Not Time to Pack Up the Tent Yet 
by Mark Clemens, Utah Chapter Lobbyist

For several years past, any review of the Utah Legislature's performance on environmental issues deserved all the morbid connotations the word post-mortem conjures up. Brace yourselves. This year we actually have some good news to report.

Senator Leonard Blackham (R-Moroni) introduced Senate Bill 19. This bill provided a sales tax exemption for machinery and equipment used to generate electricity from both renewable sources and waste materials. Initially, most of the environmental community was sufficiently unhappy with the waste materials provision that we opposed the bill. However, thanks to messages from club members and other environmentalists as well as the hard work of several senators including Senator Patrice Arent (D-Holladay), the bill was eventually substituted with another bill, Second Substitute Senate Bill 19, that excludes the sales tax exemption for both medical waste incinerators and municipal solid waste incinerators. With this change we felt the positives outweighed the negatives sufficiently to support the bill.

After the session, we heard rumors that Blackham might be interested in sponsoring a bill to promote renewable energy in the 2005 General Session by requiring a substantial increase in the amount of electricity generated from renewable sources by the year 2012 or 2020. This kind of legislation is called a renewable portfolio standard.

Substitute House Bill 71 was Representative Judy Buffmire's (D-Murray) legislative swansong. She is not seeking re-election in 2004. In addition to her reputation for thoughtful questions, good humor and hard work, this bill will serve as an important part of Buffmire's legacy. She had passed legislation several years ago requiring water retailers to develop conservation plans. Some water retailers ignored this legislation entirely; others wrote empty or meaningless plans. Substitute House Bill 71 defines what constitutes an acceptable water conservation plan and provides a penalty for retailers that don't comply. Under this legislation, the conservation plans must include numeric goals and monitoring plans.

Representative Michael Styler (R-Delta) continued the aquatic theme with a proposal for a water conservation task force. Five years of drought has a wonderful concentrating effect. In the weeks before the 2004 General Session began, Styler offered legislation for consideration to an interim meeting that would have allowed non-profits to acquire water rights to be used for in-stream flow as opposed to consumption; currently only government agencies can hold water rights dedicated to in-stream flow. His idea was not well received by the committee.

Styler realized more familiarity with the issue is needed. Non-profits are able to hold in-stream water rights in neighboring states, and agriculture and civilization do not seem materially to have been harmed. He understands further that the legislature needs to address a number of water issues including groundwater overallocation. He therefore introduced and succeeded in shepherding through a bill, HB 247, to establish a two-year task force to study water conservation, water rights and in-stream flow.

After controversy that spanned most of the session, HB 145 passed in its third substitute form. HB 145, introduced by Representative Stephen Urquhart (R-St George), amended the definition of radioactive waste categories and taxes on radioactive waste disposal, and-probably most controversially-requires explicit authorization from governor and legislature for allowing disposal of classes B and C nuclear waste (the hotter classes).

DIDN'T MAKE THE CUT 
Several good bills went nowhere this session. Representative Ty McCartney (D-South Salt Lake) sponsored a bottle-recycling bill that did not make it to the house floor. Senator Gene Davis (D-Salt Lake City) succeeded in getting legislation through the senate to extend the same tax credit for the Toyota Prius that is currently available for certain Honda hybrid models. The house rejected the bill towards the end of the session. The bill carried what is considered a high fiscal note. In other words, some critics balked at the price tag: $2,048,000 in fiscal 2006. And finally, the house refused to consider a bill, sponsored by Representative Ralph Becker (D-Salt Lake City), that would have allowed voters to endorse issuing bonds to protect open space in the November 2004 elections.

A group of citizens, disappointed by the defeat of Becker's bill, has launched an initiative campaign to put a statewide open lands acquisition bond on the ballot. They need tens of thousands of signatures. If you haven't already signed a petition, log on to http://utahlands2004.org to find out where you can.

HOT AIR 
Although a majority of Utah's legislators-Republican and Democratic-represent urban districts, legislators from rural districts often have a disproportionate influence. For years a powerful cowboy caucus was led by the likes of Met Johnson and Mel Brown. Representative Mike Noel (R-Kanab) carries on in the same vein, and during this session introduced House Joint Resolution 17.

In the resolution, Noel argues, "the people of the state of Utah are denied the right to form and to administer a government upon that portion of territory otherwise committed to them for the purposes of their state by terms of their enabling Act compact with the United States, but which remains under complete federal legislative jurisdiction." To remedy this perceived injustice, the resolution encourages the Utah attorney general to pick fights with the federal government over ownership of public lands. In the first iteration of the resolution, Noel sought authority to waste unlimited amounts of taxpayer funds seeking to overturn precedent and re-write laws and the US Constitution. Some restraint was exercised by his colleagues, and he wound up having to settle for exhorting the attorney general to, "develop nonfrivolous arguments for the extension, modification, or reversal of existing law or the establishment of new law," undoing federal land ownership in Utah. Despite the fact that the vast majority of Utahns value federally-managed public lands as the cornerstone of a high quality of life in Utah, this counterproductive and profligate resolution passed both houses without a single no vote.

For more information about these bills and the legislature generally, see http://www.le.state.ut.us/. For more information about the Utah Chapter's legislative program and to review our legislative scorecards for the last three years, check out http://utah.sierraclub.org/legislative.asp.