.

Stepp said the balloon, which usually floats at an altitude of 130,000 feet, can be seen for about 170 miles on a clear day and has raised concern from Albuquerque to Phoenix.

“It’s something unusual,” he said. “People just don’t know what it is.”

Marshall Valentine, who works in a Scottsdale office, said he and about five other co-workers who spotted the object high in the sky around 2 p.m. Monday had no idea what it was.

“It looks like someone blew a bubble in the sky and it stayed there,” Valentine said. “A plane flew under it and it looked like it was a mountain higher than a plane flies.”

Similar descriptions of an unidentified flying, clear orb were also reported out of Sedona.

Jennifer McCoy, who runs the UFO Store in Sedona with her husband, said a local resident told her about the object around 2 p.m.

She said she went into the parking lot and saw the object in the cloud line.

It “looked like the gigantic bubble from the Wizard of Oz,” she said.

Leslie Boyer, director of the Venom Immunochemistry, Pharmacology and Emergency Response Institute, holds a tube containing a dead bark scorpion at her office at Drachman Hall, 1295 N. Martin Ave.

Dawn Bray worried she might lose a second child to a scorpion’s sting.

A bark scorpion stung her 6-year-old son Morgan last May. As the family rushed him to the hospital in Globe, a wave of fear came over Bray. Six years earlier, in May 2002, she lost her 2-year-old son Dally to a bark scorpion’s sting.

“When Morgan got bit, I was thinking that it was happening again,” Bray recalled this week. “With another son, we would have the same outcome.”

From Globe, doctors flew Morgan to Tucson for treatment. He received a dose of Anascorp, a scorpion antivenin used widely Mexico but not approved for general use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Morgan made a speedy recovery. Just hours after his treatment, the Brays ate dinner together at a McDonald’s before making the two-hour drive back to their home about 25 miles south of Globe.

Morgan’s survival means that his brother “did not die in vain,” Bray said.

After Dally’s death, the Brays met with Leslie Boyer, director of the University of Arizona’s Venom Immunochemistry, Pharmacology and Emergency Response Institute. Dally received an antivenin but died anyway, his mother said. The family wanted answers.

Of the 60 scorpion species and subspecies in the U.S., only the Arizona bark scorpion is dangerous to humans; consequently, scorpion sting deaths are exceedingly rare in the United States, with fewer than a half-dozen in the past decade. But in equatorial countries more people die of scorpion stings than venomous snake bites. More than 1,000 people a year die from scorpion stings in Mexico, according to an article in eMedicine, an online medical journal.

Two years after Dally’s death, Boyer and a team of UA researchers began studying Anascorp, a drug Mexican doctors used regularly to treat those severely affected by scorpion stings. The UA researchers published their findings in the May 14 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

The study focused on 15 children hospitalized for severe reactions to scorpion stings in 2004 and 2005. Eight received Anascorp, which the FDA considers an “investigational drug.” Seven received a placebo.

Symptoms of nerve poisoning disappeared in less than four hours in the children treated with the antivenin. In the placebo group, symptoms lasted for several hours. Children not treated with Anascorp required sedation and longer hospital stays, the study found.

Bark scorpion venom “goes to every nerve of the body and tells them, ‘Fire!’ ” Boyer said.

In the worst cases, the bark scorpion’s venom can cause respiratory failure.

Scorpions sting about 8,000 people in Arizona every year. In Mexico, where Anascorp is widely available, scorpions sting 250,000 people a year.

In about 200 cases a year in the U.S., usually involving children, nerve poisoning becomes severe enough to require hospitalization.

Children in Tucson can go to a hospital emergency room for treatment, Boyer said. “But what about the baby in Morenci, the toddler in Globe?”

The UA study has expanded to include 24 Arizona hospitals. About 600 patients have received Anascorp since 2004, Boyer said.

Even in rural areas, severely affected children can receive the treatment within an hour of getting stung, the doctor said.

Whether the study’s findings will lead to FDA approval remains unclear. “We’re the only state in the country where this is important,” Boyer said.

For the Brays, it was a matter of life and death.

“Dr. Boyer was our angel,” Bray said. “If she trusted it, we trusted it.”

Dr. Leslie Boyer holds a tube containing a dead bark scorpion.

KINGMAN – A new solar plant is planned for Mohave County, the fourth and largest now slated to be built in Arizona’s northwest corner.

The 340-megawatt plant would be built about 27 miles northwest of Kingman by Mohave Sun Power, LLC, on land it plans to buy from Las Vegas developer Jim Rhodes. The facility will use a solar-thermal design, with parabolic mirrors concentrating the sun’s energy on tubes carrying oil. The heated oil is piped to a central facility to generate steam to turn generators. Some of the energy will be stored in molten salt tanks for use after dark, and a secondary heating system using oil, gas or biofuels can also keep the plant running on cloudy days.

The $2.1 billion plant will be one of the largest of its type in the world, project director Greg Bartlett said Tuesday.

Another plant using the same technology is planned south of Kingman. That 200-megawatt facility is being developed by Albiasa Solar. A Mohave County housing development called The Ranch at White Hills is building a solar facility to power its homes, and a smaller solar project is slated for the Yucca area.

“This is proof that our (Arizona’s) renewable energy standard is finally bearing fruit,” said Arizona Corporation Commission Chairwoman Kris Mayes.

The company looked all over the Southwest before settling on Mohave County, Bartlett said. Some of the benefits to locating the project in Mohave County, as compared to Maricopa County, included a higher elevation, the remote area, the amount of water and the ability to acquire 4,000 acres from a private landholder. The company has a lease purchase agreement with Rhodes for the property.

According to information from Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson’s office, the plant will use about 1,500 to 3,000 acre-feet of water per year to wash the mirrors and generate steam. The plant intends to recycle some of the water. The company says it’s well aware of the water concerns in the county and is spending a lot of time upfront on the issue, Bartlett said.

The ACC is watching the water issue carefully, Mayes said.

As first wind farm goes up in state, others likely to follow

The Dry Lake Wind Project, Arizona's first wind farm, is scheduled to begin sending electricity to Salt River Project customers late this year.

Thirty big wind machines rising off a little-used highway between Holbrook and Heber are a curiosity for now in a state that lags its neighbors in alternative energy. But that soon will change.

The 412-foot turbines, Arizona’s first, will begin sending energy to Salt River Project customers later this year, and many more turbines are on the way.

Utilities are rushing to develop alternative energy because of state requirements mandating more renewable sources and because of federal taxes being proposed on activities tied to fossil-fuel burning and global-warming pollution.

Developments such as the Dry Lake Wind Project are attractive to utilities because, if there is room for the energy on existing power lines, the turbines are quick to build, use no water and generate electricity more cheaply than solar-power plants.

“We are going after wind because it reduces emissions,” SRP Energy Manager Charlie Duckworth said.

Of the 19 states west of Texas, only Arizona and Nevada still lack operating wind farms to help meet growing energy demands.

SRP already buys wind power from turbines in New Mexico.

At Dry Lake, every time the wind tops about 7 mph, the turbines will spin and send energy to the power grid.

The turbines hit their maximum efficiency at a sustained breeze of about 26 mph. Brakes keep them from spinning when storm winds top 55 mph.

The 30 turbines will have a maximum capacity of 63 megawatts when conditions are right. In a steady wind, each massive turbine can generate enough electricity to power about 500 homes. When the wind hits them all at once, they’ll generate enough power for more than 15,000 homes.

More on the way

Iberdrola Renewables, a Spanish company with U.S. headquarters in Oregon, is building the $100 million Dry Lake project. The company has plans for 209 more turbines at the Navajo County site in subsequent phases.

If all are built, the turbines will stretch about 15 miles across the northern Arizona plains.

Dry Lake is not the only wind-power project planned for Arizona.

With Arizona utilities striving to generate 15 percent of their power from renewable sources such as wind turbines and solar panels by 2025 to meet state requirements, wind farms have also been proposed from Flagstaff to Bisbee.

Arizona Public Service Co., the other big utility in the state, announced last week that it plans to pursue an in-state wind farm.

The Navajo Nation, which stretches across parts of several counties in three states, has been trying to develop a wind farm north of Flagstaff in Coconino County.

Wind is classified based on the average speed and consistency, and most of Arizona’s windy land is classified as moderate.

any locations would require new power lines to deliver the energy to the power grid, so it’s unlikely every windy hilltop and valley in the state will see turbines.

A rancher’s initiative

Navajo County and Iberdrola officials give rancher Bill Elkins credit for researching the area’s wind potential and attracting the first wind farm to Arizona.

About six years ago, Elkins started working with Northern Arizona University to build towers on his ranch to gauge wind speeds. He studied the power-line capacity in the area to determine whether wind power could transmit to the power grid.

His research proved to Iberdrola that a wind farm on the site was feasible.

The Dry Lake turbines are being built in three curvy rows of 10 each, crossing land owned by Elkins, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the state.

Landowners lease their land to wind-farm operators. A typical agreement pays the owner $3,000 to $5,000 annually, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

Elkins declined to say what his family expects to earn.

The BLM will earn $36,966 in leases this year for the 10 Dry Lake turbines on its land and should get $87,255 a year after that, officials said last year when they approved the project.

The state, which has a different deal with Dry Lake tied to the amount of energy generated by the nine turbines on its land, could earn $4 million during the 50-year agreement.

“It’s worked out real well,” Elkins said. “There’s test towers on all the ranches surrounding us now as other companies are trying to move in.”

Positive impact

Now that Elkins has successfully attracted turbines to his ranch and President Barack Obama’s policies are strongly supporting the development of alternative energy, many more turbines are expected to rise over the landscape.

“We’re very happy with what has happened in the economic-stimulus package,” said Jan Johnson, an Iberdrola spokeswoman.

The package allows developers who start building wind-power plants before 2011 to receive Treasury Department grants worth 30 percent of the cost.

“It will be a huge impetus for 2009 and 2010 projects,” Johnson said.

Not only does Iberdrola plan to expand the Dry Lake project, but Navajo County has been busy approving new testing stations that will guide developers to the gustiest swaths of the county, Assistant County Manager Dusty Parsons said.

“We’ve been waiting to see this happen,” Parsons said.

With an unemployment rate reaching into the double digits, Navajo County is embracing the Dry Lake project.

Most of the 200 construction workers are living, shopping and eating in Holbrook. Once the plant is finished, about 10 operators will hold permanent jobs at the plant.

“Even that helps,” said Rod Ross, government-relations administrator for Navajo County. “The county is going through hard times just like everybody else. And we have a pretty good supply of wind up here.” Few Holbrook residents seem bothered by the turbines on the horizon.

Rusty Long, pointing to the coal-burning Cholla Power Plant nearby, noted, “They’re just a little shorter than those stacks on that power plant.”

FLAGSTAFF – The northern Arizona observatory where Pluto was discovered has a new director.

Eileen Friel will become the 10th director of the Lowell Observatory when Bob Millis steps down on June 15.

Friel currently is the executive officer for the Division of Astronomical Sciences at the National Science Foundation. She says she’s looking forward to her new job at what she calls a first-rate research center.

She says Lowell Observatory produces fascinating science and has done a superb job explaining that work to the residents of northern Arizona.

The private, nonprofit observatory was founded in 1894. Pluto was discovered by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 while he was working at the observatory.

PHOENIX – Social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are being considered for inclusion in a system that would warn people with asthma when particulate pollution in their neighborhoods reaches levels that could trigger an attack.

Researchers and officials from Arizona state agencies, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and from universities met recently to discuss ways of notifying asthmatic children and the elderly about high-pollution advisories.

Preliminary plans call for warnings to go to schools and individuals through telephone networks and e-mail, but for the first time, social networking is also being considered.

“For some time, we’ve looked beyond traditional notification systems,” said Patrick Cunningham, interim director of the state Department of Environmental Quality. “For instance, we now send text messages about a high-pollution day to landscapers who might be using leaf blowers.”

Cunningham said officials could use sites like MySpace and Facebook to reach young people. “What we want is to be effective,” he said.

Under the system, people with asthma could register under their ZIP code with health officials, who would alert them via text or on Facebook, Twitter or other social media when neighborhood sensors detect high levels in their area.

Current pollution alerts, given through traditional media, generally cover all the Phoenix metro area even though high readings might be only in a small area.

The idea of the alert system grew out of a December study conducted at Arizona State University.

ASU engineering Professor Harindra Fernando said the network he hopes to develop in the Phoenix area will “tell you if tomorrow will be a good day or a bad day for asthmatics, and it will issue warnings from ZIP code to ZIP code.”

Fernando said he hopes that modifying an existing network that measures air pollution in Milan, Italy, and issues air-quality alerts specific to areas and developing an alert system can be done in the next two years, with a notification system in place by 2012.

Cunningham said he is going to ask the EPA for $300,000 to $500,000 to fund the project.

PHOENIX – The question, “Paper or plastic?” is usually reserved for supermarket checkout lines, but a Senate bill could have public records clerks using a similar refrain.

Authored by Sen. Jay Tibshraeny, R-Chandler, SB 1305 would require public bodies that keep public records electronically to provide them upon request on CD-ROM or in another format.

The change would allow more efficient public access to records, said David Bodney, a media attorney with the Phoenix law firm Steptoe and Johnson LLP.

“It’s cheaper, it’s easier, it makes the information more readily searchable,” he said. “If the information superhighway means anything, it ought to mean that public bodies produce their records in electronic format when they’re maintained in electronic format.”

The bill is among several that aim to reconcile access to public records with evolving technology. Other measures would make information documenting changes to electronic documents a public record, allow public officials to redact certain information from e-mails and keep open meeting announcements online longer.

Elizabeth S. Hill, Arizona’s assistant ombudsman for public access, said she suggested the changes in SB 1305 to clear up gray areas in public records law.

Among several provisions, it would make electronic records available for inspection or copying in a format such as a database or spreadsheet if a government body maintains records in that format. However, public officials could change the data to a format that can’t be manipulated, such as a PDF, Hill said.

Under the bill, a government body could charge a reasonable fee for electronic records and could charge more if compiling the data takes longer than two hours.

SB 1305 would require that copying fees for paper records not exceed the cost of reproduction, including equipment, maintenance and personnel time. Tibshraeny also put those provisions into another bill, SB 1304.

In addition, Tibshraeny, who didn’t return three phone calls seeking comment, authored SB 1303, which would require Web announcements for open meetings to stay online for one year. The measure would allow government bodies to post meeting notices on Saturdays, though posting on Sundays still wouldn’t be allowed.

SB 1248, authored by Sen. Jonathan Paton, R-Tucson, would counteract a January appeals court ruling by classifying as public record metadata, or data about other data that’s contained within a file, such as who accessed it and when.

The ruling in Lake v. City of Phoenix denied Phoenix police officer David Lake access to data that he requested to support his claim that the city backdated documents related to his Equal Employment Opportunity Complaint.

Hill said she didn’t understand that ruling.

“The fact of the matter is, electronic records create this metadata,” Hill said. “How do you separate that from the record?”

Paton didn’t return three phone calls seeking comment on the bill.

Still another bill, HB 2328, authored by Rep. Tom Boone, R-Peoria, would permit government officials to redact personal information about senders of e-mails they’ve received.

David Cuillier, University of Arizona journalism professor and chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Freedom of Information Committee, disagreed with the proposed change, saying the public needs to know who influences politicians.

“To have this legislation passed means people will routinely in every organization redact information in e-mails,” he said. “If there’s a need to make someone secret, legitimately secret, there’s a law for that already.”

Boone didn’t return a telephone call seeking comment on the bill.

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Bills dealing with public access

to electronic records

• SB 1248: Would classify as public record metadata, or data about other data that’s contained within a file, such as who accessed it and when. Author: Sen. Jonathan Paton, R-Tucson.

• SB 1303: Would require Web announcements of public meetings to stay online for one year. Includes charter schools in that mandate. Would allow meeting notices to be posted on Saturdays but not Sundays. Author: Sen. Jay Tibshraeny, R-Chandler.

• SB 1304: Would mandate that copying fees for paper records don’t exceed the cost of reproduction, including equipment, maintenance and personnel time. No fee can be charged for reviewing or redacting the records. Author: Sen. Jay Tibshraeny, R-Chandler.

• SB 1305: Includes all of SB 1304 and would allow public records to be obtained in electronic format, if possible. Allows government bodies to charge fees for electronic records, including higher fees if complying with a request takes more than two hours. If a government body can’t provide a record in electronic format, it must give a written explanation as to why. Author: Sen. Jay Tibshraeny, R-Chandler.

• HB 2328: Would allow government officials to redact personal information about the senders of e-mails they’ve received. Author: Rep. Tom Boone, R-Peoria.

A Scottsdale-based investment fund is looking for mid-size renewable-energy projects in need of a loan, and is hoping to capitalize on incentives that utilities and the federal stimulus are pouring into such projects.

The Ethos Fund is targeting all types of renewable-energy projects in the Western states, including solar, wind, landfill-gas recovery and everything else eligible for big rebates.

Executives said such a fund is needed because while lots of public money is available for energy projects, few are being built because none of the incentives help developers with up-front costs, and the credit crunch has cut off most other funding.

“If you’ve tried to get a mortgage lately, you can imagine what it would be like for a renewable-energy developer (to get a loan),” said Adam Boucher, president of the fund planned at $150 million.

The Ethos Fund is looking to make short-term loans of six to 12 months to provide the up-front financing, with the energy projects and incentives serving as collateral.

Ethos is targeting projects that need between $250,000 and $5 million in start-up financing, or have an electrical-generating capacity between 100 and 200 kilowatts.

Most household solar systems or backyard wind turbines can produce less than 10 kilowatts, while solar and wind power plants produce several thousand kilowatts.

Boucher said mid-size projects are uncommon because there are few ways to finance them, a niche he wants to fill.

While federal and utility rebates can cover more than half the cost of renewable-energy projects, those incentives only are available once the projects are built.

“They will only be paying interest for a short period of time,” Boucher said.

Boucher has been putting the fund together for two years, but with the changes in the federal-stimulus package passed in February for renewable energy, Boucher expects to find many more eligible borrowers.

Many renewable projects are eligible for a 30 percent tax credit, but the stimulus allows projects to get that tax credit as a single payment in the form of a grant, so developers don’t have to wait until tax season to get their money back.

Boucher, who has been doing private lending since 2003 when he moved to Scottsdale from the San Francisco Bay Area, said he sees the most potential in alternative energy.

“I compare it to the race to the moon,” Boucher said of the nationwide alternative-energy push.

Small banks aren’t experts in renewable-energy rebates and credits, which gives Ethos an advantage, he said.

The fund intends to charge interest rates between 10 to 15 percent, and pay investors returns of 12.7 to 14.1 percent, according to the fund’s executive summary. Ethos is asking a minimum investment of $100,000.

But the fund needs to find borrowers, and has yet to make a loan.

The fund principals are renewable-energy supporters, including senior underwriter Larry Farris, who makes biodiesel fuel in his garage, Boucher said.

“Our underlying business model gives us a significant comfort level with these projects,” he said.

At least one executive who develops alternative-energy systems like those that Ethos is targeting said such financing is needed.

John Ellers is CEO of Solid USA, which sells large hot-water and air-cooling systems powered by the sun. Solid is based in Austria and is selling systems in the United States.

Even before the current credit crunch, large banks only wanted to lend to larger solar projects in the range of $20 million or more, he said, leaving the mid-size projects struggling to find loans.

“It certainly is something that is needed today given the dearth of traditional construction financing that is available,” Ellers said.

In some cases, Ellers has turned to Austrian banks to finance U.S. projects because American banks are unfamiliar with the technology, he said.

“The major banks in Austria look at these projects and are comfortable with the technology being used . . . so they can do the underwriting much more easily and cost-effectively and at a lower risk than other lenders,” he said.

“I’m hopeful that in the near term our traditional lending sources for construction financing will get back into this market.”

Palo Verde plant west of Phoenix was rapped in 2006

PHOENIX – The nation’s largest nuclear power plant has made “substantial improvements” since numerous performance deficiencies prompted a safety downgrade in 2006, according to a letter released Tuesday by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station 50 miles west of Phoenix has been under scrutiny following a series of problems beginning in 2004 and culminating two years later with the safety downgrade. The move gave the plant the lowest rating of any of the nation’s more than 100 licensed reactors.

While the commission said the plant was being operated safely, its problem areas included safety-system reliability, human performance, and problem identification and resolution, among others.

The lowered safety rating triggered more stringent oversight by regulators.

“As a result of the problems they had, they were receiving the highest level of NRC oversight involving some 1,500 hours of inspection,” commission spokesman Victor Dricks said on Tuesday.

A March 4 letter released to the public Tuesday is the first indication that Palo Verde has improved its performance.

The commission wrote that Palo Verde has made “significant progress” in the letter to Randy Edington, executive vice president and chief nuclear officer of plant operator Arizona Public Service Co.

Of 12 areas in which the commission said that Palo Verde needed to improve, five have been resolved, the letter said. Those included long-standing equipment concerns, changes in management and other areas.

The findings of the remaining seven concerns, including problems with human performance, engineering programs, and emergency preparedness, will be released at a public meeting Tuesday.

“This is good news,” Edington said Tuesday. “It’s showing good momentum and good direction. We’ve made some excellent gains, but we’re also focused on how we can continue to get better from here.”

Edington said the improvements have come ahead of schedule; he had hoped to have them by the end of this year. “We’re basically ahead of the plan,” he said.

The problem that prompted the safety downgrade was an emergency backup generator that was inoperative for 18 days and unreliable for 40 days in 2006.

That problem came months after inspectors discovered that heat exchangers that cool emergency equipment and spent fuel storage areas at the triple-reactor plant had been fouled by years of plant technicians using an improper chemical mix. And in 2004, NRC inspectors found that APS had drained a large pipe designed to flood the reactors with water in an emergency years earlier without informing them.

Palo Verde supplies electricity to about 4 million customers in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California. It is run by APS for a consortium of power companies in the four states.

During the public meeting at 6:30 p.m. in Tonopah near Palo Verde, the commission staff will meet with APS representatives to discuss the plant’s safety performance during 2008. Commission staff members also will field questions from the public.

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On the Web

Nuclear Regulatory Commission: www.nrc.gov

Arizona Public Service: www.aps.com

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Palo Verde facts

Facts on the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, the nation’s largest nuclear plant complex:

• Location: Wintersburg, Ariz., about 50 miles west of downtown Phoenix.

• Design: Uranium-fueled, steam-electric nuclear plant using a pressurized water reactor.

• Capacity: 3,739 megawatts from three 1,270-MW units. Provides enough power for approximately 4 million homes.

• Construction: Began in 1976, first unit online in 1986. Third and final unit running in 1988.

• Cost: $5.9 billion for construction and startup testing.

• Owners: Arizona Public Service, Salt River Project (Arizona), El Paso Electric Co., Southern California Edison, Public Service Co. of New Mexico, Southern California Public Power Authority and Los Angeles Department of Water & Power.

Source: Salt River Project

Gabe Lopez inspects a silicon wafer at the Advent Solar offices in Albuquerque, N.M. The company chose New Mexico over Arizona.

PHOENIX — Yes, it’s sunny here.

But Arizonans are learning that it takes more than blazing rays to make Phoenix the “solar capital of the world.”

The Sonoran Desert is among the most efficient spots on Earth for solar power plants and rooftop solar arrays.

State requirements for utilities to get 15 percent of their energy from clean sources by 2025 also would seem an opportunity for solar manufacturing.

But most solar panels, mirrors, frames and other equipment are made elsewhere. In case after case, the state has fallen short of the competition. At least 10 companies have looked at Arizona in the past two years but decided to move their factories and about 4,500 workers to other Western states.

Some business leaders and politicians have made it a mission to grow Arizona’s solar industry, saying it could anchor a strong economy.

“Just because it’s sunny doesn’t mean we are going to get solar companies here,” said Rep. Michele Reagan, a Scottsdale Republican who is co-sponsoring a renewable-energy manufacturing-incentive bill.

“We have not capitalized on any industry in the solar arena or renewable energy at all.

“If you’re a company and you are trying to decide what state to move to, and some states are embracing you with open arms and you’ve got Arizona saying, ‘We are not doing anything,’ which one are you going to pick?”

In recent years, several states have offered financial incentives to the fledgling renewable-energy industry, helping to establish factories.

The federal government’s economic-stimulus package includes $50 billion in spending and $20 billion in tax provisions for alternative energy that should spur the industry even further.

Nevada, California, Colorado, Texas, Oregon, New Mexico and Tennessee all have successfully courted solar manufacturers to their states.

When New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson formed the state’s economic recruitment team in 2003, renewable energy was one of its primary targets.

The state landed Advent Solar Inc. after that company licensed technology from New Mexico’s Sandia National Laboratories in 2003.

Advent opened a small manufacturing and research facility in Albuquerque that began production in 2005.

Then the state’s economic development team successfully used $130 million in a variety of tax incentives to recruit Schott Solar from Germany to build a plant near Advent.

In December, the state announced that Signet Solar of California would build a manufacturing plant south of Albuquerque that could qualify for as much as $185 million in tax incentives.

Both Schott and Signet also had considered sites in Arizona.

When Schott Solar announced last year it would build a plant in Albuquerque, it not only qualified for all the state’s tax breaks, but the governor said he would ask the Legislature for an additional $12 million to pay for infrastructure. The city itself kicked in $1 million.

“When I was in Phoenix, we didn’t consider New Mexico competition,” said Jim Colson, a former economic-development official for New Mexico, Glendale and the Greater Phoenix Economic Council. “That has shifted. Now, New Mexico doesn’t consider Phoenix competition.”

That sun-soaked Arizona isn’t leading the solar-manufacturing frontier perplexes some experts in the field.

Arizona traditionally has shunned tax incentives and relied on its climate and population growth to drive industry.

Some oppose tax benefits for a few when they believe an overhaul of the tax code is needed to lower taxes on all businesses. When similar incentives were proposed last year during the final weeks of the legislative session, they didn’t pass.

“Arizona should be more competitive than it is,” said Colson, now president of site selection for Austin-based AngelouEconomics Inc.

With AngelouEconomics, he helps companies decide where to open new facilities, including solar companies trying to decide on U.S. locations.

“I’ve had several projects where Arizona was included in the mix, and it didn’t stay there very long,” he said. “It wasn’t all because of the lack of incentives. The property-tax impacts were significant when comparing it to its neighbors.”

The business property tax rate on a factory not in an enterprise zone is 2.95 percent in Arizona. Oregon has the next-highest rate in the West, at 1.52 percent. Rates are 1.13 percent in Nevada, 1.03 percent in New Mexico, 0.5 percent in California and 0.6 percent in Colorado, according to Scottsdale-based Incentives Advisors, which analyzed the effect incentives would have in Arizona.

When a state has a particular weakness, such as a high commercial property tax, tax credits and other incentives can be the final factor that drives a factory to that location, said Andy Mace, a principal with Cushman and Wakefield Consulting in Pennsylvania.

“It’s not always the place with the most incentives that wins, it’s the place with the total lowest cost of operating,” Mace said. “Over 10 years, where will I spend the least on labor, land, energy and transportation?”

Arizona has strong selling points, such as its weather and a work force with manufacturing skills. But factories require expensive buildings, lots of energy and hundreds of employees, making the economics much more important than, say, a corporate headquarters that simply needs office space for a few dozen employees.

Economic development officials say Arizona still has a narrowing chance at being one of those hubs. Even the companies that have so far passed up Arizona for factories say the state is a potential home of solar manufacturing.

“I can’t fathom why this isn’t a hotbed of solar activity,” said Peter Green, president and chief executive of Advent Solar in Albuquerque and a former executive with ON Semiconductor in Phoenix.

But Green agreed, when asked, that even if the tax-incentives bill passes, the state lacks the strong political backing, the money for sweeteners such as infrastructure improvements, and the word-of-mouth industry buzz that help foster a solar industry.

“I think it is going to be a struggle,” he said.

Nation’s first carbon-neutral city

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon will use today’s State of the City address to outline an ambitious strategy to make Phoenix the first carbon-neutral city – and the greenest – in the entire country.

Green Phoenix, a 17-point plan developed in collaboration with Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability, would require about $1 billion in water, renewable energy, public-transit and other investments.

Gordon is turning to President Barack Obama’s economic-stimulus package for help, though he doesn’t expect to receive funding for every goal.

The mayor’s proposal, if fully implemented, would cut city-generated greenhouse-gas emissions by roughly 70 percent, or 430,000 metric tons a year, the equivalent of taking 80,000 vehicles off the road, based on one estimate.

The three- to four-year plan is essentially a mix of new concepts and projects already under way. They range from providing bicycle rentals at light-rail stops to developing Phoenix’s canal system for recreation and business use similar to the Tempe Town Lake area.

In a bid to secure funding from the $787 billion federal stimulus package, Gordon and ASU President Michael Crow pitched the plan Tuesday to Energy Secretary Steven Chu in Washington, D.C., emphasizing that it also would create jobs and improve neighborhoods and health.

During the meeting, Crow said, he sensed that Phoenix was the first city to approach Chu with a comprehensive program promoting green technologies, which could be used as a model across the U.S.

“We put a new idea on the table,” Crow said by phone after the meeting.

To become carbon-neutral, a city must offset all its activities that produce carbon dioxide with efforts that remove the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere or produce no pollution at all. For example, the approach could require reducing vehicle use, planting trees and promoting alternative energy.

Of course, that would take money. The stimulus plan sets aside $50 billion in new spending for energy projects, including more than $6 billion in grants for states and cities.

Central to Phoenix’s green plan is solar energy.

The plan calls for installing solar panels and solar water heaters in existing city buildings and requiring them in all new facilities. It also would provide homeowners and businesses incentives for solar panels and weatherization. And it would require all lighting at park-and-ride and light-rail stops to be powered by the sun.

Today, Gordon also plans to announce that, by April, Phoenix will solicit proposals from the private sector to build the Valley’s first solar-power plant. The plant would be constructed on 1,200 acres at the city’s landfill just off Arizona 85 in Buckeye.

Phoenix would lease land for the solar plant for free, though it estimates such a project would require $1 billion in private investment. The city is asking the U.S. Energy Department for $90 million in stimulus dollars to cover the cost of connecting the future plant to the region’s power grid.

Green Phoenix will mean “turning Phoenix into a solar city,” Gordon plans to tell hundreds of civic and business leaders today during his address at Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel, according to an advance copy of his speech. “In the middle of what has always been known as the Valley of the Sun, Phoenix will become the ‘City of the Sun.’ ”

But critics of the stimulus plan worry that once the federal dollars run out, Phoenix and its residents and businesses will be stuck with the bill for maintaining new projects.

Tom Jenney, director of the anti-tax group Americans for Prosperity’s Arizona chapter, had not reviewed the city’s green plan. But he said the stimulus package provides only short-term government subsidies for cleaner-yet-costlier forms of energy.

“At some point, the subsidies will run out and people in Phoenix will have to pay the full cost,” said Jenney, who is based in Phoenix. “That will get very expensive.”

The green plan builds heavily on the city’s recent efforts to reduce its carbon footprint. In December, Phoenix unveiled its Climate Action Plan, which aimed to cut city-made greenhouse-gas emissions over the next seven years to levels just below those seen in 2005, even as the city continues to grow.

Several planned projects, including efforts to capture methane gas from landfills and wastewater-treatment plants, would be accelerated under the proposal. That also is the case for the future “people mover” connecting light rail with Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

With current local funding, the automated train is scheduled to connect with Terminal 4 by 2013 and two other terminals by 2020. But under Green Phoenix and with $200 million in possible federal grants, the people mover would reach all three terminals by 2013.

“Three months ago, the chance of Phoenix getting a billion dollars for any one or two projects was remote to none,” said Rob Melnick, executive director of ASU’s sustainability institute. “Now, you have an entirely different context where $1 billion is not entirely out of the question because the feds have to get things going.”

Chris Yetman

Canyon del Oro High School’s Academic Decathlon team will represent Arizona at nationals in April.

The team, from Amphitheater Public Schools, beat its closest competitor by more than 3,000 points.

That’s substantial, said CDO coach Chris Yetman, who compared it to the last time CDO won state in 2006. “We won that year by only 76 points, which is like double, double overtime,” he said.

Marana Unified School District’s Mountain View High School team placed fourth overall. And Sonoran Science Academy was named top small school and got the rookie of the year award.

All academic decathlon teams must be comprised of A, B and C students.

CDO’s team is made up of Taylor Cleland (A), Marie Clymer (B), and Jordan Kurker-Mraz, (C) who all finished in the top three of their categories. Ben Ferell (A), Melinda Fraser (A), Jennifer Wendel (B), Ellie Strasser (B), Dylan Ousley (C) and Rush Moore (C).

Yetman credits the win to incredible hard work.

“This team was willing to sit down and work three or four hours after they did their homework,” he said. “They’d get yelled at by parents and by me for not going to bed on time. I wanted to keep them healthy.”

Wendel said she used to stay on the phone studying with Clymer until 2 a.m., but she found a way around getting yelled at at home to go to bed.

“I started getting up really early, around 4 a.m., to study,” she said.

Her parents can’t be too upset, she said – especially her dad, who is a CDO vice principal, Robert Wendel.

“We brought a nice honor to the school,” she said.

Individually at the state competition in Phoenix Saturday, Cleland was the second-highest scorer overall; Clymer was top-scorer in the B category and Kurker-Mraz was second-highest scorer in the C category. Ben was the top essay writer and the team as a whole won the Super Quiz relay.

For their win, CDO students earned between $500 and $1600 in scholarships, Yetman said, and $250 flight vouchers on US Air.

Ferell said no one was more surprised than he was when he took the top essay award. “I’ve never medaled in essay before except in a very small competition,” he said.

His strategy for nationals, which will be in Memphis, Tenn., April 22 to 25: “I think we’ll all focus on the events that we had the lowest relative scores in. For me, that’s Art and the Super Quiz.”

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Results

Arizona Academic Decathlon state contest results:

1. 47,055.5 Canyon del Oro

2. 44,052.2 Red Mountain

3. 43,988.7 Mountain View Mesa

4. 42,901.4 Mountain View Marana

5. 42,769.0 Mountain Pointe

Source: Arizona Academic Decathlon data

Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., speaks to reporters in Phoenix, Ariz., Monday, March 10, 2008.

PHOENIX — John McCain says indicted Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi is no longer taking part in his presidential campaign.

McCain told reporters in Phoenix on Monday that he didn’t know if Renzi had officially stepped down as a campaign co-chair.

But McCain says the congressman has taken himself out of doing any further campaign work.

McCain added that it’s up to Renzi to decide whether he can still serve his congressional district.

Renzi was indicted last month.

He is accused of embezzling $400,000 from his family owned insurance agency to help pay for his first campaign, and of using his office to promote a land deal that would financially benefit both himself and a former business associate.

Renzi has pleaded not guilty.

Xavier Elizondo inspects a photovoltaic cell in between processing steps in the Advent Solar offices in Albuquerque, where the small manufacturing and research facility opened in 2005.

Yes, it’s sunny here.

But Arizonans are learning that it takes more than blazing rays to make Phoenix the “solar capital of the world.”

The Sonoran Desert is among the most efficient spots on Earth for solar power plants and rooftop solar arrays.

State requirements for utilities to get 15 percent of their energy from clean sources by 2025 also would seem an opportunity for solar manufacturing.

But most solar panels, mirrors, frames and other equipment are made elsewhere. In case after case, the state has fallen short of the competition. At least 10 companies have looked at Arizona in the past two years but decided to move their factories and about 4,500 workers to other Western states.

Business experts say the state needs to use some of the tax credits and other tools used by those other states to diversify its housing-dependent economy and deliver the state high-paying manufacturing jobs.

Some business leaders and politicians have made it a mission to grow Arizona’s solar industry, saying it could anchor a strong economy.

“Just because it’s sunny doesn’t mean we are going to get solar companies here,” said Rep. Michele Reagan, a Scottsdale Republican who is co-sponsoring a renewable-energy manufacturing-incentive bill with Sen. Barbara Leff, R-Paradise Valley.

“We have not capitalized on any industry in the solar arena or renewable energy at all.

“If you’re a company and you are trying to decide what state to move to, and some states are embracing you with open arms and you’ve got Arizona saying, ‘We are not doing anything,’ which one are you going to pick?”

Tough competition

In recent years, several states have offered financial incentives to the fledgling renewable-energy industry, helping to establish factories.

With the industry getting much more attention under President Barack Obama, and with nationwide calls to produce more clean power, the future of those factories is looking brighter.

The federal government’s economic-stimulus package includes $50 billion in spending and $20 billion in tax provisions for alternative energy that should spur the industry even further.

With other manufacturing operations shedding their U.S. workforces, renewable-energy jobs are increasingly attractive.

Nevada, California, Colorado, Texas, Oregon, New Mexico and Tennessee all have successfully courted solar manufacturers to their states.

Oregon, for instance, offers a 50 percent tax credit to pay construction costs for renewable-energy equipment manufacturers. Development officials say it has helped them land seven international solar manufacturers in two years. Most of those companies had considered coming to Arizona.

In the Midwest, Ohio is offering low taxes and incentives such as job-creation tax credits.

And just next door to Arizona, New Mexico is looking to set itself apart.

When Gov. Bill Richardson formed the state’s economic recruitment team in 2003, renewable energy was one of its primary targets.

The state landed Advent Solar Inc. after that company licensed technology from New Mexico’s Sandia National Laboratories in 2003.

Advent opened a small manufacturing and research facility in Albuquerque that began production in 2005.

Then the state’s economic development team successfully used $130 million in a variety of tax incentives to recruit Schott Solar from Germany to build a plant near Advent.

In December, the state announced that Signet Solar of California would build a manufacturing plant south of Albuquerque that could qualify for as much as $185 million in tax incentives.

Both Schott and Signet also had considered sites in Arizona.

New Mexico doesn’t just sweeten the pot with tax benefits. It also provides reimbursement to companies for job training and helps foot the bill for infrastructure needs.

When Schott Solar announced last year it would build a plant in Albuquerque, it not only qualified for all the state’s tax breaks, but the governor said he would ask the Legislature for an additional $12 million to pay for infrastructure. The city itself kicked in $1 million.

“When I was in Phoenix, we didn’t consider New Mexico competition,” said Jim Colson, a former economic-development official for New Mexico, Glendale and the Greater Phoenix Economic Council. “That has shifted. Now, New Mexico doesn’t consider Phoenix competition.”

How Arizona rates

That sun-soaked Arizona isn’t leading the solar-manufacturing frontier perplexes some experts in the field.

The state is often one of the first places looked at by executives shopping for factory sites. But financial analyses usually keep Arizona off the short list when companies make their final decisions because the cost of doing business in other states is lower once incentives are factored in.

Arizona traditionally has shunned tax incentives and relied on its climate and population growth to drive industry.

Some oppose tax benefits for a few when they believe an overhaul of the tax code is needed to lower taxes on all businesses. When similar incentives were proposed last year during the final weeks of the legislative session, they didn’t pass.

“Arizona should be more competitive than it is,” said Colson, now president of site selection for Austin-based Angelou- Economics Inc.

With AngelouEconomics, he helps companies decide where to open new facilities, including solar companies trying to decide on U.S. locations.

“I’ve had several projects where Arizona was included in the mix, and it didn’t stay there very long,” he said. “It wasn’t all because of the lack of incentives. The property-tax impacts were significant when comparing it to its neighbors.”

The business property tax rate on a factory not in an enterprise zone is 2.95 percent in Arizona. Oregon has the next-highest rate in the West, at 1.52 percent. Rates are 1.13 percent in Nevada, 1.03 percent in New Mexico, 0.5 percent in California and 0.6 percent in Colorado, according to Scottsdale-based Incentives Advisors, which analyzed the effect incentives would have in Arizona.

However, some of those states have higher levies than Arizona for corporate income, unemployment or other taxes. Incentives Advisors concluded that the tax incentives proposed at the Legislature would make Arizona more competitive for solar-manufacturing factories.

Such incentives can help level the playing field.

When a state has a particular weakness, such as a high commercial property tax, tax credits and other incentives can be the final factor that drives a factory to that location, said Andy Mace, a principal with Cushman and Wakefield Consulting in Pennsylvania.

“It’s not always the place with the most incentives that wins, it’s the place with the total lowest cost of operating,” Mace said. “Over 10 years, where will I spend the least on labor, land, energy and transportation?”

Arizona has strong selling points, such as its weather and a workforce with manufacturing skills. But factories require expensive buildings, lots of energy and hundreds of employees, making the economics much more important than, say, a corporate headquarters that simply needs office space for a few dozen employees.

“If you’re comparing Portland, Albuquerque and Phoenix, I know I can get real estate, labor, transportation, they’re all within one or two points of each other,” Colson said. “Then I overlay the incentives on top of that. Albuquerque jumps up, Portland jumps up and Phoenix actually goes down.

“That’s why the Greater Phoenix region is not winning these projects.”

Arizona’s odds

Economic development officials say the solar industry isn’t likely to spread evenly over the country but grow around those cities established as hubs.

They say Arizona still has a narrowing chance at being one of those hubs.

“Right now, there are 11 companies looking to decide (on factory sites) this year,” said Barry Broome, president of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, a proponent of the incentive bill. “We may be in or out (of the industry) after two quarters.”

Arizona has an available workforce, mostly because of continuing job losses in the semiconductor and construction industries.

The state not only represents a large market for solar devices but is next door to California and its large population. Transportation is on par or better than some of its competition.

The research taking place at Arizona State University, along with the recently upgraded solar-testing lab there that international companies use to certify their products, also are among its strengths.

But those pluses haven’t added up to much yet.

Arizona hasn’t had any major solar manufacturers move to the state. It boasts a few, small, homegrown companies and some German manufacturing companies that have opened small factories near Tucson.

Even the companies that have so far passed up Arizona for factories say the state is a potential home of solar manufacturing.

“I can’t fathom why this isn’t a hotbed of solar activity,” said Peter Green, president and chief executive of Advent Solar in Albuquerque and a former executive with ON Semiconductor in Phoenix.

But Green said that building a solar-manufacturing industry in Arizona will be challenging.

He agreed, when asked, that even if the tax-incentives bill passes, the state lacks the strong political backing, the money for sweeteners such as infrastructure improvements, and the word-of-mouth industry buzz that help foster a solar industry.

“I think it is going to be a struggle,” he said.

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More on this topic

The tax-incentive proposal

A bill in the state Senate would give tax incentives to factories that produce components for renewable energy. Opponents favor a comprehensive reorganization of the tax code, lowering taxes on all businesses and individuals.

The bill: Senate Bill 1403

What it includes: A transferable income-tax credit based on the jobs created, as well as a possible property-tax reclassification.

• Factories could get a 10 percent income-tax credit on capital investment, which would be paid out over five years. So a $100 million factory would get $2 million a year in tax credits for five years.

• Companies that spend at least $25 million also could have their real- and personal-property taxes reclassified, saving them about 80 percent.

Companies that pay between 125 percent and 199 percent of the median state wage (between 25 percent more to nearly double the state average wage) get a 10-year reclassification. Companies that pay 200 percent or more (more than double) the average wage get a 15-year reclassification.

Other stipulations:

• The majority of jobs must pay 25 percent more than the median wage in the state.

• The company must provide healthcare coverage and pay at least 80 percent of premiums.

• The tax credits are not available until the factory is operating.

• Companies must remain in Arizona for 10 years and would have to pay back credits received if they didn’t meet the program obligations.

Read the bill online at: www.azleg.gov

Africanized honeybees

SALT LAKE CITY – Africanized honey bees have been found for the first time in the Beehive State.

The bees, long the subject of lore as “killer bees,” were recently discovered in Utah’s Washington and Kane counties, the state Department of Agriculture said Wednesday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed that seven hives — three in the wild and four managed by private beekeepers — contained Africanized bees. The hives have since been destroyed.

The bees in Utah do not appear to be widespread and no injuries to people or animals have been reported.

State and local officials have been anticipating the bees’ arrival since they showed up in Mesquite, Nev., in 1999, just a few miles from the Utah line.

“We’ve been saying not if but when for a long time,” said Larry Lewis, a spokesman for the state agriculture department.

The bees are the result of interbreeding between European honey bees and bees from Africa. They were inadvertently released in Brazil in the 1950s. They were first spotted in Texas in 1990 and have since been found in several other states, including California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada.

Although Africanized bees look like European honey bees, they tend to get irritated faster, respond with more firepower and stay mad longer than other bees, said Kirk Visscher, a professor at the University of California at Riverside, who has studied Africanized bees since 1985.

Their stings aren’t more powerful than other bees but they are more aggressive and swarm more often. “The danger is getting a large number of stings in a short period of time,” Visscher said.

Attacks on people and animals have happened, but are relatively rare, he said. Africanized bees have linked to the deaths of 14 people in the United States since 1990, Utah officials said.

“This discovery makes it imperative that we think differently about honey bees in our state,” Leonard Blackham, Utah commissioner of agriculture and food, said in a statement.

Local officials plan to ramp up education efforts for homeowners and others about how to keep homes and buildings bee-free and what to do if they encounter a disturbed hive.

“These bees don’t go out and intentionally look for people to sting. They’re just defending their hive,” Lewis said.

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ON THE WEB

Utah Department of Agriculture: ag.utah.gov