"Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes." – Carl Friedrich Gauss

February 27, 2015

credit: Victoria Bevolden

Dear Conservation Friends,

The legislature continued its march backwards this week with bills to weaken water protections, swipe our natural heritage, and hinder solar rooftop programs. Also on the table are bills to prohibit local government from requiring salvage of native plants and requiring native plants for development (see alert below), as well as a bill to remove the written notificationof parents for pesticide spraying in schools. Apparently, they think merely announcing to a six-year-old that the school will be spraying toxic pesticides (low toxicity pesticides are already exempt from notification requirements) is considered enough. This bill will be heard on Thursday in the Senate Education Committee. For these and other reasons, it is critical that we all speak up now for the land, the water, the wildlife, and the people we love.

The legislature's public lands grab agenda advanced this week as it began approving the bills to seek control of federal public lands and even added one to the mix in the House Appropriations Committee by passing a strike-everything amendment on HB2176 relating to nonenumerated federal lands; relinquishment. It directs the State Land Commissioner to request most of the federal public lands. Read more about the Legislature's public lands grab.

This week, we have a pretty long list of actions to take. Please consider taking one action each day. It makes a difference!


Please protect our public lands and keep them public – ask your state representatives to vote NO on five bills that are advancing in the House.


There is a concerted effort to remove Clean Water Act protections for most of Arizona's waters. There are three bills advancing in the House and two bills in the Senate. Please speak up for our rivers and streams that flow intermittently and seasonally – that is most of them.


Ask your state representatives to oppose bills that could harm our rivers and streams.



Ask your state senator to oppose bills that seek to eliminate Clean Water Act protections for Arizona waters.

credit: Rick Resnick

HB2175 public rights of way; claims (Finchem, Thorpe: Barton, et al.) advanced in the House and will likely go to a floor vote on Monday. It asserts claims to "rights-of-way" across public lands. This is an issue that arises every few years in an attempt to get roads through parks and other public lands. This measure will create confusion regarding rights-of-way throughout our state and could cost counties thousands of dollars, plus harm important protected lands including national parks, national monuments, and wilderness areas.

Ask your state representatives to oppose more user-created roads in our national forests, national monuments, and national parks!



HB2570 municipalities; vegetation requirements; prohibition (Mitchell) prohibits municipalities from adopting an ordinance requiring the salvage of native plants and also prohibits them from requiring any kind of vegetation, including native plants. I don't know what Arizona Legislators have against native plants, but this is clearly a bad bill.


Ask your state representatives to oppose HB2570. Protect our native plants!

Credit: Mark Coryell

• Executive Nomination - Sue Black, Arizona State Parks Director
• Executive Nomination - James Zieler, Arizona Game and Fish Commission

• Presentations by JLBC and Goldwater Institute

• SB1079 solid waste collection; multifamily housing (Griffin, McGuire, Mitchell, et al.) prohibits municipalities from restricting private entities from providing recycling and waste services to multi-family housing. This could result in private entities cherry picking valuable recyclables while leaving the city with the mess, the garbage, that costs taxpayers. OPPOSE.

• HB2393 water settlement act; replenishment formula (Pratt, Barton, Cardenas, et al.) modifies the formula to calculate the annual southside replenishment obligation under the Gila River Indian Water Settlement. MONITOR.
• HB2660 domestic water improvement districts; directors (Barton, Thorpe: Shope) provides for reorganization of a domestic water improvement district to reorganize with five members. MONITOR.
• HB2661 multi-county water districts; storage tax (Barton, Bowers, Cardenas, et al.)delays repeal of a tax to fund the Central Arizona Project. MONITOR.

• Agricultural Air Quality Regulations by ADEQ and Industry Specialists
• HB2394 air quality; agricultural management practices (Pratt, Bowers, Cardenas, et al.) requires immediate compliance with these best management practices (BMPs). That seems fine. We would like to see more specific requirements on agriculture, versus just these BMPs, but if they are going to have BMPs, people should have to comply immediately. MONITOR.

• SCM1006 urging Congress; Keystone pipeline; support (Griffin) urges Congress to approve the proposal by TransCanada to build the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline, an 875-mile pipeline that would transport up to 830,000 barrels of dirty tar sands crude from Alberta, Canada. This pipeline is part of an effort by the oil industry to export millions of barrels per day of tar sands from Alberta through the United States to international markets. Extracting tar sands is one of the most destructive projects on earth. Reliance on tar sands oil hinders our ability to avoid climate disaster. Congress already passed this and the President vetoed it. OPPOSE.
  
• SCM1009 military bases; endangered species act (Griffin, Allen, Burges, et al.) is a message to the United States Congress asking it to enact legislation exempting United States military bases and training facilities from the Endangered Species Act. This, despite the fact that the military has not indicated that protecting endangered species hinders its mission. In fact, the military actually promotes its efforts to protect threatened and endangered species. OPPOSE. 
• SCM1012 endangered species transparency act (Griffin, Allen, McGuire, et al. )asks Congress to enact the "21st Century Endangered Species Transparency Act" to require the federal government to disclose to affected states data used prior to an ESA listing decision and require the "best available scientific and commercial data" used by the federal government to incorporate data provided by states, tribes and local county governments. The ESA requires  the best available science already. This is an attempt to make it less effective. OPPOSE.
• SCM1013 rulemaking; electric generating units; opposition (Griffin, Allen, Burges, et al.) expresses opposition to the Clean Power Plan and asks Congress to oppose it and the attorney general and governor to take action against it. The Clean Power Plan is a rule to implement carbon pollution reductions from existing power plants to address climate change. Opposing it is short-sighted. Apparently the legislature's alternative is to do nothing to address climate change and that is totally unacceptable. OPPOSE.

• SB1185 appropriation; wolf recovery; litigation costs (Griffin, Allen, Burges, et al.) appropriates $250,000 to challenge any expansion of the Mexican wolf recovery program in Arizona. This is just wrong as it seeks to hinder recovery of these highly endangered animals. This is also a terrible waste of money that should instead be directed to programs that benefit conservation or other important issues, not diverted to try to subvert recovery of this important animal. OPPOSE. 
• SCM1010 PILT program; SRS; full funding (Griffin, Allen) asks Congress to fully fund the Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program on federal public lands and several other items.  MONITOR.

• HB2181 schools; omnibus statutory repeals (Boyer, Ward: Allen J) removes the requirement that schools provide written notice to parents prior to when they spray pesticides. This means that parent are unlikely to know when the spraying occurs and will be unable to limit their children's exposure to potentially harmful pesticides. We are still hoping this might be reinstated, but for now are opposing the bill. OPPOSE.