Area info

(602)841-7127

The schools in the Tonopah area is Ruth Fisher's K-8 public school and Arlington Elementry. In past years the school has been ranked among the best in Maricopa County. The school has excellent facilities including an olympic size swimming pool. Recently, the voters in Tonopah decided to transform their district into a unified district so that a high school could be built.

Construction has begun on Winter's Well Elementary school at 355th Ave and Buckeye Rd. It is going up fast. Once the ground breaking ceremony took place the building could then take shape.

The closest major shopping area is at Miller and I-10 approximately 15 minutes from the Tonopah area. There is a Fry's Supercenter, Lowe's, and other stores.

There is a Post office located in Tonopah. Rural mail is also delivered

News!!!

Developments rising in

shadow of reactors

Thousands moving in within a lo-mile radius

Mark Shaffer
The Arizona Republic Nov. 15,2006 12:OO AM

WINTERSBURG - When Arizona Public Service Co. was looking for a site way out by its lonesome 30 years ago to build the nation's largest nuclear power plant, this remote area of desert scrub was the perfect fit.

Just ask Doris Heisler, one of the nearby community of Tonopah's pioneers when she bought 100 acres near Interstate 10 and moved there in 1974.

"I'll never forget looking in all directions at night from outside my house and counting seven lights," Heisler said.

But a housing boom not much farther away than the shadows of Palo Verde's three reactor domes appears to be in the offing. It is expected to attract thousands of homeowners within the plant's 10-mile emergency notification zone during the next two decades.

Development plans have been filed with Maricopa County for eight master-planned communities, most of which are north and northeast of Palo Verde, where the prevailing winds are from the southwest to the northeast. Preliminary plans call for more than 107,000 dwellings to be built on 33,000 acres.

The Saddle Mountain Unified School District has built a large administrative center seven miles north of the plant in anticipation of thousands of children attending schools spaced throughout the Tonopah area.

Speculation continues

Even with the housing slowdown in the Valley, speculation has continued to drive up prices around Tonopah, which has yet to incorporate. An estimated 7,000 people now live within 10 miles of Palo Verde, double the number in 2002.

The price of an acre has more than tripled to almost $60,000 an acre between 1-10 and the nuclear power plant during the past three years, local real estate agents said.

Jim Levine, Palo Verde's plant manager, said he is powerless to do anything about development on nearby private land. Palo Verde is situated on 4,000 acres owned by APS and other utilities.

"There's nothing wrong with encroachment by itself," he said. "But it does impact our emergency planning and how many people we would have to notify in the case of an emergency."

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