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District 27 Green Party candidate touts energy, water plans

As one of the first projects for The Footprint, over the next six weeks I’ll be interviewing a cross-section of candidates and incumbents for state office across Arizona, asking them about their views on the environment, energy, climate change and other topics that interest us.

For our first installment, I spoke with Kent Solberg, a first-time candidate running for the District 27 seat in the Arizona legislature on the Green Party ticket. Solberg, 61, qualified for $32,000 in Clean Elections funding by raising several thousand dollars in small donations in his district. He hopes to be the first Green Party member of the state legislature.

According to Solberg, contrary to some impressions (mine too – guilty) the Green Party stands for way more than just environmental protection. “It’s a misnomer to say that the Green Party is strictly an environmental party,” Solberg says. “The Green Party goes way beyond just the environment.”

The party staunchly opposed the war in Iraq from the outset, and favors immediate withdrawal from that country. Their platform condemns capital punishment, favors decentralized government and strongly supports reproductive rights for women. Except for the fact that they’re running former Rep. Cynthia McKinney for President, and may sap some much-needed swing-state votes away from Obama, I think they’re great, and a much-needed antidote to the two-party gridlock that our country seems mired in.

Yet while Tucson may be one of Arizona’s most liberal bastions, Solberg faces long odds against entrenched Democratic incumbents in District 27.

In our talk, Solberg focused in-depth on two specific environmental concerns: renewable energy – in particular solar power – and water.

Near the top of his priorities, he says, is jump-starting the state’s solar power industry.

“One of the things I would do as a legislator is to fight to make Arizona the world leader in solar power,” he says. “I would encourage the Arizona legislature to work with solar companies, to bring solar companies into the state, to develop solar farms and develop the highest levels of technology.”

There are a few large-scale solar projects under construction in the state, such as the Solana Generating Station, but Solberg believes we’re still well behind where we could be.

“We should’ve been doing this 25 years ago, and we haven’t progressed at the pace that we can. Solar energy has been stagnant,” he says. “There’s ways that the legislature can change that. We can provide tax credits and tax incentives to individuals and companies.”

Solberg sees a bright future in solar, and echoed one of the themes of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign – that renewable energy can be a win-win, both for the environment and the economy.

“I think we could bring in a clean new industry that can’t be outsourced,” he says.

Solberg also fears that rampant development in the Tucson area is outstripping the region’s long-term water supply and putting the Tucson aquifer at risk.

“We’re living in a place that has a limited amount of water, and for us to continue to grow in a sustainable way, we have to address the amount of water we have,” he says. “We have to look at how we can recharge the aquifer.”

Solberg proposes looking at methods to capture runoff from monsoon storms that is otherwise lost. But he opposes uses treated effluent – otherwise known as treated sewage – to recharge the groundwater.

“They’re finding more and more substances and drugs in the effluent,” he says. “Effluent can be used for other purposes. We can learn to use treated effluent in a way that would save the groundwater.”

To contact Kent Solberg for more information or to get involved in his campaign, write to: kent4house@juno.com

The campaign also has a website that Kent assures me will be active soon: www.kent4house.org

JCR