NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 17, 2018
Contact: Sandy Bahr, Sierra Club (602) 999-5790, sandy.bahr@sierraclub.org
Sierra Club Releases 2018 Environmental Report Card
Legislature Fails to Act to Protect Waters – or much else.
Phoenix, AZ – Today, Sierra Club released its 2018 Environmental Report Card for the Arizona Legislature and Governor. This year’s report card tells a story of lost opportunities to protect public health and our environment, including our state’s waters, and a step backwards relative to clean energy and clean elections.
“It was disappointing that legislators did nothing this session to protect Arizona waters or advance environmental protection,” said Sandy Bahr, chapter director for Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon (Arizona) Chapter. “They had opportunities, but although numerous measures were introduced to advance protections, none passed and most were not heard. There were bills to establish ecological water as a beneficial use in our rivers and streams, bills to address environmental justice, and a measure to fund historic preservation, among others. Two bills, one to promote cleaner cars and one to better regulate the hauling of uranium ore, did get a hearing, but no vote in committee. This lack of positive action is one of the reasons the majority in the legislature did so poorly on the report card.”
As the 2018 Legislative Session kicked off on January 8, 2018, many people expected water to be a key issue. Considering that Arizona has had 21 years of drought conditions, Arizona’s mountain watersheds had the driest winter on record, and flows in the Colorado River are well below normal this year, it is crucial that leadership work together to find real solutions. However, the Arizona Legislature and Governor Doug Ducey could not come together on a path forward due in part to the way the Governor’s office handled the process—behind closed doors at invitation only meetings that did not include many key stakeholders – and the power struggle between the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Central Arizona Water Conservation District. The good news is legislators did not pass bills that would harm the San Pedro River and weaken consumer protections.
At the urging of Arizona Public Service (APS) and other monopoly utilities, the Arizona Legislature passed a bill to neuter enforcement of a citizen initiative on renewable energy, “Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona,” and attempted to refer a competing measure to the ballot, the “Clean and Affordable Energy for a Healthy Arizona” (emphasis added). This latter measure, HCR2017, was never brought to the floor in the House, so it died without a vote there.
“Unfortunately, the Arizona Legislature passed and Governor Ducey signed into law a big tax break for Peabody Energy, allowing them to avoid transaction privilege tax on coal from the Kayenta Mine,” said Bahr. “This will cost the state more than $12 million per year to try and prop up an uneconomical and highly polluting power plant, Navajo Generating Station. Those dollars could better be directed to transition to clean energy.”
The session’s last vote was on a bill that refers to the ballot a harmful measure that will substantially weaken the Clean Elections Commission. It will also limit candidates’ ability to engage in coordinated campaign efforts or access voter lists from their respective parties. This is headed for the ballot, so voters will have a chance to reject it and keep Clean Elections intact.
Sadly, the entire Republican majority in the Senate, and all but two Republican representatives, received failing grades. Two senators earned an “A+,” which means they voted 100 percent pro-environment and did not miss a vote on the key bills Sierra Club scored. Nine senators and 24 representatives received an “A.” Governor Doug Ducey earned an “F” on the 2018 Environmental Report Card. As has been the case for the past decade or so, the environmental votes were highly partisan.
Sierra Club is one of the country’s oldest grassroots environmental organizations with more than 60,000 members and supporters in Arizona as part of the Grand Canyon Chapter. At the end of each legislative session, the Grand Canyon Chapter develops its report card in order to inform Arizonans about their legislators’ voting records on key environmental issues.
The Sierra Club report card is available on the website in English here and Spanish here.
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