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For Toyota, a ‘green’ lemon

TUCSON — A local woman is invoking Arizona’s “lemon law” for a refund on her 2008 Toyota Prius, alleging the vehicle conked out on her after just 60 days on the road.

The hybrid vehicle is one of the most talked-about models from Toyota. Its fuel efficiency has driven American competitors to follow up with their own versions, even as their companies head toward financial ruin. Some say the Prius’ example could bail them out.

Julie Chambers, however, disagrees. In her three-page lawsuit in Pima County Superior Court, she says the vehicle was inoperable for so long that the case falls under the Arizona Motor Vehicles Act, widely known as the Lemon Law.

The suit names Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc. as the defendant. It claims that on March 12, Chambers bought a new Prius from Allstate Vehicles in Tucson. She received a bumper-to-bumper, three-year or 36,000-mile warranty with the purchase.

On May 12, “several of the Prius’ warning lights were activated shortly after [Chambers] started the vehicle,” the complaint states. “She drove about one half-mile and the vehicle subsequently ceased to operate. Specifically, the vehicle would start but not move forward.”

Chambers had the vehicle towed to Desert Toyota in Tucson on the same day. She claims the dealer was required to honor the warranty but did not do so.

The Prius was inoperable for 112 days, she claims. This far exceeds the minimum 30 days for which the dealership has to cure the vehicle under the state’s Lemon Law.

Chambers is asking a judge to intervene. She is represented by Scottsdale lawyers Luis F. Ramirez and Shalev Amar.

New trends find home on the range

NEAR THE CHIRICAHUA MOUNTAINS — Just before sunrise, fighting a temptation to snooze a few hours more in my casita’s comfy king-size bed, I pull on some shoes and a sweatshirt and head out into the chill early morning air.

To the west, the sky above the still-darkened Chiricahua Mountains slowly shifts from gray to a light, opalescent blue. A family of domesticated geese drifts across the surface of a small, still pond ringed by tall oak trees. And Dharma, an Abkash with sleek white fur – the ranch’s friendly canine sentry – lies in his usual spot on the café’s wraparound porch, dreaming his peaceful dog dreams.

Sunglow Ranch, a retreat that promises a break from the stress and turmoil of the city, was living it up to its word.

“It’s just a total chill factor here,” Susan Nunn, the ranch’s general manager, tells me later, over a breakfast of pumpkin-walnut pancakes, sausage, apple cider and coffee. “You do what you want to do.”

Located in sparsely populated Cochise County, an hour-and-a-half drive southeast of Tucson, the ranch sits on 400 acres at the base of the Chiricahua Mountains, where desert and rolling grasslands merge into juniper and oak forest.

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INTERACTIVES

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Down at the end of a long dirt road, the property backs up to 300,000 acres of the Chiricahua National Monument.

Its secluded location makes the ranch a popular getaway for harried city-dwellers, some who travel from as far as New York City for a few days of rest and relaxation.

“People love the isolation,” Nunn says. “The more chaos they have in their world, the more delighted they are to be here.”

Beginning this summer, the ranch has added a comprehensive program of sustainable and earth-friendly practices to put guests at its nine casitas at even greater ease.

At the café, baked goods are made from organic wheat that is ground on the premises. Green and leafy vegetables increasingly come from the ranch’s garden. Other produce is bought from local farms to further reduce the restaurant’s carbon footprint. Harsh chemical cleansers have also been banished from the kitchen.

The café was certified by the national Green Restaurant Association for its efforts.

“We had to get rid of anything Styrofoam before they would even talk to us,” Nunn says.

The change holds major appeal to guests like Eleanor Kedney, a poet and creative writing teacher from Tucson who is planning a writing seminar at the ranch in several weeks.

“I think that how we walk on this earth is very important,” she says. “It makes me feel good that I’m spending my money in a place that’s not polluting or taxing the environment.”

All of the casitas now boast 150-gallon rainwater catchments, which provide for much of the irrigation of the landscaping. Solar-powered lighting has replaced incandescent bulbs on the driveway.

Vegetarians, vegans and other health-conscious diners will also find themselves at home at the ranch’s café.

“We make really, really healthy meals here,” says Nunn, a vegetarian who has studied macrobiotics for the last 10 years.

Beyond the ranch’s gates, Cochise County itself is experiencing something of a transformation. The largely rural county is now the heart of Arizona’s fledgling winemaking industry, which has seen major expansion in the last few years.

While wine has been made in the area since at least the early 1980s, since 2002 the number of wineries has more than tripled – from nine to 27.

“It’s really taking off,” says Rod Keeling, president of the Arizona Wine Growers Association and owner of Keeling-Shaefer Vineyards, just down the road from Sunglow Ranch. “You can grow this incredible fruit here.”

Keeling retired several years ago, and relocated to the area from Tempe. The climate, wildlife, scenic beauty – and the quiet, largely undeveloped character of the land – made it the ideal place to spend his and his wife’s sunset years.

“This is a genuine place,” he says. “It’s a place you want to keep coming back to.”

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MORE INFORMATION:

One Bedroom Casita (including dinner, breakfast, taxes and gratuities)
1 queen bed
One person - $200.00
Additional person - $70.00

Visit Sunglow Ranch and Cochise County’s tourism board for more details.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

McCain’s record casts doubt on energy ads, ‘green’ platform

PHOENIX — Wind turbines spin. Solar panels turn toward the sun.

“Renewable energy to transform our economy, create jobs and energy independence, that’s John McCain,” says the narrator of this ad for the Republican presidential candidate.

With oil prices and energy issues and jobs among voters’ biggest concerns this election season, it’s a pitch guaranteed to swing some votes.

But is it true? Not exactly.

When it comes to renewable energy, McCain’s record has been mixed at best. He has missed key votes on renewable energy legislation, and opposed renewable energy standards that would have boosted wind and solar power.

The Arizona senator’s record on wind power is so patchy, and his campaign’s policies on renewable energy so vague, that the non-partisan group FactCheck.org called his ad featuring wind turbines “puffery.”

Still, McCain is far from the worst U.S. Senator on the issue of renewable energy. He has some hard-earned credibility on the issue of global warming, even co-sponsoring an unsuccessful climate change bill with Democratic rival Barack Obama.

The renewable energy issue will surely come up again tonight as the two candidates square off in their last nationally televised presidential debate at Hofstra University.

“We have many advantages in the fight against global warming, but time is not one of them,” McCain said during a campaign speech at a wind turbine factory in Portland, Oregon. “Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming, or the precise timeline of global warming, we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters, and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring.”

A MIXED MESSAGE

McCain has outlined a cap-and-trade plan that would cut carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and cut 1990 emissions by 60 percent by 2050. By creating a market for the sale and purchase of excess emissions, his plan would create powerful incentives for the development of renewable energy and other carbon-neutral technologies, he said.

“As never before, the market would reward any person or company that seeks to invent, improve, or acquire alternatives to carbon-based energy,” McCain said.

McCain has touted his support for a cap on emissions as a principled break from his own party leadership, and has used images of solar panels and wind turbines in campaign ads seeking to bolster his contention that his presidency will usher in a new era of renewable energy and so-called “green-collar jobs.”

Yet despite McCain’s advocacy on climate change, Arizona, his home state, produces little renewable energy, relying almost solely on coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydropower. According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Energy, Arizona ranks 46th in the nation for renewable energy, with 0.7 percent of its power from non-hydroelectric renewable resources.

Thanks to the Republican-dominated Arizona Corporation Commission, which has launched an aggressive renewable energy standard, the state is on its way towards improving its energy mix.

Yet McCain has voted repeatedly against a federal renewable energy standard that would have accomplished a similar goal on a national level.

“Overall, he’s said good things about it, but he hasn’t done a lot to help Arizona when it comes to renewable energy,” says Sandy Bahr, outreach director for the Sierra Club’s Arizona chapter. “He’s missed the key votes.”

The McCain campaign did not respond to several requests for comment.

McCAIN MISSES KEY VOTES

As a U.S. Senator, McCain’s ability to drive renewable energy development in his home state has been limited. But critics in the state contend that as senator, McCain has failed to lead on the renewable energy issue, even as he touts his climate change credentials.

Others condemn his plans for expanded nuclear energy production, to reduce carbon emissions from coal and natural gas-fired plants, saying the environmental and financial risks outweigh the potential benefit to the climate.

McCain’s failure to vote on a key Senate bill extending tax credits to renewable energy projects like wind farms and thermal solar plants has provided fodder for local critics of his environmental and energy policies.

While the bill finally passed the Senate this Tuesday, McCain again missed the vote, the ninth time he has missed a chance to support the measure.

In the bill’s eight previous incarnations this year, a group of almost exclusively Republican senators joined together to prevent the Democratic leadership from bringing it to the Senate floor for a vote.

Had the measure failed, projects in Arizona such as the Dry Lake Wind Project, the state’s first wind-energy farm, and the Solana Generating Station, a solar-thermal plant near Phoenix, would have suffered major financial setbacks.

“Without the credits, the numbers don’t work,” Fred Morse, a senior advisor for Abengoa Solar, the Spanish firm building the Solana plant, told The New York Times in August.

McCain’s campaign website says the candidate “believes in an even-handed system of tax credits that will remain in place until the market transforms sufficiently to the point where renewable energy no longer merits the taxpayers’ dollars.”

To Bahr, however, that rhetoric is not backed up by action.

“These tax incentives are essential to our state – things like the Solana solar power station will not move forward without them,” she says. “McCain has not stood up for Arizona on this issue.”

Others in the state disagree.

“I think John McCain’s position on renewable energy is solid,” says Kris Mayes, an Arizona Corporation commissioner and a strong advocate for increasing wind and solar power production in the state.

Mayes is a Republican who has endorsed McCain and speaks as a surrogate for him at campaign events. She says she feels confident that were he elected president, McCain would show leadership on both climate change and renewable energy.

“I think McCain has shown real courage on this issue,” she says. “I think it’s another area where he has bucked his own party.”

REMAINS DEFIANTLY PRO-NUKE

On another contentious energy issue – nuclear power – McCain has taken a characteristically bold position. Despite unresolved issues over how to safely dispose of nuclear waste, the senator has advocated the construction of 45 new reactors by 2030, and 100 by 2050.

“Nuclear power is a proven, zero-emission source of energy, and it is time we recommit to advancing our use of nuclear power,” McCain said in a June campaign speech.

Yet McCain’s description of nuclear power as emissions-free is misleading at best. While nuclear power plant operation is largely emission-free, the production of nuclear fuel – from mining to enrichment to disposal – involves large expenditures of energy and generates tens of millions of tons of carbon emissions over the life of a plant.

Other environmental impacts – from uranium mining to waste disposal – are equally troubling, and locating the new plants raises tricky political issues.

In Arizona, where the reactors at the Palo Verde station already provide almost 30 percent of the state’s power, building new reactors could face an uphill struggle.

Corporation commissioner Mayes says she agrees with McCain that the country needs more nuclear power. But she cites the plant’s huge demands on scarce water resources and the delicate financial stability of the state’s utility companies as potential stumbling blocks.

“This is not a simple issue. I agree with Sen. McCain that generally we need to do more nuclear power in the U.S.,” Mayes says. “Do I think we should start building a new nuclear power plant in Arizona? I’m not convinced of that. Can we build more of them on the East Coast? I think so.”

Even if no reactors are built in Arizona, the state could still feel an impact.

With uranium prices up substantially in recent years, mining companies are aggressively pursuing potential deposits in Arizona, some of them near the Grand Canyon. Were the U.S. to build McCain’s proposed 100 new reactors – doubling the number currently in use – the accompanying spike in demand would undoubtedly lead to a renewal of uranium mining in the state.

And while reactor meltdowns such as those at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island have done the worst damage to the nuclear industry’s reputation, a poor fiscal track record hurts nuclear power’s chances even more.

“It’s not just going to be an ecological disaster,” says Russell Lowes, founder of Safe Energy Analysts, a renewable energy advocacy group based in Phoenix. “Putting everything else aside, economically, it’s simply not viable.”

The industry has consistently underestimated the cost of construction, power generation and waste disposal, Lowes says – often by as much as 220 percent.

With an industry estimate of $7 billion to construct each new plant, the ultimate cost for McCain’s 100 new reactors could reach as high as $1.54 trillion.

“It’s an incredibly stupid way to proceed at this point,” Lowes says. “It’s a 20th century failure.”

NO ANSWER FOR NUCLEAR WASTE

Lowes is not alone in his pessimistic view of nuclear power. The last nuclear reactor order for a new reactor that was subsequently completed was in 1973.

A decade later, the conservative and pro-business Forbes magazine pronounced the nuclear industry a “disaster.”

“The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale. The utility industry has already invested $125 billion in nuclear power,” the magazine declared in a 1985 cover story. “Only the blind, or the biased, can now think that most of the money has been well spent.”

McCain, were he to win the presidency and initiate his nuclear program, would likely also face charges of hypocrisy for his stance on nuclear waste.

During an interview with Nevada journalist Sam Shad, McCain said he supported the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada – but opposes the shipment of nuclear waste through Arizona, or his hometown of Phoenix.

“Would you be comfortable with nuclear waste coming through Arizona on its way, you know, going through Phoenix, on its way to Yucca Mountain?” Shad asks in a video of the interview, which is available online.

“No, I would not. No, I would not,” McCain says.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.