Western Resource Advocates & Aveda Corporation Partner for a Successful Earth Month Campaign!
 Western Resource Advocates is proud to have been Aveda Corporation's Earth Month partner for a second year in a row! As part of the Earth Month campaign, Aveda salons and spas hosted a series of benefit events in March and April 2008 for WRA.
WRA’s water program focuses on meeting human water needs while also protecting the West’s rivers, lakes, and aquifers. Finding this balance is especially challenging and important in the arid southwest where population is rapidly increasing. WRA works in some of the fastest-growing cities to help planners develop and implement conservation programs that range from sustainable landscaping guidelines to rebates on water-saving appliances.
Approximately 135 Aveda salons and spas in the Rocky Mountain region held fundraising events, such as silent auctions, cut-a-thons, and raffles to raise funds and awareness for water conservation. We thank all participating Aveda salons for their dedication and support!
Though One Lucky Ticket Wins Prius Raffle, Lots of RaffleTickets Protect Water
It was the only ticket he purchased, but for Timothy Tobin, a carpenter from Boulder, it was all he needed to win a new Toyota Prius. His name was selected at a drawing held at Ten Salon and Spa in Loveland May 18th, one of many Earth Month fundraisers held by local Aveda salons and spas to raise funds for WRA.
Ten Salon and Spa accepted the challenge to do something big for their Earth Monthactivity, organizing a raffle for the fuel efficient and clean running Prius hybrid car. “Last year we raised $1,500, but we felt we could do much, much more,” said Courtney Anderson, the Assistant General Manager for Ten. To get the vehicle, Anderson worked with Pedersen Toyota Scion and received local assistance to make this happen. “They believed in who we are and what we were doing,” said Anderson.
WRA thanks all the Aveda salons who participated in the raffle and everyone who supported WRA by purchasing tickets! Together, our efforts can help ensure that clean and accessible water is available to everyone while maintaining the health of the West’s precious water sources.
The WRAp Up: News in Brief
- WRA Energy Program Director John Nielsen coauthored an article with Energy Program Lead Attorney Steve Michel for The Electricity Journal, the leading policy journal for the U.S. electric power industry. The article proposed a simplified yet more efficient version of cap-and-trade policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions produced by power generation.
- WRA is working to speed approval of Arizona Public Service’s contract to purchase clean energy from a 280-MW central solar power project, significantly advancing the use of this technology in the U.S.
- WRA played a central role in the development of amendments to energy efficiency legislation in New Mexico. The amendments call for utilities to deploy all cost-effective demand-side management tools and also establish aggressive energy efficiency requirements.
- Sierra Pacific Resources confirmed it was delaying plans to develop the coal-fired Ely Energy Center in Nevada. This delay was spurred primarily by Senator Harry Reid’s aggressive stance against any new coal plant development in the state, as well as rising coal plant construction costs, increased public awareness, uncertainties of future carbon regulation, and opposition to the plants by WRA’s Nevada office, local partners in Nevada, and our Western Clean Energy Campaign (WCEC).
- WRA continues to work with state policymakers and regulators in the West who are developing a regional CO2 cap-and-trade program for a subset of states in the western United States. WRA developed a cap-and-trade design alternative that avoids many of the complexities of other designs that arise in a regional cap-and-trade program where all states are not participating.
- WRA partner The Western Clean Energy Campaign collaborated with Navajo group Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment (Diné CARE) to release a report entitled Energy and Economic Alternatives to the Desert Rock Energy Project. While the Navajo Nation continues to press forward with the coal-fired Desert Rock Energy Project, it recently announced a joint venture with Citizens Energy Corporation for a 500-MW wind power project, due in large part to the report and the organizing efforts of Diné CARE.
- WRA is appealing a decision by the State of Utah to deny citizen input on allowing the industrial development of 33,000 acres of the bed of Great Salt Lake. At issue are plans to increase the extraction of minerals from the lake and its impact on water quality. At the center of the debate is a numeric water quality standard in the Great Salt Lake for selenium, a mineral that causes reduced hatches and embryonic deformations in bird eggs at certain levels. The state and industry are attempting to secure a standard that would allow for 10 percent mortality among water bird eggs, a level WRA considers too high for an essential stop for migrating birds on the Pacific flyway.
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