Clunkers Bill & Watering The West

Cash for clunkers gets rolling...

This is the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams in for Lester Graham.

Automakers are pretty excited that the U-S House passed a “cash for clunkers” bill this week.

The Senate is taking it up next.

If this becomes law... if you have a car or truck that gets 18 miles per gallon or less... you’d get to trade in your old gas guzzler for a more fuel efficient car or truck. The old car would get scrapped.

You’d get a voucher for several thousand dollars. Automakers get the sales. Polluting old cars get taken off the road. Everyone wins... right?

Well... some environmental groups say the bill’s much too watered down.

In the House bill you could trade in an old SUV that gets, say, 14 miles per gallon... for a new SUV that gets just two miles per gallon more.

Ann Mesnikoff directs Sierra Club’s Green Transportation Campaign.

“The key things to change in the cash for clunkers program are to ensure that taxpayer dollars that are invested to help consumers buy new vehicles are going to buy vehicles that have at least better than average fuel economy. Not those that can’t even meet today’s fuel economy standards.”

Congress is also going to have to figure out how to pay for the bill. The plan’s expected to cost about 4 billion dollars.


STING

This is the Environment Report.


Some of the nation's fastest-growing cities happen to be in the nation's hottest and driest environments.

And when people arrive in their moving vans, it's not like they're bringing the water they need along with them.

So, cities in western states pipe water across deserts, and even mountains, to keep the taps running.

Shawn Allee found out about one pipeline project in Colorado that's gotten some scrutiny.

Shawn, where is this pipeline?

**

- Southern Delivery System
- run from Pueblo 45 mi North to CO Springs
- scrutiny comes from it going uphill entire time
- talked with Stacy Tellinghuisen (TELLING-hew-sun)
- with enviro group, Western Resource Advocates

ST: They would be lifting this water several thousand feet to Colorado Springs. At the heart of the question is that water is heavy. Pumping it over a great distance takes a lot of energy. And in the process it would require something along the lines of 60 MW of power, which is about a tenth of power plant.

- carbon footprint because primary fuel in the area is coal

LESTER: what does the utility have to say about this?

- Keith Reilly helped plan the project for Colorado Springs Utilities
- looking for extra money it'd cost to dedicate wind or solar for it
- can't count on it.
- city's growing - have to move now.

Riley: Water is the essential element for all of us, so when it comes to that level of sustaining our own lives, then you get to some trade-offs on what we're willing to do to keep ourselves alive where we we live, where our cities are. we've got to move water to Colorado Springs, and we're uphill from the river, so we've got to get the water uphill one way or another.

- the carbon footprint gets a mention in the enviro impact statements, but carbon doesn't count for much in those
- enviros are hoping someday, carbon footprint will get attention right at the beginning
- stacy Tellingheusen (enviro) wishes it would
-says 5 big water pipeline projects in the works for the Western US - some with even bigger carbon footprints.

LESTER: Cities like CO Springs say they're growing and they need the water. Can't some of these places in the desert or arid places stop growth?

- asked Riley @ CS Utilities
- for them, grow just from families having babies

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That’s the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.