The Show for June 25, 2026: Aluminum plant pulls out of Benson, a major fish kill and more

The company behind a controversial aluminum recycling plant in Benson has decided to scrap it. We’ll hear why that is and what might be next. Plus, lakes around the state are drying up and leaving countless fish dead.

Transcript

UNDERWRITER: KJZZ’s original production, The Show, is supported by Banner Health, Arizona’s largest nonprofit healthcare system. Last year, Banner reinvested more than $1.1 billion in community health and charity care. Banner Health, nonprofit for Arizona. bannerhealth.com/nonprofitforaz.

LAUREN GILGER: Hi, I’m Lauren Gilger, co-host of The Show, an original production from KJZZ. Every weekday, we bring you the latest news and culture from across the state. You can find much more at theshow.kjzz.org. Here’s today’s episode.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. Coming up, San Carlos Lake is dried up and all of the fish there are dead.

MARK BRODIE: And big changes could be coming to the Phoenix Open.

LAUREN GILGER: But first, early voting has officially begun for this summer’s primary elections, slated for July 21. Maricopa County elections officials sent out more than a million early ballots, so if you’re on the state’s active early voting list, watch your mailbox. But this year, early voting is starting amid a slew of proposed voting changes from the federal level and an ongoing dispute over who runs what parts of our elections here in Maricopa County, and one actual new voter ID policy change here in place for the first time this year. Here to break it all down for us is Wayne Schutsky from KJZZ’s politics desk. Good morning, Wayne.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Good morning.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so let’s start, Wayne, with this concrete change, one change we know is coming that’s happening this year for the first time. This has to do with a new option to show your ID as you drop off the ballot this year. But this is an option, right?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, that’s right. So typically, you get a mail-in ballot, you can either mail it back in, go drop it at a drop box, or you can actually bring it to a polling place and drop it off there in a box. And then it’ll be tabulated after it goes through that signature verification process.

That’s one of kind of the big culprits of what we these election counting “delays” we see. It takes a little bit longer to process those ballots, especially when they’re dropped off on Election Day. And so this change that was passed a few years ago and goes into effect this year would allow you to have the option of you have your mail-in ballot, you already filled it out, you go to the polling place, but instead you just wait in line with everybody else and then show your ID, and then it immediately is verified via that ID instead of going through that signature verification.

So the idea is that it’s a new option to speed up counting — but again, it’s an option. If you still like just dropping it off in that box, that’s still available.

LAUREN GILGER: Sure, sure. You’ve actually seen kind of the rules around dropping off those late early ballots and sometimes confusion about them play out and and potentially affect real votes, right, Wayne?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, this actually happened during the last election cycle in 2024. And again, it’s not with this rule because this rule is new, but it’s it’s something similar. I was at a polling place in Scottsdale and a late early, as we call them, guy was coming up, really crowded polling place, to just drop off his ballot. Outside of that 75-foot zone where there’s a lot of political folks hanging out, there was a woman who said, “Well, that’s not going to get counted today.” He took it to mean, “My vote’s not going to get counted, so I’m just going to go home.” He turned around and walked back to his car.

LAUREN GILGER: With his ballot.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: With his ballot. And what she actually meant, she wasn’t not technically incorrect. It wasn’t going to get counted today because, as I mentioned, it still had to go through signature verification. So those late earlies typically aren’t counted until the next day or the day after that, which is what causes these delays.

So I actually chased him down and was like, “Hey, no, it’ll still get counted.” She wanted him, this option to verify your early ballot wasn’t available, she wanted him to actually like get it voided and wait in line and vote in person and have it counted immediately because there’s all these disproven ideas that somehow this is connected to fraud and all this, but I won’t get into that.

But again, it just goes to show you that there is confusion about some of these rules with late earlies, and if you have people who don’t maybe understand the rules fully out in front telling people they have to do this, even though it’s an option, I could see that creating some form of confusion.

LAUREN GILGER: I’m sure folks will be watching. All right, let’s move on then, Wayne, to the federal level here. President Trump issued a pretty sweeping executive order earlier in the year attempting to restrict mail-in voting, and that’s being challenged in courts on multiple fronts. But the postmaster general this week made some big headlines testifying to Congress that the Postal Service would not deliver ballots to states that do not turn over to the federal government their voter lists. This was just blocked by a judge in Boston.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, that was just literally within hours was blocked. But yeah, the postmaster — this rule has to do with mail-in voting and the federal government’s attempts to create a nationwide voter database essentially to verify the identity of people. And the president created this executive order directing the United States Postal Service not to deliver ballots in states that don’t hand over that rule, and it’s a big deal here because we’re one of those states.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, most people here vote by mail.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Most, 80-plus percent vote by mail, and we’re also one of the states where our attorney general, our secretary of state have said, “No, we’re not going to give the federal government our voter rolls.” They won a lawsuit that said this violates privacy laws.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, Secretary of State Fontes is not going to do that. OK, what’s next on this front in general, Wayne, when it comes to these executive orders from the president when it comes to voting? I mean, this is a broad attempt to restrict mail-in voting on a lot of fronts.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, so there have been two executive orders, both of which now have been blocked by judges, so for the short term, they are not in effect. However, we expect the administration to appeal. That USPS rule was supposed to go into effect by July, or the final rule was supposed to be published and be in effect for the general election essentially. But now, again, they’re on hold, at least for the states that filed these lawsuits, including Arizona was was signed on. So, yeah, they won’t be in effect for the time being.

LAUREN GILGER: Is there a chilling effect though, Wayne, in terms of just lots of questions now swirling about mail-in voting and distrust in it?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: I think it does create confusion, yeah, because people read the headlines, “Oh, the president is now saying we’re not going to turn in mail-in ballots — the Postal Service isn’t going to turn in my mail-in ballots.”

Now, that’s not the case for the time being, as I said, but again, people read those headlines and now they’re like, “Well, should I change how I vote? Should I go in person?” Yeah, so it definitely could create some sort of voter confusion about the options they have available.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, last couple of minutes here. There’s also this ongoing dispute between the Board of Supervisors here in Maricopa County and the County Recorder Justin Heap, which we’ve talked to you about before on The Show. They’ve been arguing in court for months now, basically about who gets to control what parts of local elections here. Now they’re being ordered into mediation. Is that the case right now?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, it was kind of an on-again, off-again type of thing, but the current on-again is that the judge has ordered them into mediation. During the latest hearing, attorneys for both sides kind of agreed that, “Yeah, we could do mediation if there’s if there’s an independent person.”

So the judge suggested another Maricopa County judge, Christopher Coury, who could do that. They ordered the mediation, and then the appeals court issued a stay in the case, and that takes it out of the lower court’s jurisdiction. So they kind of just paused that.

But then the Supreme Court weighed in and was like, “The stay can stay, but we’re going to modify it. You guys can still go to mediation. That’s still an option,” and kind of hinted that like, “Yes, please resolve this outside of the courtroom.”

LAUREN GILGER: Right, which, as we heard at the top of The Show, it could be a miracle is what the judge had said. I mean, so a lot of this though is about the fact that early ballots have gone out. Like, we are in the midst of of voting already.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, one of the supervisors — who has his own attorney because he doesn’t agree maybe on everything with the others — actually had requested the judge appoint a mediator about a month ago in filings, and the judge actually denied that request. But now the judge is definitely more on board, and I think a lot of that has to do with, yeah, as you mentioned, early ballots are out. We have an election ongoing, and the principal actors responsible for administering it are still fighting over how to do that.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. All right, lots to watch for. KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky with our Politics Desk. Wayne, thanks as always.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yep, no problem.

MARK BRODIE: The company that was planning to build an aluminum recycling plant in Benson has decided not to, after all. Aluminum Dynamics says it’ll develop the facility at an alternative location and blames differences with some state officials for the decision. The plan was controversial in the Cochise County city. That controversy included the recall last month of half of the city council over this issue. So why did the company behind the plan decide to move on, and what’s next for the community? With me to talk about that is Terri Jo Neff, county political and courts and crime reporter for Herald Review Media.

And Terri Jo, let’s start by reminding us all about this aluminum recycling plant. What was it all about?

TERRI JO NEFF: Sure. So the Aluminum Dynamics actually was leasing and going to buy a 200-acre parcel. About 20 of those acres were actually going to house this gigantic facility, 88-foot-tall building that was going to heat and then melt scrap aluminum — particularly cans — and then actually pour those into great big 2- to 4-ton ingots or slabs that were then going to be put on a railroad car and shipped to Mississippi, where that recycled aluminum was going to be turned into great big sheets of aluminum, sold off let’s say to car makers, other can companies, things like that. That was their plan.

MARK BRODIE: And this was a pretty unpopular plan in and around Benson, right?

TERRI JO NEFF: Once folks actually learned about it, Mark, it became very unpopular. So Aluminum Dynamics came into Benson, spoke with business leaders, city leaders around June-July of 2024. This was after things kind of went south for them with their planned location in Gila Bend, where they had actually bought acreage intending to build this recycling facility there, but they bought it without getting the necessary zoning permissions. And they ran into some roadblocks there.

So they came down summer of 2024 into Benson, were going to lease this property from Union Pacific Railroad. By October-November of 2024, they were sending out their notices. But as most people have learned now, Arizona’s requirements for notifying neighboring properties is a really, really short distance. So only a couple of dozen — no more than about 90 — potential neighbors, property owners even knew in the fall of 2024 about this plan. And of course, the city didn’t say much publicly because they were waiting to see if the company was even going to come in and get what they needed.

The real knowledge about this this whole plan did not come out until about May of 2025 when suddenly neighbors and people passing by on the highway saw this big hunk of desert. All this groundwork was being done out there, and then people started asking questions, and then they learned about the potential environmental hazards that come from aluminum recycling, as well as the vast amount of water that has to be used.

And this location, Mark, is right next to the San Pedro River.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so this led to a number of members of the Benson City Council being recalled, as you referenced. It was a really unpopular thing in the community. Why did the company ultimately decide to not go forward with this project at this location?

TERRI JO NEFF: Well, in addition to the fact that there was a lawsuit brought, it took several months. Really, the controversy just kept growing throughout 2025. By late ’25 and January of ’26, it was in the courts. Attorney General Kris Mayes had come to town, had one of the biggest political town halls we’ve ever seen in Cochise County.

And her office got involved. She recently announced to us during an interview that she wasn’t against the recycling plant itself. She actually had proposed the company find somewhere else in Cochise County or Arizona to to do it. She was absolutely against this location.

And so her threats essentially — which she’s admitted she threatened a public nuisance lawsuit against the owners of of Aluminum Dynamics, and they they just decided with with the price of of business, they needed to find someplace else.

We have been told that they have applied for various permits in Mississippi nearby where their big main plant is. And we don’t know what the neighbors out there think about that yet.

But there’s just a lot of relief in Benson. Again, the jobs would have been wonderful, very good-paying jobs with full benefits. People loved that part of it. They just were very upset about the environmental and health issues, the water issues, and actually the lack of transparency.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, so the the company, Aluminum Dynamics, has said that the facility will be built somewhere else. Is the expectation that that somewhere else is is outside of Arizona, maybe in Mississippi?

TERRI JO NEFF: Yeah, that’s going to be — we can’t imagine them even trying in Arizona. There’s just nowhere else. Even though the attorney general had suggested a location that’s about 20 miles from here, still would have been in Cochise County. There’s just no way right now in the political climate that this kind of business is going to come into Arizona.

So Mississippi looks like it’s going to be it. We don’t really know why they never considered that originally. There had to be a reason that they had planned on building outside of Mississippi, but that’s where they want to do it. They say that they believe the economics are still good for the need for this kind of aluminum recycling plant, so we’ll see what happens in the future.

MARK BRODIE: What has the reaction been to the news of of the company saying, “We’re not going to do this in Benson,” in your community?

TERRI JO NEFF: A lot of relief that officials listened. And and I don’t even mean a political relief here because this, interestingly, brought together so many different people of political leanings. We had very conservative ranchers who, of course, have their own thoughts about conservation and things like that; environmentalists; you just had the neighbors, you had small business owners; everybody of all these different walks of life came together, united, and were like, “Wow, you really can take on the big guy and get people to listen.”

The interesting part now is going to be what happens next. The honeymoon is going to be over very quickly for those three new City Council members. The budget, which just got approved the last few days, shows horrible signs for Benson going into the next couple of years, and without some kind of major industry here, there’s going to be some hard decisions.

So what what comes next now really, I think, has a lot of people just as on edge as they did about the fact that the plant might have actually gone into operation.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Terri Jo Neff with Herald/Review Media in Cochise County. Terri Jo, thanks so much.

TERRI JO NEFF: Absolutely, you have a great day.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning. It’s The Show here on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Lauren Gilger.

MARK BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, San Carlos Lake is dry and all of its fish are dead. We’ll hear from a longtime environmental writer about what happened and why this isn’t the first time the lake has gone dry.

LAUREN GILGER: But first, the case of Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance from her Tucson home continues to grab headlines months after it happened. Just this week, news outlets reported receiving a ransom note that indicated today’s show host Savanah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother had died shortly after she was taken in the middle of the night. But now, there’s another kind of drama playing out outside of her Catalina Foothills home. Three YouTubers who have been streaming from her street were arrested earlier this month. They face charges like obstructing a highway or thoroughfare and creating a public nuisance. And they’re just a taste of the social media scene that’s still going on in Guthrie’s normally quiet neighborhood. But should these YouTubers be protected by the same First Amendment rights as journalists who have also been reporting there? Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller has been writing about it, and he joins me now with more.LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Tim.

TIM STELLER: Hey, good morning, Lauren.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so most of us have seen this on the news, but since Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, tell us just like what it’s been like outside of her home there in Tucson.

TIM STELLER: I think it’s fair to say it’s been increasingly quiet, but still often people there on the street, by the streamers or even influencers showing up and posing in front of the house. I mean, weird stuff.

The streamers, I should say, you know, not everybody understands even what this is. It’s people who are like doing quote-unquote “reporting” on the Nancy Guthrie case, kind of trying to, it’s kind of a true crime video blog, and they sit there and they will talk on their camera for four, five, six, seven hours. And they may do that in front of the house or they may do that at their own house. So, sometimes it’s just showing up there near Nancy Guthrie’s house, right across the street.

LAUREN GILGER: What do neighbors think about this, Tim? Like it sounds like there have been some angry encounters.

TIM STELLER: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think increasingly over time, they’ve become fed up. Certain neighbors have really gotten angry at them and there have been clashes now and then, verbal clashes, I should say. And they’ve — neighbors have complained to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, which hadn’t taken well, what they did, the thing they did initially quite a few months ago was block off parking on the street there.

We should remember that when this first happened, there was — there were news outlets from all over the world parked or stationed right there on the street, and eventually they cleared that out.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, OK. So when you’re talking about these streamers being live for hours and hours and hours on end here, what do they talk about? Like, is this journalism?

TIM STELLER: Yeah, I mean, you know, it’s a fine line between journalism and not journalism. But I think the thing, the key problem, is that they run out of material. So people, people, you know, they have audiences, communities, I would call them, who engage with the YouTubers and share theories, just share friendship and conversation.

But the thing that one of the things that really gets people going is when someone complains, like a neighbor, or someone comes by and engages angrily with them. That person then becomes like the focus of conspiracy theories like, "Oh, that person must have been involved in Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance," or something, and then they find ways of starting to look up information on them and then they talk and talk and talk about them endlessly because there’s really very little else to talk about going on in the case.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, yeah. One of your news interns there at the Daily Star was caught up in this, right? Just because he was walking on the street there with a press badge.

TIM STELLER: Yeah, right. He walked past some, [Alexander Zabel Jr.] was livestreaming, and Griffin, our intern, walked past with a photographer. And yeah, before long, there’s, you know, everyone’s talking about Griffin, you know. "What who is he? Who does he work for?”

You know, the funniest comment I saw was that his shoes look like the perp’s shoes, referencing the person seen in a video outside Nancy Guthrie’s house the morning or late night she disappeared.

So that’s the kind of thing that happens because there’s really not much going on. And but it is apparently somewhat lucrative financially because they’re able to at least support their streams, if not support themselves fully on this.

LAUREN GILGER: So let’s talk, Tim, about the arrest of these three YouTubers and what they were charged with. One of the YouTubers said after this happened that every journalist in America should be speaking out about this, basically framing it as an issue of First Amendment rights. What do you think about that as a journalist?

TIM STELLER: I mean, you know, I wouldn’t think about it as specifically as a journalist. I don’t think it’s a journalism issue. I think it is a First Amendment issue because there is a question about whether you can stand in a public spot and talk and stream.

That’s a that’s, you know, not necessarily the freedom of the press. It could be viewed as a freedom of the press issue, but it also could just be viewed as a generic First Amendment freedom of speech, freedom of assembly issue. And so, yeah, I mean, it’s, what they do is kind of borderline journalism, if that, but I don’t think it really matters in the sense that it’s a First Amendment issue nevertheless.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, and you write about the fact that they’re not exactly upholding the principles of traditional journalism here.

TIM STELLER: Yeah, right. I mentioned in the column that, you know, one of the four major tenets of the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethics, ethics system is minimize harm. And, you know, it’s just that’s just not something they’re doing. They say SPJ says, "Balance the public’s need for information against potential harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance or undue intrusiveness."

And I think that undue intrusiveness phrase is something that professional journalists maybe take a little more seriously, that is like, when is it time to back off, when is it time to go in and and be a, be a pain, but only because it’s necessary, you know, for the story.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Last question for you, Tim. I mean, you kind of write about this as a community online, right, these people and their followers. But, but it’s almost you describe it as like an us-versus-them dynamic, especially when it comes to the quote-unquote traditional media.

TIM STELLER: Yeah, well, it’s become that because they view themselves as being targeted when traditional news outlets, reporters from traditional news outlets have not. So they view themselves as the people keeping the case alive and in the public eye. The disappearance of Nancy Guthrie has faded from most news broadcasts, but not from their streams. So they view themselves as kind of the good guys in this situation.

LAUREN GILGER: All right, well, leave it there. Tim Steller, joining us from Tucson with the Arizona Daily Star. Tim, thank you so much for coming on appreciate it.

TIM STELLER: Thank you, take care.

MARK BRODIE: The PGA Tour is changing its competitive structure and that could have implications for the Phoenix Open. Tour officials announced this week that starting in 2028, there will be two separate series of tournaments. The Championship Series will feature top-ranked golfers, while the Challenger Series will run concurrently and include the next tier of golfers. But there will also be a promotion-relegation system, meaning golfers can move up or down based on their performance. The PGA Tour says it’s identified 10 of the 15 Championship Series events, meaning there are only five slots left, and the Phoenix Open has not yet made the cut. With me now to talk more about this is Brandon Brown, senior reporter with the Phoenix Business Journal, who’s written about this. Brandon, good morning.

BRANDON BROWN: Good morning.

MARK BRODIE: This seems like it could be a pretty big deal for the Phoenix Open depending on where it lands, right?

BRANDON BROWN: Phoenix hasn’t been mentioned by the PGA as being part of the Championship Series, is what they’re calling the top level, the top tier. But if it’s not in there, the Phoenix Open could see big, big changes. Instead of having the top players play there, it’s going to have a lot fewer players play there, and they’re going to be playing for less money.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so it seems like it could be, depending on where the Phoenix Open ends up, it could be really good in the sense that if it’s in the Championship Series, all the top golfers will be there, which is not necessarily the case every year now.

But if it turns out to be in the Challenger Series, none of the top golfers will be there. It seems like the status quo will not stay. It’s either going to be really good or less good.

BRANDON BROWN: Yeah, in 2028, the Phoenix Open will look very different than it has for the last few years. And the question is, is do all the people who go to the Phoenix Open are they going there because of some of the top golfers that are there, or is it because of the atmosphere and everything else? And so if it gets bumped down to that second tier of tournaments and it’s not having the best golfers in the world there or some of the best golfers in the world there, will it draw the same crowds, will it impact the economy the way that it has?

MARK BRODIE: And as you’ve reported, the PGA is looking at some other — in addition to the tournaments that they’ve already said are going to be in the Championship Series, there’s some other locations, it sounds like that they’re looking at putting tournaments in. Phoenix does not seem to be among them.

BRANDON BROWN: Yeah, they said that they have about 10 tournaments already picked out. They didn’t say which ones. There’s some that like Pebble Beach, the Travelers Championship, that already have a very high purse, that are that are assumed to kind of be there.

But then they said they’re looking at other markets where the PGA doesn’t have a have a presence in, like Denver, New York, Seattle, some big markets where they don’t have a presence. And they haven’t mentioned Phoenix anywhere in this.

MARK BRODIE: OK, so you mentioned the purse, the amount of money that golfers win depending on how they do in the tournament. That has an impact here as well. Like, where does that money come from, and could the Phoenix Open bump up the amount of money they award out, which could, in theory, help them keep up in that top ranking?

BRANDON BROWN: Yeah, so they said that the Championship Series is going to need a purse of $20 million. That’s all the money that gets sent out to the golfers. The winner gets the most. The Phoenix Open has a purse about $9.6 million right now. That’s what it was this last year. So they need to more than double it.

That money comes from sponsor mostly from sponsorships. So WM, Waste Management, who sponsors the tournament now, they pay right now, it’s reported between $13 and $15 million a year, and so is that company willing to double the amount they give to the tournament? Are they able to bring in more sponsors to do this? Are they able to charge more money for the luxury seating that’s there? And finding all that way to find the money is where it will be tough.

MARK BRODIE: Do you have a sense of how big of a component the money will be? Like, how important it might be for the Phoenix Open to come up and sponsors to come up with $10-plus million in the next year or so to keep this as a top-level event?

BRANDON BROWN: Yeah, from what I’m hearing is the PGA of the existing tournaments and these other cities are kind of putting together bids and saying, "Hey, this is where we’re going to have our money from. This is how we’re going to be able to do this. This is how we want to be one of the top-tier tournaments."

MARK BRODIE: What would it mean for the Valley — I mean, the Phoenix Open is obviously a huge event with, you know, hundreds of thousands of people who go to this every year, and it’s got this sort of reputation, for better or worse, on the PGA Tour. What would it mean for the Phoenix Open if it were, let’s say, all the top golfers were guaranteed to come there? And what would it mean for the Phoenix Open and the Valley if it were in that second tier?

BRANDON BROWN: With how big the tournament is now, it’s kind of hard to imagine it getting any bigger. They don’t give out attendance numbers, but it’s, you know, known to be upwards to, you know, over 700,000 people are there all weekend long.

And so by having all the top tournament people there, with all the top players there, you can probably charge more money, they can probably generate more income revenue for it, and then they can also probably get better viewership on TV.

If they don’t have those top players, there’s a chance that the demand’s not going to be as high. So the prices might go down, but there might not be as many opportunities to be there, and it might dwindle in its size.

MARK BRODIE: Well, to the point you were just making, it kind of would answer the question to some extent, are people going there for the golf? Are they going there for the scene? And are people coming here because it’s February and it’s not snowing in Phoenix like it might be in other parts of the country?

BRANDON BROWN: That’s exactly right.

MARK BRODIE: So, when will we have an answer on this?

BRANDON BROWN: The PGA said that they are they’re looking to make an announcement before the end of the year on what the ’28 schedule is going to look like. Before the end of the summer, sorry. So in the next few months, we’ll probably have an idea of what the 2028 Phoenix Open is going to look like.

MARK BRODIE: And presumably based on that, we’ll have a sense of what the 2027 Phoenix Open might look like because it could be the end of an era, or it could be the end of something that is going to get even better.

BRANDON BROWN: Yeah, for sure. The 2027 will be the last one, the last tournament that’s it been in a really long time.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Brandon Brown, senior reporter with the Phoenix Business Journal. Brandon, thanks as always, appreciate it.

BRANDON BROWN: Thank you for having me.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. San Carlos Lake is all but gone, dried up. The fish are belly up and it seems to have happened pretty much overnight. The body of water a few hours east of Phoenix is closed off, and the San Carlos Recreation and Wildlife Department says it will be closed until further notice. That’s because there was what officials called a, quote, "major fish kill affecting approximately 100% of the fish population within the lake." That’s right, 100% of the fish, they’re all dead. Authorities say drought on the lake coupled with releases of water from the dam caused the fish kill. And our next guest said it’s not actually the first time this has happened there. Ron Dungan is a longtime Arizona environmental reporter, including here at KJZZ, he also author of on Substack, where he wrote about San Carlos Lake. And he told me how he heard about the story.

RON DUNGAN: I was actually fishing a small lake on the San Carlos Apache Reservation when I heard about it, and I was with a group called the Desert Fly Casters, and we come off the water and there’s this tribal game warden checking permits. We got to talking and I heard about the fish kill. When I got home, I saw the pictures in social media, and they’re pretty jarring.

LAUREN GILGER: It reminded him of the history of the lake, which he actually wrote about as part of his master’s thesis at ASU. And that’s where we begin our conversation.

RON DUNGAN: You first hear about this lake in Arizona history, at least the first time I came across it, was the territorial governor asked the feds to build a dam on the Gila River. And this was before Arizona was even a state. So the idea got kicked around for quite a while. Of course, the state didn’t have any money to build it. That’s why they asked the feds to do it. Well, the feds wound up damming the Salt instead, so it would be a long time before they got around to damming the Gila. But they finally did in the 1920s. The Pima tribe had used the Gila River to water their crops for years, and when settlers upstream started to use that water, there wasn’t any left for the Pima. So the government decided to build this reservoir to store water, and that way farmers could irrigate and there would still be some water left over for the Pima. That sort of left the Apaches out. When the reservoir filled, it flooded out the old town of San Carlos and everything around it, farms, houses, graves. The tribe was really concerned about it. So then James Kitch took over as superintendent, and he started to urge the feds to really take these concerns seriously. But they went ahead with it, and they named the dam after Coolidge when it looked like he might veto the project. Calvin Coolidge, yeah. Calvin Coolidge, right. So they they thought he might veto the project, and he and in 1930, after he had left office, he helped dedicate the the dam at a ceremony. Humorous Will Rogers was there as well, and the lake hadn’t filled up yet, and there were so many weeds growing in it that Rogers said, "If this was my lake, I’d mow it." A humorist for sure. So I mean, this this long and kind of interesting history of this lake, Ron, I mean, it was built to supply farmers with water, and in fact, this is not the first time it’s dried out. But there are like serious ecological and environmental implications to that, right?

RON DUNGAN: Yeah, absolutely. This is not the first time the reservoir has run out of water. Local media reports say that it’s run out of water at least 20 times since it’s filled. 20? Yeah, and and and I do know they’ve had fish kills before. More than 5 million fish died in 1976 according to one report. Uh, they had a fish kill in 2018, and I do remember in 2021 when the Telegraph Fire burned, the lake was so low that firefighters got their water from Roosevelt Lake.

LAUREN GILGER: So I mean, what exactly is the scientific cause, I guess, of this fish kill? Like, it’s drying up, there’s not enough water, and then also this release of water from the dam. I mean, what happens to kill the fish?

RON DUNGAN: Well, fish need oxygen. We don’t really think of that because they’re under water. We would, you know, drown if we were under there, but they’re equipped to take oxygen out of the water. And and they also need a certain chemistry, right? So if pH levels get off, if the temperature gets too high or too low, uh, that can be hard on fish. You know, trout will die if the water gets too warm. It’s just too warm. Um, but in a situation like this, I would guess that there was just not enough oxygen, there could be other chemical factors involved. And you start running out of water, there’s just not enough for the fish to live on.

LAUREN GILGER: Have you ever fished San Carlos Lake?

RON DUNGAN: I have, very early when I moved here. It’s a big bass lake. It it it I quickly learned it it’s better if you have a big boat to get around on. Uh, but it is one of the first lakes that I did fish in Arizona. So not the first time there’s been a big fish kill on this particular lake, and also, Ron, this is not the only lake in the state or in the region that’s that’s dried up recently, right?

RON DUNGAN: No. No, a lot of lakes in the state are in trouble right now. Uh, we’ll probably get some relief from the monsoon, but we’re supposed to get most of our water from snowpack, and it just hasn’t snowed much the last couple of winters. I’ve heard that Sunrise Lake is not fishable because it’s so low. You can’t get a boat on it. The boat ramp at Lee Valley leads to nothing but dirt. One of the ramps at Big Lake is useless. Lower Lake Mary up by Flagstaff is completely dry. So it’s tough. You know, a lot of us have been fishing in the White Mountains all winter long. I mean, normally if you live in the Valley, you stop going there in the late fall, early winter because the lakes ice up. Well, these past couple of winters, that hasn’t happened. I started going to the White Mountains in February. Wow, no ice. No ice.

LAUREN GILGER: But it has been the dam has been a source of jobs to those folks over the years, to the to the tribes up there. Is that a kind of a dying industry as well? I mean, when these lakes continue to dry, there’s not enough snow, what does that do not just to, you know, the economy in that area, but to the farmers who that water is supposed to be for?

RON DUNGAN: I don’t think those farmers are going to be able to get water from too many other places. You know, we’ve seen other farmers in Central Arizona struggle because of uh Colorado River problems, shortages there. I think with fishing, you know, there’s always a chance that lakes will come back, you can restock them, that sort of thing. It’s problematic maybe when you get into endangered species, but for recreational fishing, I think over the long term, we’ll probably be fine. The thing about fly fishing is you have to be an optimist to do it, so it’s it’s been a strange season, but we still have water and people are catching fish. Now we’re getting reports of an El Niño system moving in, and that could really help. You know, in the news business, you’re supposed to point out when things aren’t going well. I think people misunderstand why we do that. It’s not to make people feel bad, it’s to give them a heads up while there’s still time to do something. We have time to do something about climate change, and we’ve done we’ve done a lot of really good work in renewable energy, water conservation, and so forth, and I think we’ll get there. I certainly hope we do. But when you see a lake with a bunch of fish going belly up, it’s a reminder we still have a long way to go.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. I mean, it’s such a a a harbinger, right, like of of the times. And it seems so surreal, and I was watching video footage of it, it looks like something out of a a horror film or a sci-fi movie, right? Like, I just wonder what does this fish kill in particular at this lake in this time kind of say to you about the future of our environment?

RON DUNGAN: It’s a very jarring visual. If we have an El Niño and the lake fills back up, we can restock those fish. It’s very dystopian, and if you do environmental reporting or writing, you have a lot of dystopian moments. You have to be careful not to just make sure that all that reporting doesn’t come back to the public. There’s still a lot we can do. Yeah, still a lot we can do. All right, we’ll end on a note of hope. Ron Dungan, a longtime Arizona environmental reporter, including here at KJZZ, he writes about this stuff on his Substack, and is the author of the book, "The Worst Fishing Dog Ever and Other Essays," all about fishing in these lakes. Ron, thank you so much for coming on the show again. I appreciate it very much.

RON DUNGAN: Appreciated. Thanks for having me.

MARK BRODIE: There was a major happening in Goodyear earlier this week when Buc-ee’s opened its first Arizona store. Buc-ee’s is a gas station and convenience store, but for many people, it’s more than that, as evidenced by the lines of fans who camped out just to be among the first to get in on Monday’s opening day. With me now to help explain why Buc-ee’s has become such a phenomenon is Eric Benson, senior writer with Texas Monthly. Eric, good morning.

ERIC BENSON: Good morning.

MARK BRODIE: So for those of us who have not been there and haven’t in Phoenix, at least, braved the crowds yet, can you sort of describe what Buc-ee’s actually is?

ERIC BENSON: Buc-ee’s is the most supersized gas station that you could ever imagine. Uh it’s ten, you know, every Buc-ee’s that that they build now, these large travel centers, they’re tens of thousands of square feet, over I think all of them would be over 50,000 square feet. And so they have all of the gas station snacks that you could ever want, many of them Buc-ee’s branded. You can get a full lunch there, you can get a full breakfast there. There’s a huge portion of the store that’s for Buc-ee’s merchandise that I see all over the country wherever I go visit. And, you know, dozens and dozens of gas pumps, hundreds of parking spaces, and they are very proud of their bathrooms, as well.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, I’ve heard these are some of the cleanest bathrooms you’re going to find. Is that really true?

ERIC BENSON: They they clean them constantly. They are always being cleaned. So, uh, I do I will say, uh, gas station bathrooms can be inconsistent, uh, at best, um, and I have I have never been to into a stall of a Buc-ee’s that has not been clean.

MARK BRODIE: So it sounds like this is, of course, a Texas-based company, so it it it’s sort of taking its everything bigger in Texas motto to other places, now including Goodyear, it sounds like.

ERIC BENSON: Truly, they’ve they’ve had a massive expansion over the last, uh, seven years, I believe is when they opened their first store outside of Texas.

MARK BRODIE: And is it true that the the person who started Buc-ee’s, the when the very first one opened in Texas, was kind of hopeful that this might turn into something a little bit bigger than just one, you know, one single gas station and store? It seems like it’s really just become a thing, a huge thing.

ERIC BENSON: It has become a thing, but but over a really long period of time. You know, the first Buc-ee’s store was over the the founder of the first Buc-ee’s store is a guy named Beaver Aplin, who’s still the the CEO and the the co-owner of it. Um, and he opened the first Buc-ee’s in his hometown, Lake Jackson, Texas, which is on the Gulf Coast, uh, in 1982. And so it’s been, uh, you know, over these last, uh, what, we’re talking, you know, 44 years, uh, it’s it’s been a it’s been a slow build. You know, the first Buc-ee’s was, uh, was 3,000 square feet instead of 2,400 square feet, which is the the industry standard. So it was a little bigger and a little nicer than your average gas station convenience store, but it wasn’t anything like the ones that they’re building now.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, it sounds like it. So why is it that people seem to love this place so much? Why is it that you see merchandise all over the place from there wherever you go?

ERIC BENSON: Well, I think that they they got a good logo and they got a good mascot as part of it. There’s Buck Buc-ee Beaver, you know, and the the nickname, the long kind of boyhood nickname of the of the founder is Beaver. His his name is Arch Aplin III, I believe, um, but he was always Beaver. And so they have this great logo, which, you know, looks great on a shirt. Uh, so that was smart. And then, it’s it’s just it’s just one of those brands that for whatever reason has a has a kind of following beyond, uh, anything having to do with it. It’s it’s something people have a kind of, almost emotional attachment to. Maybe it’s the size of it, maybe it’s the logo, maybe it’s the fact that the food is is good and they have fun food options. Um, but it’s it’s a place that I think for a pretty drab experience, which is stopping on the side of the road to get gas and get some, you know, snacks, um, yeah, they they make it they they kind of Disney-ify it a little bit, and people like that.

MARK BRODIE: Well, and it seems as though the company kind of leans into it, right? Like they seem prepared for people in the West Valley here of Phoenix to be camping out and, you know, lines of cars for miles to get in on their first day.

ERIC BENSON: Yeah, well, they’ve had experience with it now. You know, I think as as the store expanded and and got into they started to build these big travel centers, you know, the opening of each one became a bit of a new event, uh, a big event. And as they’ve come to new places, expanded beyond Texas into the Southeast and now to Arizona, um, you know, people hear about it and want to see it. I, you know, I’d liken it to something like In-N-Out Burger. You know, when they open a new In-N-Out Burger, it’s a big it’s a big deal. People line up, people want to get, you know, and is so it’s this regional store that is kind of a legend, and when it comes to your neighborhood, uh, I think there are, you know, there are a lot of people who want to get there first.

MARK BRODIE: Is there kind of a scarcity argument, too, here? Like, this is the first Buc-ee’s in Arizona, and for people who are familiar with it or maybe have heard of it or maybe have seen the the beaver logo on a t-shirt somewhere, like they just like they don’t have other opportunities nearby to go, so this opens, it’s a big event, let’s just go check it out.

ERIC BENSON: Absolutely. I would imagine when uh for the eighth opening of a travel center in the Phoenix area, there there will not be the same line. But believe me, I think they uh I think they’d love to open eight, right, you know. Yeah, well, I mean, are there are there plans to just keep expanding? You mention it’s been, you know, four decades since the first one, and, you know, this is the first one in Arizona, which is, of course, not that far from Texas, relatively speaking. Are there plans to keep opening more and more of these?

ERIC BENSON: I I I don’t know. I would imagine, yes. Uh, so I I was in, uh, you know, I wrote a long story on Buc-ee’s in, uh, in 2019, and at the time there were 14 travel centers in Texas, there were 34 stores overall, and they had just opened a store in Alabama and it had a big line and all of that. But when I went to Beaver’s office, he had a map of the United States on his wall, and he had all these little pins in the map, and it looked it looked like a map of like battles in the Civil War because it was all in the Southeast and it was all there were all these kind of little little pinpricks all around Atlanta. And, you know, every major highway going out from Atlanta to another major city had a little pin in, you know, kind of equidistant between Atlanta and these other cities. And I said, "What what is this? It looks like an invasion." He said, "Yeah, kind of does look like an invasion." And so they um they had plans even when they didn’t have properties then, they had plans to really put Buc-ee’s between these kind of between major American cities, so when you were driving, there’d be one smack dab in the middle right when you wanted to stop. I don’t believe there was one anywhere near Arizona in 2019 when I visited, but they’ve been successful with their expansion, and so I don’t see why they would stop.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. OK, so you mentioned that the food is pretty good. I assume it’s not just like chips and, you know, the kinds of snacks, prepackaged snacks you would, you know, you would get at any convenience store.

ERIC BENSON: Oh, very I mean, they, yeah, yes. It is a it’s a full kind of restaurant, um, it’s all counter service, there’s no there’s no weight service, but there’s a there’s a head chef at a Buc-ee’s, there’s a big kitchen, um, they are, you know, they’re cooking a lot. And so you have a kind of there’ll be these islands out in the middle of this massive store where at lunchtime, now I think it varies depending on stores, but the ones I’m familiar with in Texas, there’s a big barbecue area, and they’ll at lunch, you can just grab and go, brisket sandwich, pulled pork sandwich, uh, you know, that sausage sandwich, that kind of thing. There’s a counter where you can go up and order other kinds of food, and it all, you know, it all comes out very quick, and they, um, you know, like a fast food chain, like a big national fast food chain, they’re always introducing new menu items, and I was there when some of those items were being kind of showcased for Beaver and he was selecting, "Oh, are we going to do the this kind of you know, yogurt cup, what what kind of lid are we going to use, and bring these out to um to all of our stores." So it’s it’s very, very intentionally done, and there’s, uh, you know, all these these is not a franchise operation. All these stores are owned by the company. Right. And there’s a lot of consistency across the brand.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting. All right, that is Eric Benson, senior writer with Texas Monthly. Eric, thanks so much.

ERIC BENSON: Thanks, thanks for having me.

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for listening to The Show’s podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah, and Ayana Hamilton. The Show was created by Jon Hoban and our executive producer is Amy Silverman. You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at theshow.kjzz.org. You can also find us on Instagram at @kjzztheshow.