Nesting Golden Eagles Delay Durango Airport Work

DURANGO, Colo. -- An airport runway expansion plan in Durango has come to a halt because of some traffic the tower can't control.

Two golden eagles, with wingspans that can exceed six feet, have decided to nest in a pine tree near a runway of the Durango-La Plata County Airport.

That has brought a two-year $18.6 million runway expansion plan to a halt, at least temporarily. They are expected to move on around June 1.

Meanwhile, the Bald Eagle Protection Act of 1940 protects the birds.

"We can't do anything until that eagle decides to up and move," said Ron Dent, airport director of aviation.

The birds are holding up an extension of a taxiway, which now ends about 1,200 feet from a runway. It is needed both for safety and to improve airport efficiency.

The lack of a full taxiway means airplanes must taxi as far as a third of a mile on the runway, interrupting takeoffs and landings.

"We don't like aircraft back-taxiing down the runway," said Dent. "It's a pretty safe procedure, but there's always that potential."

The airport has agreed to delay construction within a quarter-mile of the nest until the winged couple's nesting period ends.

At the moment, the eagles are out of town. But they are expected to return in early spring.

Their nest was found in May of last year.

"If they feel secure, if they feel safe from predators, if they feel like they can raise their young, they'll choose to make a nest in that location," said Tony Gurzick, assistant regional manager of the Colorado Division of Wildlife in Durango.

A third of primary school students cannot use full stops correctly
By LAURA CLARK - More by this author » Last updated at 22:00pm on 14th January 2007

Up to a third of children are leaving primary school unable to use capital letters and full stops properly, examiners' reports have revealed.

Eleven-year-olds are tripping up on basic grammar, punctuation and spelling despite seven years of daily literacy lessons.

And 120,000 read and write to such a poor standard that they failed their national curriculum tests in English last year.

Even pupils who reached the expected level often struggled with crucial aspects of the subject such as making sense of straightforward paragraphs.

The scale of the problem was revealed in an analysis of some of last year's test papers by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.

National results in the tests showed a surprise stalling in English standards despite Treasury targets for dramatic improvements by 2006.

Ministers are facing criticism they have been too slow to focus on traditional "synthetic phonics" in teaching children to read, instead allowing schools to follow discredited approaches which involve merely guessing at words.

The QCA analysis will be issued to schools to help teachers prepare for the next round of testing this spring.

It shows that pupils who fell below the Government's required "level four" in the tests, often known as SATs (Standard Assessment Tasks), were still struggling with putting capital letters at the start of sentences and full stops at the end.

The report said pupils must learn to "demarcate most sentences correctly with capital letters and full stops, using question marks and exclamation marks carefully".

They must also "use punctuation within the sentence, e.g. placing commas correctly to support divisions".

Six-year-olds should be able to master writing simple sentences with capital letters and full stops, according to the Government's guidance.

But the report reveals that many still struggle when they are 11.

It also warned that too many youngsters were failing to use basic connective words and could not master adjectives and adverbs.

Even pupils who passed the tests - which consist of reading, comprehension and creative writing - made glaring spelling errors and did not always "recognise the gist of a paragraph".

A similar analysis of maths tests for 11-year-olds showed that some youngsters are still struggling to subtract, add and multiply in their heads.

Examiners also urged teachers to give pupils more practice at rounding three-digit numbers to the nearest ten and to help them understand fractions. The Government's literacy and numeracy strategies, involving daily lessons in primary schools, were initially credited with dramatic improvements in the three Rs.

But progress slowed and research has since suggested the gains owed much to teaching to the test rather than genuine advances.

Last spring, 79 per cent of pupils passed national curriculum tests in English, breaking down into 67 per cent making the grade in writing and 83 per cent in reading.

Unveiling the results, Education Secretary Alan Johnson hailed improvements in writing and maths but conceded worries over a "minor dip" in reading.

Some residents can’t win battle to keep sidewalks clear
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written by: Nelson Garcia , Reporter 
     
created: 1/14/2007 9:20:03 AM
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Some residents can’t win battle to keep sidewalks clear. 9NEWS at 10 p.m. January 13, 2007.
DENVER – When 60-year-old Cynthia Roberson got a citation to for having snow on her sidewalk, she could not believe it.

And it's not because the disabled woman can’t physically move the frozen-over mess, but because she already paid someone to shovel her walkways.

“It was clean. It was done correctly,” Roberson said.

However, she said overnight Denver city plows scooped the snow back and buried her sidewalks. Now, the city has given her 24 hours to remove the snow or else she faces a fine of $150 for the first offense, $500 for the next one.

“I think it sucks. I mean this isn’t something I chose to do,” Roberson said.

The retiree said she’s on a fixed income, so it’s extremely difficult for her to either pay the fines or for someone to shovel her walks, again.

“You try to do, as a homeowner, what is required. I can’t keep paying people to fix what the city messes up,” Roberson said.
To make her even more upset, Roberson said even though her neighbors have the same problem, she is the only one cited by the city.

“If you’re going to give one notice, give out notices to everybody,” she said.

Neighbor Tammi Robson said no one should be receiving citations after what she calls poor snow removal by Denver Public Works.

“I think if they’re going to have leniency, then I think the city should have leniency as well,” Robson said.

Community Planning and Development Official Julius Zsako told 9NEWS that the city has already issued more than 900 citations. He said so far almost everyone has been cooperative.

Zsako said that if the city has put snow back on the sidewalk, residents will be given extra time. However, he said, they will still have to remove it.

That’s news Roberson does not want to hear.

“I just don’t think it’s fair,” she said.

Ann Williams of Denver Public Works says people can call 311 if they are suffering with disability to give their info to the city, and the city’s volunteer teams will clear snow off of their sidewalks and driveways.

Williams says the response may not be immediate, won’t happen within five hours, but it will happen.

Williams says the city will work with disabled Denver residents who were issued citations to avoid those fines.

Smoking foes bring the fight to apartment buildings

By Sanjay Bhatt

Seattle Times staff reporter

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MARK HARRISON / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Terry McLlarky says smoking is a point of dispute in the Kirkland public-housing apartment complex where he serves on a residents committee.

A year after a statewide smoking ban took effect at workplaces, restaurants, bars and other public places, a new battlefield over secondhand smoke is emerging: apartment buildings.

Spurred on by nonsmoking tenants and public-health leaders, more private landlords are considering restricting smoking inside their rental units. And local public-housing agencies are also looking at banning smoking in the units of some buildings.

Since the ban took effect, people have gotten used to going out in the community and not being exposed to secondhand smoke, and that's prompted some to ask, "Why do I have to take it in my home?" says Roger Valdez, manager of the tobacco-prevention program for Public Health — Seattle & King County, which enforces the smoking ban here.

"We've been surprised by the increased level of interest to make their apartments smoke-free," he said.

A year ago last month, the voter-approved Initiative 901 took effect. It prohibits smoking in work settings and public places — from offices to bowling alleys — and within 25 feet of their front doors, or a "reasonable" distance, to keep smoke from wafting indoors.

Compliance has gone well, according to the health department. The first month, the department received 168 complaints and found 16 violations. A year later, the numbers were down last month to 18 complaints, with the department finding just one violation.

"When you think of the thousands of businesses in King County, everyone did what they were supposed to do," Valdez said. "What we've heard now is about people smoking in condos and apartment units."

While the state ban prohibits smoking in the common areas of private apartment buildings, such as hallways, community rooms and libraries, residents may smoke inside their units unless the landlord prohibits it.

But smoke from one unit can seep through ventilation shafts and doorways into other units, and the ban has emboldened some nonsmoking tenants to complain about that to their landlords.

"Some landlords are dealing with the issue by banning smoking entirely in their buildings to avoid being stuck in the middle," said Seattle attorney Chris Benis, who advises landlords for the Rental Housing Association of Puget Sound.
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In the past year, he says, he has received more calls from landlords asking what legal steps they must take to convert their buildings to being smoke-free. Valdez said the health department supports such voluntary efforts, but is not advocating for an expansion of the smoking ban to include apartment units.

Perhaps nowhere is the issue more controversial than in public housing, where many residents — smokers and nonsmokers alike — have few housing options.

"You have some people who say, 'My apartment is my castle. I should be able to smoke whenever I want,' and other people say, 'Yeah, but your smoke is helping to kill me,' " said Terry McLlarky, a resident of Casa Juanita apartments in Kirkland, which is operated by the King County Housing Authority.

McLlarky, who smoked for 40 years before quitting in 2002, is serving on a residents committee that advises the authority on their concerns. Even before the smoking ban went into effect, smoking was not allowed in the common areas of public housing.

Last summer, to find out what public-housing residents had to say about secondhand smoke, the health department and the Group Health Community Foundation, an affiliate of Group Health Cooperative, surveyed 508 households in properties run by the housing authority.

Just over 300 households responded. Most were nonsmoking, with 84 percent reporting they don't allow smoking inside their units. Nearly three-quarters supported rules that prohibit smoking inside apartments.

This week, the housing authority plans to distribute a second survey targeted at elderly and disabled apartment residents. At the end of the month, the committee McLlarky serves on plans to discuss the issue.

The committee's last meeting on the issue in September was explosive. "I don't see any immediate meeting of the minds," he says.

Indoor smoking comes with a higher risk of fires, litter and increased maintenance costs when smokers move out, authority spokeswoman Rhonda Rosenberg said.

After engaging residents in discussions over the next year, the authority probably will establish limits on smoking in some apartments, Rosenberg said. "It's a very delicate dance. It's not as obvious as it would seem."

In July 2003, the Seattle Housing Authority opened its first and only smoke-free property, the Tri-Court, an 86-unit development in North Seattle. The building had been remodeled and smokers who lived there were moved to other properties at the authority's expense.

Virginia Felton, the authority's spokeswoman, said the Tri-Court project came about because many residents with asthma, emphysema and other respiratory problems were asking for a smoke-free building.

This year the authority plans to evaluate whether to expand the smoke-free policy to another building, she said.

Tri-Court resident Susan Vanbuskirk, 58, is allergic to smoke and appreciates living in a smoke-free building, but said compliance isn't perfect. Sometimes in the evening, when she's watching TV, she detects whiffs of cigarette smoke coming from somewhere on her floor.

"I used to smoke, so I know what it smells like," she said.