By Ashlee Forman and Bari Levinson, volunteer Legislative Committee Co-Chairs
The Toiyabe Chapter’s legislative committee has been hard at work since early March! For the first time ever, the committee has begun the process of developing legislative proposals during the interim between legislative sessions. The committee’s ultimate goal is to propose legislation with the hope of it being adopted by a legislator and introduced during the 2023 session.
Currently the committee has divided into subject specific groups to better direct effort and volunteer interests. The active group topics include wildlife, solar, climate justice, and zero waste. Each group meets regularly to discuss their topics and to further develop their ideas for legislation.
Pesticide Ban
In the 2021 legislative session, Assembly Bill 275 to restrict the use of neonicotinoid pesticides failed to pass. We are not giving up. We're building a coalition and researching legislative language that will help protect Nevada's pollinators. Neonics are a major cause of colony collapse syndrome, killing off a large number of pollinating bees every year, which is detrimental to our food supply. Seventy percent of the foods that we eat are bee-dependent! We are working with several partners including beekeepers, farmers, legislative experts, National Resources Defense Council and Beyond Pesticides to create a bill that can pass. We have high hopes for the bill and for the bees of Nevada! Let us know if you want to join the swarm of activists working to help protect pollinators.
Solar Power
As everyone knows, Nevada is a prime state for harvesting solar energy. So why are there not more solar panels on homes and other buildings in this state? Nevada does have a net metering law that allows homeowners to sell energy back to NV Energy, and there has been a federal tax credit that greatly lowers the cost. Together these laws have helped make solar more affordable. But we need to do a lot more to expand solar energy to many more homes, businesses, and public buildings (like schools!) and spaces (like parking lots!). We are working with partners to define opportunities for new legislation to increase solar power and distributed energy, with a priority on environmental justice. One promising idea is to turn schools into resiliency centers that can provide solar power to the community in the event of power outages.
We are also working with finance experts to explore how Nevada might expand low-interest loans and other financing models for solar, energy efficiency, and electrification of appliances.
We are also working with partners to encourage solar siting on brownfields and other developed lands as opposed to environmentally sensitive deserts.
Zero Waste
The zero waste legislative group has focused their discussions on proposal ideas including waste reduction, single use plastic bans, extended producer responsibility programs, composting, and solid waste diversion mandates. We are centering our efforts on furthering our understanding of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) programs as well as the Skip the Stuff campaign developed by Upstream Solutions. An EPR program would shift the cost of waste management from our local organizations and consumers who pay for waste disposal to the producers of products that boast unnecessary packaging and unrecyclable materials. By imposing a fee on the non-recyclable packaging they choose to use, an EPR would take the responsibility off of the consumer and put it onto the true producer of the waste. It would incentivize businesses to get creative with packaging and the types of materials they employ. The ‘skip the stuff’ campaign asks restaurants to simply ask the customer before they include any single use serviceware thus reducing their contribution to the plastic waste stream. We have had some great discussions with experts across the state on solutions to our ever growing waste problem. Within the next few months we hope to develop some well informed legislative proposals to share with legislators.
As you can see, we have lots of irons in the fire. But we need your help to be successful.
Volunteer today! Join our volunteer-led Legislative Committee to help develop legislation that will move Nevada forward in 2023.
Donate today! Your financial support will provide professional staff and digital tools to support our volunteers in building grassroots power for the changes we all need. Thank you!!
