This article was produced by Local First Arizona.
Broadcast version by Alex Gonzalez for Arizona News Connection reporting for the Local First Arizona-Resource Rural-Public News Service Collaboration

Solar panels have been on Anna May Cory's mind for years. But she worried the expense of installing them would outweigh the long-term cost savings.

All that changed last year, when Cory found out about thousands of dollars in grants and tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act designed specifically to help rural businesses affordably upgrade their buildings to cut energy costs.

The 27-room Pines Inn and Suites sits a few miles southwest of Arizona's famous Sedona red rocks in the 12,000-person town of Cottonwood. Cory moved to the community in search of a rural atmosphere, warmer temperatures and a friendly, small-town experience, which she now helps to foster.

"What I like is the friendliness, and everyone caring about our town," Cory said.

With 275 days of sun, solar makes sense

Pines Inn and Suites has been certified as a "green" hospitality outpost by the Arizona Hotel & Lodging Association for more than two decades, in part thanks to Cory's improvements like high-efficiency light bulbs, better ventilation and a water bottle refilling station for guests.

The hotel even became an early adopter of electric vehicle charging stations.

"We were way ahead of our time," said Cory, who runs the inn with her son and daughter-in-law.

In a town that sees 275 days of sun per year, solar was the next logical step.

Cory learned about federal assistance to install solar while attending the Green Business Boot Camp facilitated by Local First Arizona, a nonprofit that supports small businesses throughout the state. The seven-week program covers a series of sustainability topics, helping Cory realize she could tap into the federal funding passed by Congress in 2022 to cover the bulk of the costs that were holding her back.

To help other business owners, Local First Arizona created a Green Project Guide that explains tax credits, grants and other funding available for energy and water efficiency projects.

70% savings with help from federal programs

Cory was able to achieve essentially 70% off the installation cost with the help of a $32,000 reimbursement from the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) and $23,000 from the renewable energy Investment Tax Credit, both of which were made possible through the Inflation Reduction Act.

"One day, $32,000 appeared in our checking account, and we were like, 'Whoa it's time to celebrate!'" Cory said. "For us, that was quite impressive."

In addition to tax credits and grant funding, Cory estimates she will save more than $10,000 on energy bills every year.

The project was so successful, she's working on a second REAP grant to finance a second solar installation.

"I'm excited about that because it's really going to bring down our costs," Cory said.

Doing her part to keep Cottonwood 'breathing fresh air'

Cory feels good that her upgrades will contribute to better health for the whole town. As zero-emission sources of energy, solar panels help reduce air pollution.

That fits right in with what Cory loves about Cottonwood as a hometown.

"I love the Verde River," she said. "We can enjoy the river here, and there's a lot of opportunity for hiking and outdoor activity and breathing fresh air."

In addition to the solar panels, the Green Business Boot Camp inspired Cory to find a locally based coffee vendor to reduce the pollution generated by ordering products from far away.

"It's a small thing, but a small thing can become a big thing in terms of sustainability," she said.


This article was produced by Local First Arizona.


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As worldwide demand for meat and dairy continues to grow, so does evidence showing animal agriculture, as currently practiced, is harming the environment.

Advocates are making the case for widespread adoption of a vegan diet, avoiding animal products, as better for individual health and the environment. It is estimated between 11% and 20% of all greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide come from animal agriculture and livestock grazing has degraded up to 20% of the world's pastures.

Marco Springmann, research fellow in climate change, food systems and health at University College-London and senior environment and health researcher at Oxford University, said a vegan diet would bring a number of benefits.

"Adoption of a completely plant-based, or vegan, diet has many health, environmental and even cost benefits," Springmann explained. "If more people adopted such a diet, it would result in general benefits for climate change, land use as well as population health."

Maryland is home to more than 160,000 cattle, with a $91 million beef cattle industry and a $185 million dairy industry.

Veganism has attracted more attention in recent years, thanks in part to advancements in lab-grown meat technology; however, it's still not a very popular diet, with surveys indicating fewer than 5% are vegan. The prospect of billions of people deciding to eliminate animal products from their diets seems unlikely. Feeding a vegan world would require growing many more plants than we do now.

Springmann pointed out there is enough cropland to meet the nutritional needs of Earth's population through plants alone.

"At the moment, we feed about a third of all grains to livestock," Springmann emphasized. "Which means that if we wouldn't have so much livestock anymore, we actually would have lots of cropland available to grow other things in addition to not having, for example, all this need for pastures anymore."

He said if we shifted to a healthy plant-based diet, then we would still have a net reduction in global cropland use of about 10%.

Benefits of a global vegan diet include an estimated 3 billion hectares of land freed up for other purposes and a 6 billion-ton reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions annually. It is also estimated more than 2 million additional hectares of tropical rainforest would be preserved each year. Springmann added another benefit is cost.

"If you recompose your diet to something that is not made up of those processed products but is just generally healthy, then we calculated that purely on the cost of ingredients, a plant-based diet might actually be much cheaper," Springmann stressed. "Up to a quarter or even a third in high-income countries."

This story is based on original reporting by Seth Millstein at Sentient.


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The U.S. Forest Service is spending $8 million to reduce wildfire risk in Montana, part of a larger federal program funded by the Inflation Reduction Act.

The money allocated to Montana is part of the 14-state Collaborative Wildfire Risk Reduction Program and will be used to reduce fire fuels in the Custer Gallatin and Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forests.

Melissa Simpson, northern regional partnership coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service, said the program also seeks to restore habitat for native species and protect the Bozeman watershed.

"Specifically, some of the treatments for the Bozeman project include things like thinning, some commercial timber harvest, pile burning and other activities related to reducing hazardous fuels," Simpson outlined. "Also, really protecting watershed health and forest health."

Regionwide, the program funds 21 fire risk-reduction projects in national forests and mostly within the urban-wildland interface.

Simpson pointed out the projects should increase the overall health of the Custer Gallatin and Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forests, by reducing what's known as "fuel loading," which lessens the chances fires become catastrophic when they do break out.

"(It) provides better access for firefighters to respond if there were a fire in those areas," Simpson explained. "Both of these projects are in municipal watersheds, so providing healthy forests for healthy water is really important."

In one instance, the project seeks to protect the Tenmile municipal watershed, which supplies drinking water to 40,000 people in the greater Helena area.


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This is Pollution Prevention Week and advocates are renewing their call for one plastics manufacturer to clean up its act.

An August demonstration at Formosa Plastics' New Jersey headquarters saw protesters demanding the multinational company compensate victims of a 2016 environmental disaster in Vietnam, restore the affected land and cancel proposed expansions in Texas and Louisiana. Activists from around the country participated, including representatives from GreenFaith, a multifaith climate justice organization.

Rev. Fletcher Harper, executive director of GreenFaith, said many Formosa Plastics' manufacturing locations have a long and well documented record of toxic contamination.

"The pollution has severe health impacts on residents of communities," Harper pointed out. "The company does nothing to respond in terms of changing the way that it operates, increasing its commitment to safety."

In a statement via email, Formosa Plastics U.S.A. said it is committed to conducting business in a manner which is environmentally responsible and in compliance with applicable U.S. regulations.

Expansion plans in Louisiana involve a new petrochemical complex with 14 individual plants covering more than 2,000 acres along the Mississippi. The $9.4 billion complex would be located in Saint James Parish.

In a June letter to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, environmental law advocates said the department must deny Clean Air Act mandated operating permit renewals to Formosa Plastics based on their own emissions data. The letter cited data-based air modeling showing the complex would exacerbate violations of the recently updated Environmental Protection Agency air quality standards for fine particulate matter or soot.

Harper noted the human and environmental toll taken by such facilities is huge.

"You see different forms of cancer; you see air pollution that fails to meet health and safety standards," Harper outlined. "You see water pollution, contamination of soil that impacts food that people grow. So you see this at a widespread level, in the communities adjacent to the Formosa Plastics petrochemical plants and in the surrounding areas as well."

Saint James Parish is already considered to be part of "Cancer Alley," an 85-mile stretch of land along the Mississippi where rates of cancer are significantly higher than the national average. The area is home to more than 200 petrochemical plants.

In 2019, Formosa Plastics reached a $50 million settlement after its Port Comfort, Texas, facility dumped billions of plastics pellets and other pollutants into Lavaca Bay, the largest Clean Water Act settlement in history.

The company also agreed to reach "zero discharge" of plastic waste from the facility. Despite its promises, since 2020 the Port Comfort location has been cited for nearly 600 violations and assessed more than $15 million in additional penalties.

Given the company's plans to also expand its Port Comfort facility, Harper emphasized advocates are calling on banks to divest.

"We have called on Citibank and other major U.S. banks, many of which are financing Formosa Plastics' activities, to stop investing and to stop financing," Harper explained. "Because of the negligence of the operation and because of the impact on the community."

In February, environmental officials in Texas issued a draft permit allowing the local river authority to construct an off-channel lake to enable the expansion of the Port Comfort facility. The reservoir would be permitted to divert up to 31 billion gallons from the Lavaca River each year. Public comment on the draft permit is ongoing, with a public meeting scheduled for next week.