The Show for July 7, 2026: Recharging Arizona aquifers, a 94-year-old baseball artist and more

Most of the precipitation that falls in Arizona is lost before it seeps into the ground. Hear about trying to find new ways to get more water into aquifers. Plus, we meet the 94-year-old artist with a new exhibit of baseball portraits.

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.

MARK BRODIE: Hi, I’m Mark Brodie, 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.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, and welcome to The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Lauren Gilger.

MARK BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, how to get more of the rain and snow that falls in Arizona underground?

LAUREN GILGER: And where to find the fun this summer as the temperatures shoot up.

MARK BRODIE: But first, Republicans in the Southeast Valley’s 5th Congressional District are picking a new nominee. The incumbent, Congressman Andy Biggs, is leaving the seat to run for governor. But the race has taken a sharp turn over the past several weeks after a series of allegations against the perceived front-runner. KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky from the politics desk has been reporting on this. He’s with me now to talk more about it. Wayne, good morning.

MARK BRODIE: Wayne, good morning.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Good morning.

MARK BRODIE: So let’s describe the seat and who the contenders are. Who are the candidates in this Southeast Valley district?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yes, this is Congressional District 5. Like you said, a lot of the Southeast Valley going into Pinal County. Very Republican district. The two candidates in the Republican primary, who whoever wins will likely win that seat, are former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, very popular name, a lot of people know who he is. You know, he kind of had that America’s sheriff persona, did a lot of YouTube videos, a "COPS"-style television shows. So what, very well known, has the Trump endorsement.

He’s running against Daniel Keenan, who’s a local product, homebuilder — not well-known, but says he’s very connected to the community. Grew up there, was born in Gilbert, I believe. Now lives in Queen Creek. And, you know, he’s he’s running saying that, "I’m closer to the roots here. I know what the people want," and trying to unseat that frontrunner.

MARK BRODIE: And given sort of the political makeup of this district, for a while, it seemed like the the race was about like who could be closer to Donald Trump, right?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: That’s right. Yeah. Like I said, Andy Biggs has represented this district for years. And basically, the Republican primary winner wins the general because of the partisan splits. Democrats just don’t really have a good shot.

And ... with that Trump endorsement — Trump’s endorsement is still, as we’ve seen in recent history in a lot of other states, is still a golden ticket in Republican primaries, by and large. So between his public persona, his name recognition and then that Trump endorsement, you know, we all kind of assumed that Lamb was going to run away with this thing.

MARK BRODIE: OK. So things started to change maybe a few weeks ago or so when there was some reporting by the Arizona Republic about some maybe not-so-savory parts of Mark Lamb’s life. And I don’t want to get into all the details, but can you sort of summarize what these were about?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah. Broadly, again, yeah, Republic did a lot of deep-dive reporting into this. Broadly, they they spoke with some women, some friends of the Lambs or former friends of the Lambs. They had a lot of text messages, things like that, that showed basically that Lamb allegedly had participated in a lot of extramarital type of relationships, whether they were physical or via text message and sending photos that I won’t get into detail here, that type of thing.

Maybe involved also sending photos of his wife to friends of his and his wife being involved. Again, not going to get into the details on the radio, but what we’ll call unsavory things, things that don’t line up with his image as an active member of the LDS Church. And, you know, running on a family values type of platform. And so those kind of undermined that persona he’s built for himself in the district.

MARK BRODIE: And there’s also now an issue, and you’ve reported on this, about his — like does he actually spend time in in this district or in the state?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah. At the same time, him and his wife have — again, YouTube videos — showing that they’ve opened up this ranch in Tennessee. And they’re saying that this is a way to supplement the family’s income now that he’s going to be in Congress, they think. Had to end his his consulting business. And, you know, there’s there’s cabins you can rent, there’s event space. And they’re saying that their family is going to be running the place while they live here.

But he’s posting an awful lot of videos of him on the ranch working on it, so again, questions about whether he actually lives not just in the district, but the state that he wants to represent in Congress.

MARK BRODIE: The timing of that seems kind of interesting as he’s running a congressional race in Arizona to be opening a business on the other side of the country.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah. And again, he hasn’t really ... he’s kind of fallen out of the public spotlight, has not done any interviews. You know, ended up canceling an interview with me after some of these Republic reports came out.

So he hasn’t answered questions about, you know, ranches very popular in Pinal County. Why couldn’t you open up a ranch in Pinal County? Why did you have to go, you know, thousands of miles away to start this business? Plenty of people have run for Congress in Arizona and been able to sustain themselves by living in Arizona. So, yeah, it probably would have been the top controversy in this race had all of this other reporting not happened.

Diannie Chavez/The Arizona Republic

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Pool photo

MARK BRODIE: OK. So Keenan, his opponent, has been talking about a lot of this. Like what is he saying? How is he trying to use all of this to to boost himself?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, he basically, you know, during a "debate" that Lamb didn’t show up to, so it was just Keenan. He basically just said ... "This guy is not, you know, he he’s going to sully the reputation of our of our Republican Party."

Now depending on what your partisan leaning is, you might say it’s already happened, but he, yeah, he basically says "This guy isn’t the right guy to represent our community," Because, again, this is a East Valley heavily Republican community, also heavily religious community, very conservative. So a lot of the allegations against Lamb kind of fly in the face of of the perceived values of that district.

MARK BRODIE: Has any of that mattered? I mean, I would imagine polling is fairly sparse in a in a primary like this, but like when you talk to voters, like is this something that’s on their mind?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, like you said, haven’t really seen any polling since late last year before all this controversy broke. Unsurprisingly, that showed Lamb with a sizable lead. But again, also people ... don’t really campaign like they used to anymore. Lamb has disappeared, so I can’t go to Lamb rallies and see what his supporters think.

Daniel Keenan has done a few public events, and I did make it out to one of those. And one of the gentlemen I spoke with, who was there just kind of feeling out Keenan and seeing whether he liked him, did say he’s read the Lamb allegations, and that, you know, they basically if what you say you are and what your behavior shows you are don’t line up, that’s a problem for him, was basically what that guy said.

MARK BRODIE: I mean, is there reason to believe that Lamb might not win this primary?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Again, without any polling to show otherwise, it’s ... with that Trump endorsement, it’s it really depends on whether the voters in the district believe these these allegations. Again, the Republican reporting is very heavily sourced. There’s a lot of evidence backing up what they’re reporting there, but everyday voters, you know, I'll say these days with politics, we see we see Republicans, we see Democrats, anyone who has a smear campaign against them, they say it’s a smear campaign. They say this, you know, they don’t have to refute the specific allegations, which Lamb hasn’t, but they just say we’re being smeared. And then if their supporters believe them and that’s enough to get them 50 plus one, then they can win.

MARK BRODIE: And has the president or anyone on his team suggested that the endorsement could be taken away?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: No ... I have not heard a single thing from most of the groups endorsing Lamb. ... Somewhat surprisingly, given some of the values they say that they they have in this district and some of the people backing him. Turning Point USA is a major backer, has not pulled that endorsement. The president has not pulled his endorsement.

I think the Republic reported today that Club for Growth is, which is another conservative organization, is putting a bunch of money behind Lamb’s campaign in a last-minute push. So it doesn’t seem like it’s hurt him on the political donor side. And, again, with donors, we’ll have to wait until we see those results start coming.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, and we’ll have to see how if it hurts him or not with the voters. We’ll see that at the end of the month. All right, Wayne Schutsky, KJZZ’s Politics Desk. Thanks.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah. Thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: If you’ve ever wondered why neighborhoods in Phoenix don’t look like New York City or somewhere in Europe with brownstones lining the streets or smallish apartment buildings built pretty close together, our next guest this morning points to a simple building code change that is at the root. It’s called single-stair reform. Nicole Rodriguez is executive director of the nonprofit Valley Urban Action Alliance and president of the Urban Phoenix Project. And she says there’s an outdated requirement that apartment buildings of a certain size have two staircases for fire evacuations. Now, more cities are getting rid of that requirement and are advancing single-stair reform. They say it’s an important step in improving housing supply and affordability, and it’s actually safer. I spoke with Rodriguez more about it.

NICOLE RODRIGUEZ: Almost everywhere in the U.S. you are required to do dual stairs, two stairs for buildings over three stories.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah.

NICOLE RODRIGUEZ: Which makes it really challenging to build apartments on small lots. And often times that leaves us with either single-family homes only in urban areas or even the big mega-blocks. And these laws were written way before, you know, fire sprinklers or modern fire safety measures and materials. So it’s outdated, and other states and cities are revisiting it now.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. It seems to be picking up steam in other places. Austin, you know, Nashville, Dallas, all cities that have kind of put in reforms like this in recent years. And then you’ve got obviously like big cities like New York and Chicago where there are a lot of buildings like this.

NICOLE RODRIGUEZ: Seattle and New York City have been doing the single-stair buildings for a number of years, and it’s conceivable to do it up to like six stories in the U.S. It’s it’s very practical to do that. Some cities have that recently passed laws have just gone up to like five stories.

But I mean, try to like visualize what a single-stair apartment building could look like, and we’re talking about small. A lot of people think of, you know, the Netherlands, when they think of those tall skinny quaint-looking buildings with a beautiful different colors that makes it easier to build on infill lots, which we have a lot of vacant lots here in Phoenix.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. Right. So that would be the idea, to allow developers, builders, smaller ones often, to build these smaller buildings and fill in some of these lots that are empty in the center of the city where people want to be, and it would be cheaper. Is that the idea?

NICOLE RODRIGUEZ: Yes. So a big component of this is it’s it’s cheaper to build. To build two stairs, you need a lot more land. But fire escape staircases are extremely expensive to build, right? Um, but what’s kind of interesting too about all this is that single stairs are comparably more safe. With the the mega-block uh apartments that have the dual stairs, you have people that are very far from this fire exits.

And with the the single-stair, you’re more or less 20 feet, your front door’s more or less a max of 20 feet from that stairwell to exit. Um, in another aspect too is actually apartments are safer than single-family homes. Apartments have to have sprinklers and they have to have at least I know for Phoenix, fire-rated doors. And, you know, we even see some cities doing the self-closing doors. And it really contains any kind of breakout within a unit if that were to occur.

LAUREN GILGER: But it is, there’s pushback here from some fire departments. Like the International Association of Fire Fighters says, you know, it’s not a good idea. One staircase in means one way in, one way out for firefighters if they need to get into a building. I mean, you’re saying if these laws are written in the right way, all of those things are mitigated.

NICOLE RODRIGUEZ: Yeah. And I think part of the issues in the conversations in the past with these other states and cities that were passing or trying to pass these code changes, cause it’s building code changes, not zoning reform, um, is potentially they just didn’t have all the right folks at the table when they’re starting these conversations. And, um, you have to have fire officials there. They are a key player in the these discussions and and you have your building safety code people, too, that just focus on fire safety building code.

So ensuring that you have all these subject matter experts and fire personnel who have the lived experience, I think they’re going to make progress in coming out with a solution that it’s it’s going to be feasible in the end, and also we’re going to be looking at cheaper overall to build and more walkable, more community focused. I think everyone will actually learn along the way that it’s safer for us to start looking at single-stair buildings.

LAUREN GILGER: Another pushback I think you see from this is just skepticism from folks in other cities that developers will pass their savings along to consumers, right? Like the effort here is to create more affordable housing, but I mean is there anything here that would stop developers from saving some money in the design and then just making a bigger profit?

NICOLE RODRIGUEZ: So, one of the things that makes it so challenging to build on these small infill lots, right, those vacant lots that no one likes to see, that takes a lot of work to even get a community garden on if you’re lucky enough to get that, um the the problem is the cost.

So let’s say um you do have enough space to do dual staircase in there, but the cost is still exponentially higher than a single-stair building. And then we start seeing, you know, the financing that goes into it. It becomes more and more out of reach of the smaller builders. ... It’s nice to think that we could potentially have builders from our own community, our own neighbors being able to build on infill lots rather than out of state or even out of country people coming in and building what often times we see are the big mega-block apartments.

But you still have to follow on any apartment those basic modern fire safety measures, right, you don’t in single-family homes.

LAUREN GILGER: So if those developers, those smaller builders, build these single-stair buildings and and, you know, can do it in a cheaper and easier way, is there anything that would require them to pass those savings along to renters?

NICOLE RODRIGUEZ: A good business model is, of course, you’re going to have to recoup your cost, um, but when we are building more and more and it becomes easier to build, the more options that you and I have to buy or rent, the cost of rent or the cost to buy goes down.

LAUREN GILGER: So it’s a piece of a bigger pie.

NICOLE RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, exactly.

LAUREN GILGER: Let me ask you lastly about efforts to implement reform like this here in Arizona. I know this has not been part of big efforts at the state Legislature. You work on the municipal level. Are you talking to cities hoping you can get something like this implemented?

NICOLE RODRIGUEZ: Yeah. So with the different cities, they all have a different way of changing building code, so um some are going to be a little more fluid and easier to revise building code, um, than others. And there’s cities like, let’s say, Tempe. Tempe really cannot build out anymore. Tempe’s going to have to start looking to build up. So I think Tempe is going to be one of those cities that might be the leader on this particular topic.

And once again, like single-stair solutions, sing- single-stair building solutions is just one of those many things that we could be doing to make it easier, the cost to build more affordable, right? But what makes it so palatable is that it also creates more walkable communities, and a lot of folks want walkable communities.

Folks are traveling to Europe quite a bit to visit places that look very much like what I’m trying to describe to you right now with these single-stair, more smaller quaint apartment buildings. Um, and we see those communities as being very walkable, and you have more opportunities to go out and do things closer to you.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s really interesting. If you wonder why our streets don’t look like Europe or New York, this is one of the reasons. OK. Nicole Rodriguez, executive director of Valley Urban Action Alliance, as well as president of the Urban Phoenix Project, joining us. Nicole, thank you very much for coming in. I appreciate it.

NICOLE RODRIGUEZ: Thank you, too.

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

MARK BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, our Made in Arizona series continues with a 94-year-old portrait artist who taught himself to draw in retirement.

LAUREN GILGER: But first, it is the dog days of summer here in the Valley of the Sun. The extreme heat warnings are officially here. You can’t really go outside and it seems like all of your friends are on the beach somewhere else. So, how do we survive the summer of 2026? Well, you’re in luck because we have got an expert here to tell us, or at least give us his take. Craig Outhier is the editor of Phoenix Magazine and he is in studio now to tell us more, where it is thankfully air-conditioned. Good morning, Craig. Thanks for coming in.

CRAIG OUTHIER: Good morning. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I have to say, if I had a dollar for every time I’d written a feature story in the magazine about how to stay cool in the summer, I mean, yes, I mean, I’d a few dollars, let’s put it that way.

LAUREN GILGER: A few dollars for sure. I want to ask you about that to begin with, right? Like you you you edit this kind of magazine that a lot of magazines in in other parts of the country right now would be talking about, you know, 4th of July backyard barbecues, hot icies, right? Yeah, for magazines and and and parties and things like that, but we definitely have to think about this a little differently here in the Valley.

CRAIG OUTHIER: Not our high season by any means.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. How do you think about it as an editor?

CRAIG OUTHIER: I do kind of go to the old clichés, the, you know, as the kids say, the tropes. Underground places are great. So you know, underground bars, mean these are the things I put in the magazine, like the Roastery on 16th Street, Richardson’s, the old, you know, Southwestern restaurant. He expanded and there’s a basement bar that’s so wonderful. It’s so dark. It’s so well, it’s a dungeon.

LAUREN GILGER: It’s cool down there, yeah.

CRAIG OUTHIER: But dungeons are well insulated and dark, which in Phoenix in the summer, dungeons are amazing. They get a bad rap. Uh, so, yes, those are the kinds of things I think about.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So, yeah, you have to you have to reframe things a little bit there. What do you do with yourself during the summer? How do you how do you make it through?

CRAIG OUTHIER: I try to find a Zen uh kind of balance between um air conditioning, obviously, um then um a little bit of outdoor, you know, finding those those discrete moments where you can enjoy the outdoors. Maybe there’s a monsoon or just a, you know, crazy sirocco that comes in off the desert. That was a Donald Fagen line. Steely Dan played, you know, that what they call it back then, Cricket Pavilion, Desert Sky, Blockbuster, you know what they call it, Ashley HomeStore Superstore Pavilion, whatever it is. Yeah. You know, they were playing in July. It was like, well, that’s going to be hellish, but this beautiful sirocco came in off the desert. So those are little moments I try to find, and then of course, self-medication.

LAUREN GILGER: Cocktails?

CRAIG OUTHIER: Cocktails. And I do a cocktail camp every Sunday. Yes, exactly. It’s a great way to deal. I don’t, you know, wouldn’t recommend being drunk the whole summer. That’s not productive. That has that’s going to have byproducts that you don’t want. Yes. But, you know, having a cocktail on a Sunday afternoon, it’s just a productively irresponsible. Yes. And I think that’s kind of the thing you got to look at. Just find your Zen. Balance the whole deal. What do you mean by a cocktail camp? You you you come up with a new cocktail?

CRAIG OUTHIER: The magazine uh partners with a series of restaurants and bars, and then every Sunday throughout the summer, I host it. It’s, you know, three or four cocktails at some of the best restaurants and cocktail programs in the valley. We, you know, partner with them. And uh that’s the way I spend my Sundays as a father of two and a husband. Yes. I’m trying to deal with.

LAUREN GILGER: I’m sure your family appreciates that. But, but a lot of fun, I’m sure. OK. Underground bars, you’ve got cocktails. What about when you can go outside? Like you can go outside in the summer here, maybe in the morning or in the evenings, or if you’re wet, right? If you’re in some body of water.

CRAIG OUTHIER: Thank you for bringing that up. You know, going back to the old saws, the clichés, like I had always read about the Salt River, and I had done the tubing thing on the weekends, right? Everyone has. It’s pretty gross. Our producer, Amy Silverman, who’s also our wonderful columnist at the magazine, you know, uh says she will never step foot in that thing, and I get it. But that is the weekend Salt River. The weekday Salt River is much cleaner. It’s a self-cleaning, moving body of water. So when you go during the week, especially in the summer, in the dead of summer, there’s not that many people out there at all. Yeah. Yeah. And I have a buddy who has a, you know, a couple of stand-up paddleboard rigs. Oh. And he invited me out last year, and I had never gone in 20 years in the valley, 25 years. I had never gone out there and done the paddleboard. I mean, there is an immediate like 20° drop for water. Oh, yeah. Being on the water, yeah. It’s the best evaporative natural evaporative cooling machine in the valley. And I’m talking, you know, not Tempe Town Lake. I think that you kind of lose some of it there. But the Salt River, the same, you know, up there in on halfway to Payson. And uh it’s so lovely, and as Mark was saying, there’s there’s horses. Yeah. And you know, you almost always see them if you go late in the day, which is when you should probably do it, when the sun’s going down, that’s when you really can enjoy the the coolness. And once you once that direct heat or sunlight is off of you, it really is gorgeous. And that’s the one time uh in the last 25 years since I’ve been here where I’m actually in the valley, what technically is the valley, and didn’t feel like I was there outdoors.

LAUREN GILGER: I mean, yeah, that’s a lovely thought. It’s a lovely thought. So, the city kind of empties out this time of year, Craig. I I appreciate when that happens in some ways. First of all, the lack of traffic. It’s like easier to get into places you might want to go. Like are there some upsides you think to Phoenix in the summer?

CRAIG OUTHIER: That’s a great point, and that’s part of the Zen, I think, is enjoying the lack of congestion. Driving here this morning, I, you know, was headed towards downtown for part of it, there was no traffic. There is a a thankful kind of quality you can have there, right? Gratitude. I mean, if you’re in any major metropolitan area and driving somewhere at 8:30 in the morning, what’s the chances you don’t hit traffic? Yeah. So those are the things I think we tell ourselves. He’s kind of like comforting B. S. Makes us all feel better. But it’s like we’re the last people standing, so you can appreciate this about yourself. OK. Last question for you in the last minute or so here, Craig. I wonder, you know, do we need to just like reframe the way we think about summers in Phoenix? Like could we approach it more like people approach it on the East Coast in the winter, maybe? Like you’re not going to go out a lot side a lot out side in the winter in the East Coast where it’s freezing cold a lot of the time. But for some reason, we we think about it very differently. I think we get angry about it here in a different way.

CRAIG OUTHIER: Yeah, there is a seasonal affective disorder here, and I think that’s been proven. We did a a Jimmy Magahern, a, you know, longtime journalist who used to work for the New Times, writes for Phoenix Magazine a lot. He did a piece on on summer seasonal affective disorder because we found that, you know, statistically, um crime rates, violent crime, does spike per capita. Mhm. You know, maybe not total crime because, like you say, there’s fewer people here in August. But the people that are here are angry and violent. Um, and I think that that is a problem. But um, you know, I think what we do is we look at it, like you say, like the East Coast does with their winters. What you do is you pray for an Indian summer in in on the East Coast, which means one of those nice long falls. Here, we just enjoy hopefully a pleasant spring that doesn’t get hot quick. And you know, even though we had a really nasty March, we had a really nice April and May here. Even June not terrible. Exactly. So we kind of just, you know, we took that. I think that gives us doesn’t it give us fuel for the summer? Hopefully. As we hit as we hit 110? We’re like, well, this sucks, but that May was really nice. At least there was that. All right. Phoenix Magazine editor Craig Outhier, thank you so much, Craig. Appreciate it.

CRAIG OUTHIER: My pleasure.

MARK BRODIE: A research project involving Arizona’s three public universities aims to get a better sense of how much water is in Arizona’s groundwater basins and figure out how to get more water into aquifers rather than being lost to evaporation. The Arizona Tri-University Recharge and Water Reliability Project finds, among other things, that more than 95% of the precipitation that falls around the state is lost to evapotranspiration. In the Phoenix Active Management Area groundwater basin, the amount of evapotranspiration is about equal to the amount of precipitation. Kathy Jacobs is the former director of the Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions at the University of Arizona. She recently retired from that. She says the project’s purpose is to help the State Department of Water Resources identify ways to capture water that’s currently being lost and get it underground as recharge. Jacobs joins me to talk more about this.

MARK BRODIE: Kathy, you found there is a lot of water that falls from the sky that we're losing, right?

KATHY JACOBS: It’s an enormous amount of water that we lose. In fact, it’s more than 95% of the water that comes down as snow or rain is lost statewide. But there are actually basins in the state where evaporation exceeds the amount of water that actually falls as rain or snow, which, of course, is only possible if water is being pulled up out of the aquifer or the soil, which is in fact happening.

MARK BRODIE: I mean, for a state that is grappling with a very long-term drought, that feels like a pretty big problem.

KATHY JACOBS: It’s a very serious problem, and it is, unfortunately, going to get worse because of climate change. So as the air temperature increases, it basically sucks more water out of plants and out of the soil, which is not a good thing for the long term.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. So what parts of the state is this more of a problem than others?

KATHY JACOBS: Well, all of the state, of course, has been facing a drought. I would say different parts of the state have different portfolios of water supplies, and those water supplies are more or less affected by this, this problem.

At the large scale, of course, the Colorado River is being affected by this problem. On smaller scales, not every basin even has any surface water or water flowing across the surface that they can capture. So much of this really is about how can we manage land differently in order to really change the amount of water that gets recharged into the aquifer.

MARK BRODIE: So what are the kinds of things that can be done to try to reduce the amount of precipitation that’s lost?

KATHY JACOBS: Well, the main thing that we are proposing is that we get the water as quickly as possible to a place where it can recharge. And it turns out that along the Mogollon Rim, in particular, there are lots of areas that are made of very porous rock, karst topography, it’s called. And that rock is very easy to recharge through, as well as places across the state that have fissures or other kinds of cracks in the surface. Those are easy to to recharge through. And in addition, of course, along the stream beds, we have very porous material, and that helps recharge as well.

So the idea is, how can you more quickly get water into the ground, rather than letting it pond on the surface or basically just sheet flow across the surface until it’s all evaporated?

MARK BRODIE: So is the idea then to get more of the the rain and and snow fall to the Mogollon Rim? Like do would you be getting it somehow from, for example, the Phoenix area or the Tucson area up to the Mogollon Rim so it can go into the ground?

KATHY JACOBS: No, kind of the opposite, actually. Most of the snowfall and rain actually is already on the Mogollon Rim because the mountains actually act as a barrier and and cause the air to rise and then that causes snow and rain to fall. So with that is fortunately actually where we have a larger proportion of our rain and snow.

The idea is to manage the snow pack more effectively, to make it last longer, to make more of it actually melt and get into the soil or into the aquifer. One of the ways you can do that is by being really smart about the way you do forest thinning. There is forest thinning going on across the state in many places already as a fire management technique, and our suggestion is that we actually change the way, the pattern that we use for doing that kind of forest management to try to get the water into areas where it can recharge and also to protect the snowpack.

MARK BRODIE: So, OK, so then what do you do when it, for example, rains, you know, we’re predicted to have a maybe a wetter than average monsoon season in the Phoenix area, what what can be done with all that water or if anything at all?

KATHY JACOBS: Actually, urban areas are a very major potential source of new water because of course, we are increasing the runoff every time we pave a surface, more water runs off than with in a natural environment. And so we can be much smarter than we are now about capturing that water quickly and getting it recharged more quickly.

One of the things that we identified as a possibility is more effectively working between the flood control districts and the water management districts and and utilities to see if there’s a way to deliberately plan for recharge rather than just planning for flood, for flood reduction.

So there is actually a very large quantity of water that falls in urban areas, much of which just runs off and evaporates or sits in a pond and evaporates. If it gets into a dry well, which is a very frequently used technique in the Phoenix area, that’s a great thing.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, I mean, how big of a change would this have to be? Like what kinds of efforts would have to be made to really capture as much water as possible? It sounds like what you’re saying in the Phoenix area, at least some of that infrastructure already exists.

KATHY JACOBS: Yes, that’s right. However, I think each new subdivision or large-scale development can actually be tweaked in ways that can enhance capture and recharge. That being said, we don’t think even this very large list of ideas is a solution in and of itself. We think there’s going to have to be a portfolio of solutions, and the Central Arizona Project will continue to be part of that portfolio.

Conservation is, of course, incredibly important. That’s probably the easiest kind of water to generate is to reduce demand. We also have, of course, municipal effluent, which is a growing resource. So it’s not that we have to depend entirely on this new capture and recharge thought process. It’s just an enhancement, and it’s particularly important, I think, in both urban areas and rural areas where there aren’t many other options.

MARK BRODIE: Sure. I’m curious if you have an opinion about sort of the the way that water is stored and gets to where it’s going. Like when you’re talking about evaporation, like is this a problem, for example, for the CAP canal system? Is this a problem for the reservoir system? Like should we be thinking about storing and transporting water in in ways that maybe don’t lead to so much evaporation?

KATHY JACOBS: That is a great question. It turns out that there is very significant amount of loss from open bodies of water, particularly lakes. That being said, our entire system is built on reservoirs and canals, and so changing that would is a pretty major concept.

In terms of covering the Central Arizona Project canal, obviously there have been some new efforts to do that, to shade it using solar panels, etc. on the Gila River. I don’t think that the total volume of losses in the CAP canal is very large, I’ve heard it’s something like 2%, which is, is not a big deal. But when you look at the volumes we’re talking about across the entire state, suppose it could be considered. It is an expensive option for sure.

MARK BRODIE: All right. Kathy, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

KATHY JACOBS: All right. Thanks.

MARK BRODIE: Kathy Jacobs is the former director of the Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions at the University of Arizona.

MARK BRODIE: Car and truck ads can be ubiquitous if you’re watching TV or a streaming service. And new research finds more and more of those commercials are showing off the vehicle’s performance rather than their safety features. The study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety finds between 2018 and 2022, nearly half of the ads focus on things like the vehicle’s speed, power, or maneuverability. And the group says this is happening as the number of deaths due to speeding and reckless behavior are also on the rise. Amber Woods is a research scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and lead author of this report. She joins me to talk more about it.

MARK BRODIE: Amber, what are the implications of what you found here?

AMBER WOODS: Well, I think advertisements are meant to influence behavior. They’re meant to encourage you to purchase a product and if we’re influencing behavior in a way that promotes dangerous driving behaviors, that could have very negative effects on our roads.

We know that speeding is a major highway safety concern, and we’re trying to do anything we can to reduce the amount of speeding and limit the number of people that are dying on our roadways.

MARK BRODIE: In terms of what we see in ads, is it mostly speeding that are the behaviors that you wouldn’t want people to do on the roadway?

AMBER WOODS: So I think performance in general, in the study, we define performance as any ad that highlighted speed, maneuverability, traction, stopping or power. And some of those might sound relatively normal and not of concern, like traction or things like that. You need horsepower to tow things.

But what we’re seeing is that these traction ads aren’t promoting traction as a safety feature. They’re showing the vehicle, you know, spinning up sand in the desert or driving around a beach and kicking up a lot of sand, like things that you’re never really going to do in your vehicle necessarily but that could promote risky driving behavior when on-road conditions are difficult.

So if it’s raining or snowy and you’re like, oh, well I saw my vehicle could go up a snowy mountainside in the ad, so I can definitely handle this with no problem.

MARK BRODIE: So it sounds like it’s less a matter of people trying to replicate what they see in commercials on the roads, but maybe extrapolating out, "oh, I saw my vehicle do this in an ad, it must be able to do this," that I would or might want to do on the roadway.

AMBER WOODS: I think it could definitely give people a false sense of the capabilities of the vehicle and their capabilities as a driver. Most of these ads or some of the ads will say, you know, professional driver on a closed course — and people don’t always think about that.

MARK BRODIE: Did you notice that this was the case with different types of vehicles like were some more likely to focus on performance in the ads than others?

AMBER WOODS: Absolutely. We found that, you know, trucks and SUVs focused on performance more than sedans. When we broke that down specifically into speed though, the sedans were more likely to have speed as their performance measure of the ad than the trucks or SUVs.

MARK BRODIE: Were there any types of vehicles that really seemed to emphasize safety over performance?

AMBER WOODS: There are definitely some manufacturers that are doing a great job and are highlighting, you know, new, advanced safety features in their vehicles and yes, absolutely.

MARK BRODIE: I guess that’s kind of the interesting thing here because so many vehicles now come standard with safety features that even just a few years ago almost nobody had. And yet to the point this report is making and you’re making, in a lot of commercials like you don’t really see those. You wouldn’t necessarily know that the car had them.

AMBER WOODS: Right. I, it seems to imply that safety doesn’t sell. But we have vehicles now that are, yes, very capable, but also very safe and they have all sorts of features that can be helpful to drivers.

And we’re not promoting those. We’re still you know, we’re still in America, and we’re excited about performance and speed.

MARK BRODIE: I mean that does kind of speak to kind of the car culture that we’ve had here for for generations now, right?

AMBER WOODS: Absolutely. America, America's built on car culture.

MARK BRODIE: So the report found that this is not necessarily the case in other parts of the world, right, where that car ads focus more on performance than safety. Is it really just a matter of who is setting the guidelines for what is acceptable and what is not on on television?

AMBER WOODS: So in our study, we did not look at ads from other countries, but we did look at the regulations on ads in the U.S. compared to countries like the UK. And our advertising standards are much more vague. They tend to mention things like risky driving behavior portrayed positively.

But there’s no direct mention of something like speed being a risky driving behavior, whereas in other countries, their advertising guidelines are much more explicit about what is OK and what is not.

MARK BRODIE: Do you have any reason to think that this trend that you have found is going to change anytime soon?

AMBER WOODS: It was not heading in the right direction based on the results of the study. We saw an increase in performance advertising from 2018 to 2022. We saw an increase in the focus on speed from 2018 to 2022. We were not headed in the right direction during that time.

MARK BRODIE: I mean, can you imagine a time when safety just isn’t mentioned in ads at all?

AMBER WOODS: I certainly hope not.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. I mean I think for someone who does what you do, that would probably be a pretty disappointing outcome.

AMBER WOODS: Absolutely. If changing the advertising landscape can help move the needle just a little bit to make our roads more safe, then we support, you know, whatever it takes to make that happen.

MARK BRODIE: Is there a way do you think to let potential buyers know about a car’s performance without necessarily showing them doing something unsafe? Like, you know, if you’re buying a sports car, like I would imagine a lot of people buy sports cars because they can go fast. Like is there a way to show that or to show, you know, the towing capacity or some of the other things that people might want and look for in a car without doing it in an unsafe manner?

AMBER WOODS: I think that, you know, if your car has a lot of horsepower, if the vehicle you’re advertising has high towing capacity then it’s probably OK to mention those things but maybe that it needs to also be done in the context of saying that there are features that make this car safe or promoting it in such a way that does not involve cars racing through parking lots or driving fast down city streets. Doing it in such a way that’s more consistent with how you could safely use those features of the vehicle.

MARK BRODIE: Do you think that some of this is on us as consumers? Like, obviously, the car manufacturers must think that this is what people want to see when they’re making a choice to buy a car. Like, is some of this on us, the car buying public?

AMBER WOODS: For sure it probably is. You know, we’re Americans, we like the open road, we like fast cars and all of that car culture stuff. America is very behind other countries in terms of highway safety. And we need to make big cultural changes if we want to help save lives on the roadway.

MARK BRODIE: That is Amber Woods, a research scientist with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Amber, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

AMBER WOODS: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

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

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger, and now it’s time to meet the next maker in our series, Made in Arizona.

[MADE IN ARIZONA MONTAGE PLAYS]

LAUREN GILGER: Frank Nareau spent most of his career as a newspaper pressman, a trade he found after returning from fighting in the Korean War. It wasn’t until after he retired that he picked up an old hobby, drawing. He taught himself to draw using just a pencil and Coquille board, and he created more than 1,500 original portraits of athletes, entertainers, and public figures. Now 94 years old, Nareau’s work is part of a special exhibition that opened recently at the Arizona Baseball Museum. He came into our studios recently to talk to me more about it.

FRANK NAREAU: Well, baseball’s always been in my blood actually. And once I retired, I wanted to start drawing again. I had drawn earlier, but I went 25 years without doing any drawing up until 1993.

And then I got back into it. And baseball has always been my favorite sport. And I met some really, really great people along the way, major leaguers and oh, executives and whatever.

LAUREN GILGER: So you started drawing portraits, basically, of baseball players — other athletes as well, but a lot of baseball players. How did you teach yourself to do it again after 25 years of not drawing?

FRANK NAREAU: Oh, it come pretty natural, I think. I noticed some differences between the pictures I had done back in the early ’60s compared to when I got back into it in the early ’90s. So my style had changed quite a bit.

But the drawing paper that I draw on is called Coquille board. It’s a stipple type surface paper, and it’s really good for getting shading effects and stuff like that.

And the reason that I really got into drawing was because of a sports artist that appeared in our daily papers back in Keene, New Hampshire.

LAUREN GILGER: Where you’re from, yeah.

FRANK NAREAU: His real name was Tom Paprocki. OK. And his signature on the on the drawings that appeared in the paper every day was just Pap, P-A-P. He was the biggest influence as far as getting sports drawings, you know.

LAUREN GILGER: So you had seen them as a kid in the paper. And wanted to do them yourself.

FRANK NAREAU: Right.

LAUREN GILGER: So you said baseball’s always been in your blood. Did you play?

FRANK NAREAU: Oh, I just sandlot baseball. But from the time I was 4 years old, I was, due to my older brother, he always listened to the Red Sox on the radio. And that got me started when I was only 4 or 5 years old.

LAUREN GILGER: Four or five years old playing baseball in the sandlot? What was your favorite position?

FRANK NAREAU: Uh, second base. I didn’t have a very good throwing arm, so I couldn’t play in the outfield. So I took up second base mostly.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So, you’re from Keene, New Hampshire, but you came here and had an entire career — we should say, before you had this career as an artist — as a newspaper pressman at the Mesa Tribune. And we have to just talk about that for a moment because I don’t even think people probably know what a newspaper pressman is anymore.

I grew up around newspapers. My mom was a newspaper editor, so I have a sense of this. But tell us what this was like. What were you doing every day?

FRANK NAREAU: Well, I got out of the Army, and then I was looking for a job and the Claremont Daily Eagle was looking for an assistant pressman. So I took that job. And it involved mostly just making the plates that go on the huge printing presses.

LAUREN GILGER: The metal plates where you would press them down, literally press them down to print the paper every day, yeah.

FRANK NAREAU: Yeah. A friend of mine that worked at the same paper I did in New Hampshire had been out in Mesa vacationing before. And sadly enough, after I had about three or four years apprenticeship, he passed away. But he had left a notice — because he had visited Mesa before — he left a notice with the local newspaper that if there was ever an opening, he would like to do it.

When the call came in from the Mesa Tribune that they had a job opening, I told him about the situation of the guy they were really looking for who had passed away. And I said, “Is there any chance I could take the job?” And they said, “Sure. Come on out.”

So I came out to Mesa and spent 10 years there. I was six years a pressman in New Hampshire and about 10 years a pressman in Mesa.

LAUREN GILGER: I wonder what Mesa was like then. I mean, you came here so long ago and you watched the city change so much, right? Yeah. What was it like back then?

FRANK NAREAU: Oh, a lot slower. I think the population in Mesa when I arrived there was 60,000 people. And now it’s like 500,000 people. So, a lot of change, you know.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of change not just in the city, but in the world. In baseball I wonder though. Do you think you’ve seen baseball change?

FRANK NAREAU: Oh, yeah, drastically. I think today it’s so analytical that it ruins a portion of the game. A lot of people will disagree with me, but it’s not the same as it was in the ’40s and ’50s, I don’t think. There’s a big difference. Most of the stars today, I think, are looking out mostly for themselves rather than as a unit, as a team, you know.

LAUREN GILGER: Are you a D-backs fan?

FRANK NAREAU: Oh, yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, good. So tell us about some of the favorite people that you’ve drawn, some favorite portraits, some favorite subjects of yours. A lot of what you do is just the faces of the players, but you do also kind of pictures of them throwing or playing, right? Are there some some standouts for you?

FRANK NAREAU: Some of them because of the people I met along the way I really liked. I did a I did what I thought was a very good picture of Ernie Banks. And thanks to a landscaper at the old Rendezvous Park in Mesa — his name was Truck Dayton. And we became good friends, and he introduced me to Ernie Banks, who then, about three years later, introduced me to Buck O’Neil.

And I got to be friends with all of them. And year after year, Ernie Banks would come up into the stands and sit with me. So we got to be pretty friendly.

But it all started back when I was a child. I just loved baseball, you know? It mirrors life so much, failures and the successes and a lot of errors along the way, but you brush them aside and just keep going.

LAUREN GILGER: Just keep going. Is that your advice for the next generation here?

FRANK NAREAU: Oh, yeah. Yeah, don’t give up.

LAUREN GILGER: Don’t give up. All right. Frank Nareau joining us, a Korean War vet, retired newspaper pressman at the Mesa Tribune and also an artist. His work will be on display at the Arizona Baseball Museum. Frank, thank you so much for coming in studio. Thanks for telling us about your work. I appreciate it very much.

FRANK NAREAU: Thank you.

MARK BRODIE: 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 John Hoban. 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.