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Legislative Updates 2009Sierra Club 2009 Legislative Update #10 “Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.” March 20, 2009 Hi all! The Arizona House continues to move a few bills along, but the Senate is doing nothing – other than talking about the budget behind closed doors. They have also started a “crisis-of-the-week” thing where they try to jam through a new bill in a few days with an emergency clause. The most recent one had to do with teach layoffs. They wanted to delay letting teachers know they were laid off until June – apparently in hopes that the legislature would be out of session and they would not have to deal with the calls from the teachers who had been laid off. Not to bring up a sore subject, but the deadline for filing your income taxes approaches. To make it less painful you might want to consider helping out Arizona’s wildlife. If you are getting a refund, all you have to do is check off the box labeled “Arizona Wildlife” on your Arizona income tax return – it’s easy and painless. Money goes to benefit hundreds of nongame species of animals including black-footed ferrets, California condors, desert tortoises, native fishes and frogs, and other wildlife. Voluntary gifts to the fund can also be made on your state income tax form by checking the box, which is numbered “42.” Support the cleanest and cheapest energy resource! The Arizona Corporation Commission is currently considering two ways to increase energy efficiency programs in Arizona. One is an open docket on energy efficiency and the other is the Arizona Public Service Company (APS) rate case. APS has applied to the Arizona Corporation Commission for another rate increase – a proposed increase of 9.3% for the average residential customer bill. To help reduce energy bills and offset increased rates for its customers, and to help customers become more energy efficient, APS should invest more in energy efficiency programs. There will be a public hearing on Monday, March 30 at 10:00am at Commission offices at 1200 W. Washington St. in Phoenix. Please attend if you can. Write a letter today. If you cannot attend (and even if you can), you have an opportunity to tell the Arizona Corporation Commission you support increasing energy efficiency programs in this rate case and overall, thus reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants and lowering electric bills, even if it means a slightly higher electric rate. By increasing energy efficiency and reducing energy consumption, customers can reduce their energy bills by 10-50%, even if the cost of the customer programs increases electric rates by 1-2%. If you are not an APS customer, you can still help by sending a letter to the general docket on efficiency. (APS customers can send the same letter to both dockets.) Ask that the Commission consider requiring a 20 percent increase in energy efficiency from current levels, by 2020. To expand energy efficiency requirements for all utilities as well as the availability of the APS energy efficiency programs for utility customers, the Commission needs to hear from all Arizonans as well as APS’ residential and business customers who support efficiency programs. This support can be provided as a letter to the Commission (Docket Control, Arizona Corporation Commission, 1200 W. Washington St., Phoenix, AZ 85007, indicating Docket Numbers E-00000J-08-0314, G-00000C-08-0314 for the open docket on efficiency and E-01345A-08-0172 for the APS rate case), and/or as a public comment at the hearing. You can also email it to commissioners by clicking on their names or pasting in their email address -- Kris Mayes mayes-web@azcc.gov, Paul Newman Newman-web@azcc.gov, Sandra Kennedy Kennedy-web@azcc.gov, Bob Stump Stump-web@azcc.gov, and Gary Pierce Pierce-web@azcc.gov. The Commission is currently scheduled to take public comment on March 30, 2009 at 10:00 AM in the hearing room at the Please copy me on your letter. Also, let me know if you will be able to attend the hearing on March 30. Keep the calls coming to your representatives in the Arizona House of Representatives. Ask them to oppose HB2352 aquifer protection permits; natural gas (Mason). HB2352 exempts Class I and Class II injection wells for natural gas storage from getting aquifer protection permits. The list of exemptions for the aquifer protection permit program is far too long already – it has grown over the years as special interest after special interest has sought to relieve themselves from the protective requirements of the program. This exemption is bigger and has much more significance than those previous exemptions, however. It will allow millions of gallons of briny water to be pumped into a deep aquifer thus writing off that aquifer for drinking water in the future. Arizona’s Aquifer Protection Permit (APP) program was a landmark program when passed in 1986 as part of the Environmental Quality Act. Rather than focus on remediation – trying to clean up a mess after the fact – and enforcement, it focuses on prevention. The program is aimed at keeping pollutants out of our precious aquifers. This is both more environmentally responsible and cheaper in the long run. It is especially important as it is often the public (the taxpayers) that has to pick up the tab for clean up. Arizona also decided at that time that all of its aquifers are important and should be designated as drinking water aquifers. Never before have we just written off an aquifer. This bill does that, but does so in a less than forthright manner. If Arizona does want to change the designation of an aquifer, there is a process for doing so. It is a very public process, involves studying the aquifer, and it allows for public comments and requires a public hearing. HB2352 will write off those aquifers without the proper findings and without the public notice and input. That is just plain wrong. Arizona’s water and future are too important to write off so cavalierly. The company, Multifuels out of Houston, Texas, that is seeking this new exemption in our law is doing so in order to secure its financing. They want to do this project in Pinal County, but the exemption applies statewide. Is it worth risking Arizona’s aquifers and future drinking water supplies to allow them to get financing for this project? To email your House Members or find their direct phone numbers, click on Arizona House or paste http://www.azleg.gov/memberRoster.asp?Body=H into your browser. If you are not sure who your legislators are, please go to http://www.vote-smart.org or call the House information desk. If you're outside the Phoenix area, you can call your legislators’ offices toll free at 1-800-352-8404. In the Phoenix area call (602) 926-4221 (House) and ask them to connect you with your legislators. HB2088 NOW: public conservation monies; transfer; parks (Nichols) is still hanging out there and the bill sponsor is still trying to peel off enough votes with promises of returning dollars or focusing it more on parks. The bill diverts $20 million from the Public Conservation Account in the Land Conservation Fund established by the voters in 1998 when they approved the Growing Smarter Act referred to the ballot by the Arizona Legislature. The dollars are diverted to a variety of purposes – everything from water banking to parks to workshops. This amendment is clearly unconstitutional as it in no way furthers the purposes of the “Growing Smarter” measure that went before the voters in 1998. By diverting dollars from this fund, the Legislature hurts both conservation efforts and education – dollars from the Land Conservation Fund go into the Trust to benefit the Trust beneficiaries. The primary beneficiary is public education. Providing adequate funding for parks and other programs is important, but this is not the appropriate way to do so. The best avenue is to restore those funds directly and to establish a more stable funding source for our state parks. The voters approved the Voter Protection Act, because they were fed up with the Legislature undercutting, repealing, and diverting dollars from voter-approved measures. This bill demonstrates why it is needed more than ever. Again, there is not too much happening in committee this week as the Senate is still pretty much stalled over the budget and the House is likely to just move a few bills to the floor. Monday, March 23, 2009 Senate Committee on Natural Resources, Infrastructure and Public Debt at 1:30 p.m. SHR 109 Presentations by Salt River Project and Central Arizona Project For more information on bills we are tracking, go to http://arizona.sierraclub.org/political_action/tracker/ . Thank you! Sandy Bahr |
2009 Legislative Updates Bill Tracker
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