FLAGSTAFF – A group of conservationists says pollution from a coal-fired power plant is clouding views of the Grand Canyon, and they want the federal government to do something about it.

A petition filed by the conservationists Tuesday asks the National Park Service to declare that particulate matter and nitrogen oxide emissions from the Navajo Generating Station near Page are harming air quality.

The group said the declaration could trigger a reduction in emissions at the plant, improve visibility and safeguard the public’s health.

The plant is operated by the Salt River Project, which supplies water and power to the Phoenix area. Kevin Wanttaja, manager of environmental services for SRP, said the agency has submitted a plan to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to cut nitrogen oxide emissions by 40 percent. No cuts in particulate matter are planned.

Roger Clark of the Grand Canyon Trust, which is among the petitioners, commended SRP for volunteering to retrofit its three units at the plant with nitrogen oxide controls by 2011. But he said it’s not enough. The best available control technology would cut such emissions by 80 percent to 90 percent, he said.

Building antivenin distribution system a priority

With a little “seed money” from the federal government, Leslie Boyer hopes to shore up the country’s “critically” low supply of antivenin and quickly distribute that lifesaving drug to health care providers nationwide.

Boyer heads the University of Arizona’s Venom Immonochemistry, Pharmacology and Emergency Response (VIPER) Institute, which seeks $450,000 to begin creating a national distribution network for antivenin, a drug given to people suffering from bites from snakes, spiders and other insects and reptiles.

And U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., wants to help. Giffords is seeking federal funding for the institute’s plan and several other health-related projects in the region.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., also will go to bat for several area health care projects.

Between them, they seek about $9.6 million for projects that include addressing environmental and health problems on the U.S.-Mexico border and purchasing high-tech beds for the neonatal intensive care unit at University Medical Center’s Diamond Children’s Medical Center.

Medical professionals in southern Arizona “have more experience in dealing with antivenin for snake bites and scorpion bites than anywhere in the U.S.,” Boyer said Thursday. “We want to be able to share this with the country.”

Drug companies balk at the high costs of manufacturing antivenins, Boyer said, and supplies dwindle every year.

The institute could change that by leveraging its relationships with zoos, drug companies and researchers, Boyer said.

Her goal would seem to fit the criteria Giffords uses to evaluate requests made to her for federal funding, according to Giffords spokesman C.J. Karamargin.

“She needs to have the case made by the requesting entity that this is a good thing for taxpayers,” Karamargin said. “We vet it. Many projects do not make the cut.”

Giffords, who represents the 8th Congressional District, seeks funding for eight health care-related projects.

Grijalva, who represents the 7th Congressional District, wants to fund five projects, including $1 million for the UA-based U.S.-Mexico Binational Center for Environmental Science and Toxicology.

That group tries to promote the shared use of technology and information to combat environmental and health problems along the border, said A. Jay Gandolfi, associate director of research and graduate studies at the UA College of Pharmacy.

Mexicans living along the border often get poor information about environmental problems that could affect their health, such as arsenic in their drinking water, Gandolfi said. The UA-based center tries to make the latest health information available to them and their health care providers.

The Diamond Children’s Medical Center seeks $425,000 to help cover about a third of the cost to buy 30 specialty neonatal intensive care unit beds, according to Vicki Began, vice president for women, children and emergency services at UMC.

With the new beds, which will warm premature babies as well as isolate them from harmful germs, “we won’t have to move kids back and forth,” Began said. “It’s the best of both worlds.”

It could take until December for those seeking federal help to find out if their projects will get funds. On their Web sites, Giffords and Grijalva caution fund-seekers that most projects won’t make the cut.

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Health care PROJECTS

U.S. Reps. Gabrielle Giffords and Raul Grijalva seek about $9.6 million in federal money for 13 southern Arizona health-related projects including:

• U.S.-Mexico Binational Center for Environmental Science and Toxicology: $1 million to help address and solve environmental and health problems on the border. (Grijalva)

• Arizona 7th District Eye Care Initiative: $250,000 for free glaucoma/vision screenings. (Grijalva)

• Desert Sentia Community Health Center, Ajo: $150,000 for renovations. (Grijalva)

• Carondelet Health Network: $455,000 for new digital mammography equipment (Grijalva)

• University of Arizona Center for Cellular Transplantation: $811,420 for outreach to rural and minority communities about diabetes treatments.

• U.S. Army, Fort Huachuca: $4 million for an advanced trauma life support system. (Giffords)

• United Community Health Center-Maria Auxiliadora, Green Valley: $325,000 for construction of a 21,000-square-foot clinic. (Giffords)

• Bisbee Hospital Association: $500,000 for emergency department renovations. (Giffords)

• Marana Health Center: $400,000 for radiological and other medical equipment. (Giffords)

• Sierra Vista Regional Health Center/Midwestern University: $350,000 for postgraduate nursing program. (Giffords)

• University Medical Center: $425,000 to help purchase 30 neonatal beds for the Diamond Children’s Medical Center. (Giffords)

• Northern Cochise Community Hospital, Willcox: $500,000 for a modular surgery facility. (Giffords)

• VIPER Institute: $450,000 to begin national antivenin distribution network. (Giffords)

Sources: Giffords, Grijalva Web sites

PHOENIX — The founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps is expected to announce his intentions to challenge Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona next year.

Chris Simcox is expected to make the announcement Wednesday. He already has a Web site promoting his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 2010.

Simcox says on the site he represents conservative values and will always put the United States first.

Neither Simcox nor a McCain spokeswoman responded to calls for comment. McCain will be seeking his fifth term to the Senate.

Simcox’s Web site says the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps patrols the U.S. southern border and reports illegal immigrants to authorities.

Even 5 1/2 years later, Savana Redding can’t believe she was strip-searched by school officials in pursuit of the equivalent of two Advils.

The 19-year-old hopes a U.S. Supreme Court hearing on Tuesday will ease the pain she feels from an event in eighth grade that’s clouded much of her life and set strict guidelines for school administrators.

“I’m never going to be able to forget about this,” says Redding, a college freshman still living in her hometown of Safford in far eastern Arizona. “I’ll think about it constantly, but I don’t think it’ll be as big a burden.”

The nation’s highest court will hear arguments on whether Safford Middle School officials violated the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches. Among the questions to be resolved are whether there were reasonable grounds to believe Redding was hiding pills and, even if there were, whether the pills posed a public health threat serious enough to justify a strip search.

Even if the court finds the search was unconstitutional, it will have to decide whether school officials can be held financially liable — determining whether it should have been clear to them in October 2003 that the search was illegal.

“Strip searches of children produce trauma similar in kind and degree to sexual abuse,” said Adam Wolf, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing Redding. “For Savana, she thinks about this event every day, has trust issues with her peers and adults … The search has radically altered her life.”

Initially, a federal magistrate dismissed the lawsuit Savana and her mother brought, and a federal appeals panel agreed 2-1 that the search didn’t violate her rights. But last July, a full panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found otherwise.

“It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights,” Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote in the majority opinion. The court also said vice principal Kerry Wilson could be found personally liable.

The district appealed to the Supreme Court.

The search happened after a schoolmate who was found with prescription-strength ibuprofen pills accused Redding of giving them to her. The Safford Unified School District bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs, and Wilson took Savana, a 4.0 honor student, to his office to search her backpack.

Then, he ordered her to go with a secretary to the nurse’s office. “When they asked me to take off my shirt and pants, I was panicky, but I didn’t want them to know,” Redding said. “I just wanted to get out of there.”

They told her to move her bra to the side and to stretch her underwear waistband, exposing her breasts and pelvic area. She did not resist. “I’m one of those kids who does what they’re told,” Redding said.

No pills were found.

“Her mom was irate,” said Wolf. “She feels that her parental rights were taken away and that the school had no business executing the search on her child.”

In a statement, Matthew Wright, the school district’s attorney, declined interviews but suggested a “reflexive action” in media coverage stemming from “a superficial understanding of the facts.”

He wrote that school officials sometimes are “in the untenable position of either facing the threat of lawsuits for their attempts to enforce a drug-free policy or for their laxity in failing to interdict potentially harmful drugs.”

A 1985 Supreme Court decision that dealt with searching a student’s purse said school officials needed only reasonable suspicions, not probable cause. But the court also warned against a search that is “excessively intrusive…”

Traumatized, Redding left her school and graduated from another junior high.

She developed bleeding ulcers and dropped out of Safford High School because of unexcused absences. When the ulcers flared up, Redding had refused to see the nurse — the woman who had searched her.

She left an alternative school without graduating and says she’s now introverted and untrusting, has few friends and prefers staying home. But she’s back in school at Eastern Arizona College after passing an entrance exam despite not having a diploma, plans to major in psychology and wants to “help other people that are like me.”

She hopes the Supreme Court sets clear guidelines for how school administrators “should go about searches like this.”

Safford’s school officials “never apologized to me,” she said. “They think what they did was right.”

But Redding thinks she’ll have won however the court rules. “It’s made such a big ruckus in the media that people are going to know, and people won’t want this to happen in their schools,” she said.

Missouri National Guard member Brian Coleman, 24, keeps watch on the border in this 2006 file photo.

NOGALES – On her first visit to Arizona as Homeland Security secretary, Janet Napolitano said Wednesday that requests to return the National Guard to duty along the U.S.-Mexico border are under review.

Arizona’s former governor said President Barack Obama wants to know what missions the guardsmen would perform before making a decision.

Napolitano was asked about restoring the National Guard’s border presence during a news conference announcing a $212 million renovation of the border inspection facility at Nogales and assistance for law enforcement agencies in their efforts to prevent a spillover of drug-cartel violence.

Govs. Rick Perry of Texas and Jan Brewer of Arizona have requested border troops. “The president … really has asked questions particularly of the governor of Texas, who was the first one to request it, saying, `Where would they go, what missions would they perform?”’ Napolitano said. “In other words, don’t just throw something like the National Guard at a place. They have a mission and a job to do.”

The Bush administration sent thousands of National Guard troops to the border to perform support duties in a mission called “Operation Jump Start” that began in 2006 and ended last year. It was intended to free up Border Patrol agents to focus on border security while new agents were hired. But since the troops pulled out, violence among Mexican cartels has exploded.

“When we did Jump Start here, it was to help us build the fence along this portion of the border. So that’s being looked at right now,” Napolitano said. “The National Guard issue, without being state-specific, is under consideration.”

Meanwhile, Arizona’s two Republican senators echoed the call for border troops Wednesday during a Phoenix-area luncheon sponsored by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Sen. John McCain said a National Guard presence on the border is urgently needed. “I don’t envision it for an extended period of time, but right now, we need the Guard on the border because of this violence,” he said.

Sen. Jon Kyl added that the troops proved effective in assisting the Border Patrol and deterring immigrant- and drug-smuggling operations.

Mexico’s government is battling the drug cartels, which are also fighting each other for the most lucrative smuggling routes into the United States. More than 10,650 people have been killed in drug violence in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon sent out 45,000 troops in 2006 to directly confront the traffickers.

A federal judge has delayed the trial of former Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi on charges including public corruption, extortion insurance fraud and racketeering until fall.

U.S. District Judge David Bury reset the trial date to Sept. 22 for Renzi and three co-defendants, James Sandlin, Andrew Beardall and Dwayne Lequire.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed at a hearing this week to vacate a June 2 trial date, saying it was unrealistic because of several pending pretrial motions.

It becomes the fifth trial date set since an initial indictment in February 2008 named all but Lequire. He was added in a superseding 44-count indictment. Renzi was a three-term congressmen from Arizona’s 1st District but retired last year.

All four men have pleaded not guilty.

The Supreme Court has ruled against the Navajo Nation for a second time in its battle with the federal government over whether the tribe should have gotten more money for coal on its land.

The high court, in an unanimous opinion Monday, reversed a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

The appeals court had said the federal government failed to uphold its trust duties to the Navajo Nation and that the tribe is entitled to damages from the government.

The tribe has alleged that Peabody Energy conspired with the Interior Department to persuade the tribe to accept a lower royalty than other government officials believed the tribe should be paid for coal on its land.

The Navajos claim the government’s breach of trust cost them as much as $600 million in lost coal royalties.

This is the second victory for the federal government in this case. The Supreme Court ruled in 2003 the Interior Department had protected the tribe’s interests under the Indian Mineral Leasing Act.

“Today we hold, once again, that the tribe’s claim for compensation fails,” said Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court. “This matter should now be regarded as closed.”

The case is United States v. Navajo Nation, 07-1410.

In this 1932 file photo, boxer Jack Johnson is shown working out in New York City at the age of 54. Sen. John McCain wants a presidential pardon for Jack Johnson, who became the nation's first black heavyweight boxing champion 100 years before Barack Obama became its first black president. Johnson spent nearly a year in prison for violating the Mann Act by having a consensual relationship with a white woman, a conviction widely seen as racially motivated.

WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain wants a presidential pardon for Jack Johnson, who became the nation’s first black heavyweight boxing champion 100 years before Barack Obama became its first black president.

McCain feels Johnson was wronged by a 1913 conviction of violating the Mann Act by having a consensual relationship with a white woman — a conviction widely seen as racially motivated.

“I’ve been a very big fight fan, I was a mediocre boxer myself,” McCain, R-Ariz., said in a telephone interview. “I had admired Jack Johnson’s prowess in the ring. And the more I found out about him, the more I thought a grave injustice was done.”

On Wednesday, McCain will join Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., filmmaker Ken Burns and Johnson’s great niece, Linda Haywood, at a Capitol Hill news conference to unveil a resolution urging a presidential pardon for Johnson. Similar legislation offered in 2004 and last year failed to pass both chambers of Congress.

King, a recreational boxer, said a pardon would “remove a cloud that’s been over the American sporting scene ever since (Johnson) was convicted on these trumped-up charges.”

“I think the moment is now,” King said.

Presidential pardons for the dead are rare.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton pardoned Lt. Henry O. Flipper, the Army’s first black commissioned officer, who was drummed out of the military in 1882 after white officers accused him of embezzling $3,800 in commissary funds. Last year, President George W. Bush pardoned Charles Winters, who was convicted of violating the Neutrality Act when he conspired in 1948 to export aircraft to a foreign country in aid of Israel.

The Justice Department and the White House declined to comment on this latest Johnson pardon effort.

However, the idea has a passionate supporter in McCain, who has repeatedly said he was wrong in 1983 when he voted against a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

“It’s just one of those things that you don’t want to quit until you see justice,” McCain said of Johnson’s case. “We won’t quit until we win. And I believe that enough members, if you show them the merits of this issues, that we’ll get the kind of support we need.”

Johnson won the world heavyweight title on Dec. 26, 1908, after police in Australia stopped his 14-round match against the severely battered Canadian world champion, Tommy Burns. That led to a search for a “Great White Hope” who could beat Johnson. Two years later, the American world titleholder Johnson had tried for years to fight, Jim Jeffries, came out of retirement but lost in a match called “The Battle of the Century,” resulting in deadly riots.

Johnson lost the heavyweight title to Jess Willard in 1915.

In 1913, Johnson was convicted of violating the Mann Act, which outlawed transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes. The law has since been heavily amended, but has not been repealed.

Authorities first targeted Johnson’s relationship with a white woman who later became his wife, then found another white woman to testify against him. Johnson fled the country after his conviction, but agreed years later to return and serve a 10-month jail sentence. He tried to renew his boxing career after leaving prison, but failed to regain his title. He died in a car crash in 1946 at age 68.

“When we couldn’t beat him in the ring, the white power establishment decided to beat him in the courts,” Burns told the AP in a telephone interview. Burns’ 2005 documentary, “Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson,” examined Johnson’s case and the sentencing judge’s admitted desire to “send a message” to black men about relationships with white women.

Both McCain and King said a pardon, particularly one from Obama, would carry important symbolism.

“It would be indicative of the distance we’ve come, and also indicative of the distance we still have to go,” McCain said.

Burns, however, sees a pardon more as “just a question of justice, which is not only blind, but color blind,” adding, “And I think it absolutely does not have anything to do with the symbolism of an African-American president pardoning an African-American unjustly accused.”

Burns helped form the Committee to Pardon Jack Johnson, which filed a petition with the Justice Department in 2004 that was never acted on. Burns said he spoke about the petition a couple of times with Bush, who as governor of Johnson’s home state of Texas proclaimed Johnson’s birthday as “Jack Johnson Day” for five straight years.

Bush gave Burns a phone number which led to adviser Karl Rove, Burns said, but Rove told him a pardon “ain’t gonna fly.”

Rove doesn’t recall any such conversation with Burns, his spokeswoman Sheena Tahilramani said, and “if he had been approached, he wouldn’t have offered an opinion.”

Surrounded by members of Congress and others, President Obama signs the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009. At far left is Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., one of the sponsors of the bill.

A public lands conservation bill signed by President Obama on Monday includes a provision by U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., that will help preserve 26 million acres of wilderness in a National Landscape Conservation System.

The Omnibus Public Land Management Act consists of 164 bipartisan bills that designate an additional 2 million acres of wilderness in nine states and establish or expand several national parks and monuments.

“I am proud to have stood with President Obama for the signing of this important piece of legislation,” Grijalva said.

More than 3.3 million acres of public land in Arizona gained permanent protection.

With the bill, it will be much harder to develop near monuments in Arizona such as Ironwood Forest, Agua Fria, Vermillion Cliffs, the Sonoran Desert and Grand Canyon-Parashant.

Also on the list are the Gila Box Riparian National Conservation Area, Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail and 47 wilderness areas.

The bill was approved after years of congressional wrangling. The House passed the Omnibus Public Land Management Act on Wednesday by a 285-140 vote.

Most Republicans opposed the legislation because it will lock away expanses of land in other states from development and restrict hunting, fishing and energy exploration.

“It vastly expands the federal land system. It locks up too much land as wilderness, parks or other restricted destinations without adequate analysis,” Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., said.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

HOUSTON – The Border Patrol plans to poison vegetation along more than a mile of the Rio Grande riverbank in Texas to eliminate the dense foliage used as hiding places by illegal immigrants and smugglers.

The Houston Chronicle reports opponents of the action compare it to the Vietnam War-era Agent Orange chemical program and say it could have harmful long-term effects.

Members of the Laredo City Council also have raised concerns about the spraying program.

Mexican officials are worried the herbicide could threaten the water supply for the city of Nuevo Laredo.

The Border Patrol says the project is designed to protect the country and keep its agents safe.

The $2.1 million pilot project is set to begin this week.

Governor sees death chamber before decision

SANTA FE, N.M. – Gov. Bill Richardson signed legislation Wednesday repealing New Mexico’s death penalty, making it the second state to ban executions since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Richardson, a Democrat who formerly supported capital punishment, said signing the bill was the “most difficult decision” of his political life but that “the potential for . . . execution of an innocent person stands as anathema to our very sensibilities as human beings.”

Richardson said he made the decision after going to the state penitentiary, where he saw the death chamber and visited the maximum security unit where those sentenced to life without parole could be housed.

“My conclusion was those cells are something that may be worse than death,” he said. “I believe this is a just punishment.”

The repeal, which passed the state Senate by a 24-18 vote Friday and was approved by the House a month earlier, takes effect July 1 and will apply to crimes committed after that date. Once in effect, the most severe punishment will be a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“Faced with the reality that our system for imposing the death penalty can never be perfect, my conscience compels me to replace the death penalty with a solution that keeps society safe,” Richardson told a news conference in the state Capitol.

With Richardson signing the measure, New Mexico joins 14 other states that do not impose capital punishment. New Jersey, in 2007, was the first and only other state to outlaw capital punishment since its reinstatement by the Supreme Court. Since 1960, New Mexico has executed one person, a child killer, in 2001.

WASHINGTON – Six-year-old Joshua Woods was singing Christmas songs on Dec. 8, 2005, when a runaway plane at Chicago’s Midway Airport crashed through a fence and collided with his family’s car, killing the boy. The tragedy underscores what the government says is an urgent safety problem.

Eleven major airports are struggling to meet federal requirements that runways be surrounded by safety areas that give runaway planes extra room to stop, according to a new report from the Transportation Department’s inspector general. The airports account for nearly one quarter of the nation’s air passenger travel.

All the airports have been working for years to come up with solutions, but often there’s no place to send runaway planes because the airports are hemmed in by highways, water, buildings or other obstructions.

The airports are located in Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, N.C., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco and Washington. Midway made safety improvements two years after Woods’ death.

Between 1997 and 2007, 75 aircraft overran or veered off runways, resulting in nearly 200 injuries and 12 deaths, the report said. In just three of the accidents cited in the report, 80 injuries and Woods’ death could have been prevented if safety improvements to runways made after the accidents had been in place beforehand, report said.

Safety areas typically are 1,000 feet long and 500 feet wide at each end of a runway, plus 250 feet along both sides of the runway.

The Federal Aviation Administration has allowed some airports that don’t have enough room for full-size safety areas to install crunchable concrete beds called “engineered material arresting systems” at the ends of runways. The beds are designed to stop or slow planes, not unlike the way gravel-covered ramps on highways stop runaway trucks.

The beds are typically about 600 feet long instead of 1,000 feet, saving space. Beds at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport have already halted three runaway planes. But even that requires more room than is feasible at some airports.

The report said some of the 11 airports may not be able to meet a congressional deadline of 2015 to put runway safety areas in place. Putting safety areas in place can require filling in wetlands, requiring environmental reviews that can take as long as 12 years to complete. Community opposition to airport expansion because of noise concerns has also been a factor.

“Until these challenges and problems are addressed, aircraft will remain vulnerable to damage and, what is more important, their passengers remain at risk of potential injury from flights that undershoot, overrun or veer off a runway lacking a standard (runway safety area),” the report said. “Improvements need to be made at the 11 large airports sooner rather than later.”

The FAA has already spent $2 billion helping hundreds of airports put runway safety areas in place, said Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the agency. In addition to the roughly $300 million budgeted annually for the program, the economic stimulus plan pushed by President Barack Obama contains millions of extra dollars, she said.

“We’re working with all these airports to see if we can do all these things as quickly as possible,” Brown said.

Chris Oswald, vice president for safety and technical operations at the Airports Council International-North America, which represents airports in the United States and Canada, said runway safety areas are one of the most difficult problems facing urban airports.

“You are talking about very significant geographic impediments to expanding runway safety areas,” Oswald said.

Reagan National Airport outside Washington, for example, is sandwiched between the Potomac River and the George Washington Parkway. The airport has been reluctant to install a crunchable concrete bed because periodic flooding could damage the system, the report said.

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ON THE WEB

Transportation Department’s inspector general: www.oig.dot.gov/

Federal Aviation Administration: www.faa.gov/

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MAJOR AIRPORTS

Eleven major airports face significant hurdles to meeting federal standards for safety areas around runways, according to a report by the Transportation Department’s Office of Inspector General.

• Baltimore Washington International-Thurgood Marshall Airport. Safety areas around all four of the airport’s runways need to be improved. The airport is working on the issue in connection with development of a long-range master plan.

• Boston Logan International Airport. The safety area around one runway is inadequate. Constrained by Boston Harbor and urban development, the airport has installed a smaller than standard crunchable concrete pad designed to slow or halt runaway planes as an interim measure. Airport officials are studying extending the runway by filling in part of the harbor and then adding a full-size pad.

• Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, N.C. Two runway safety areas are inadequate. The airport is installing a crunchable pad, but it is waiting for the project’s completion before deciding what to do about the other runway, which is constrained by a parkway and railroad tracks.

• Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood Airport in Florida. Three runway safety areas are inadequate, but they are constrained by canals, an interstate highway and railroad tracks. One runway has been improved with a partial and a full crunchable pad, but there are still some safety concerns. There are plans to extend a second runway; the third runway may be decommissioned.

• John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Three runway safety areas are inadequate. The airport is constrained by Jamaica Bay, roads and wetlands. One runway safety area project is under way. Improvements to the other two runway safety areas have to be done in turns so as not to increase congestion at the airport. Together, the projects may take more than seven years to complete.

• LaGuardia Airport in New York. Two runway safety areas are inadequate. Partial crunchable pads have been installed, but final improvements, including extending runway decks over Flushing Bay, present engineering challenges and could take more than eight years to complete.

• Los Angeles International Airport. Two runway safety areas are inadequate, but are constrained by roads, urban development and environmentally sensitive areas. Improvements have been delayed by legal battles involving the airport’s master plan.

• Philadelphia International Airport. Two runway safety areas are inadequate. The airport is constrained by two rivers, an interstate highway, a dredge disposal site and an industrial area. A draft environmental review is expected this year on one improvement project, but the airport still needs to reach an agreement on how to mitigate damage to wetlands to move forward on the second runway safety area.

• Phoenix Sky Harbor International. One runway safety area is inadequate. The airport is bordered by a river and urban development. The city is working on a plan to install a complete runway safety area.

• Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C. All three of the airport’s runway safety areas are inadequate. The airport is constrained by a parkway and the Potomac River. The airport plans to improve one runway safety area by extending the runway. It has not yet decided how to improve the other two safety areas.

• San Francisco International Airport. All four of the airport’s runway safety areas are inadequate. The airport is constrained by San Francisco Bay and a highway. The airport is still studying the problem, but tentative plans call for reducing landing distances on two runways. It may be impracticable to bring up the two other runways to federal standards.

Arpaio

PHOENIX – Federal authorities informed a high-profile Arizona sheriff that they will investigate his department over allegations of discriminatory practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio was informed of the investigation Tuesday in a letter from the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department.

The letter says investigators will focus on alleged patterns of discriminatory police practices and on allegations of discrimination based on a person’s national origin.

Arpaio told The Associated Press that he will cooperate with the Justice Department.

He says his department has nothing to hide.

Arpaio has gained a national profile for several controversial practices, including ongoing efforts to arrest illegal immigrants in the Phoenix area.

An opponent of Proposition 8 has his sign blocked by supporters during a demonstration in San Francisco, on Thursday.

SAN FRANCISCO – As thousands of demonstrators chanted slogans and waved placards outside, California’s highest court on Thursday skeptically grilled lawyers seeking to overturn the state’s ban on gay marriage.

Attorneys for same-sex couples sought to persuade the California Supreme Court that the public’s right to change the constitution doesn’t extend to depriving an unpopular minority of the right to wed.

But the court’s seven justices indicated a wariness to override what Associate Justice Joyce Kennard called the people’s “very, very broad, well-wrought” authority to amend the state’s governing framework at the ballot box.

“What I am picking up from the oral arguments is that this court should willy-nilly disregard the will of the people,” said Kennard, who just 10 months ago voted that prohibiting same-sex marriages violated the civil rights of gays. “The people established the constitution; as judges, our power is very limited.”

The justices heard three hours of arguments on a trio of lawsuits challenging the gay marriage ban, known as Proposition 8, which was approved in November with 52 percent of the vote. It effectively reversed a 4-3 Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage 4 1/2 months before the election.

After the hearing, couples such as Chloe Harris, 28, and Frankie Frankeny, 42, who married during that window, said they were disheartened by the tone of the hearing and not very hopeful the justices would opt to strike down the ban.

“We don’t go vote on anyone else’s rights,” Frankeny said. “It’s so demeaning.”

Gay rights advocates argued the proposition is such a sweeping change to the constitution’s equal protection clause that it was a constitutional revision, not just an amendment. A revision requires legislative approval before it lands on the ballot.

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3 QUESTIONS

The California Supreme Court is hearing arguments on three points on Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage:

• Is Proposition 8 invalid because it constitutes a revision of, rather than an amendment to, the state constitution?

• Does it violate the separation of powers doctrine under the state constitution?

• If it is constitutional, does it affect the 18,000 marriages of same-sex couples performed in the months before it passed?

The Associated Press

SACRAMENTO – Federal water managers said Friday that they plan to cut off water, at least temporarily, to thousands of California farms as a result of the deepening drought gripping the state.

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials said parched reservoirs and patchy rainfall this year were forcing them to halt all surface-water deliveries for at least two weeks beginning on March 1. Authorities said they haven’t had to take such a drastic move in more than 15 years.

The situation could improve slightly if more rain falls over the next few weeks, and officials will know by mid-March whether they can update their projections to release more irrigation supplies to growers from behind the mountain dams where water is stored.

Farmers in the nation’s No. 1 agriculture state said the shortages would wreak havoc on the rural economy, and they predicted that it would cause consumers to pay more for their fruits and vegetables, since they will have to be grown using expensive well water.

The drought will cause an estimated $1.15 billion loss in agriculture-related wages and eliminate as many as 40,000 jobs in farm-related industries in the valley alone, said Lester Snow, director of the state Department of Water Resources.

California’s agricultural industry typically receives 80 percent of all the water supplies managed by the federal government. The state, in turn, supplies drinking water to 23 million Californians and 755,000 acres of irrigated farmland.

Dwindling supplies will have to be routed to cities to ensure that residents, hospitals and fire crews have enough to meet minimum health and safety needs, officials said.