SUMMARY: Many consider Nevada's Sen. Dean Heller the most vulnerable Republican in the Senate this fall. President Trump has loomed large in the race, but public support for Trump there has been sliding, and the state went for the Democrat in the last three presidential elections. Yamiche Alcindor talks with voters about why immigration is their number one issue heading into the midterm elections.
With more than 300 days of sunshine a year, Nevada seems like the perfect place for rooftop solar.
And with the help of state and federal incentives, the amount of rooftop solar in the state has exploded, increasing by more than 400 percent from 2014 to 2015. But the future of the rooftop solar industry in this state is now very cloudy after a decision late last year by the state’s Public Utility Commission to change the rates for customers with solar panels.
At stake is a system known as “net metering,” which allows rooftop solar customers to get credit for the excess energy they send back to the grid when it’s sunny.
Versions of ‘net metering’ are on the books in more than 40 states and the effect for many rooftop solar customers is a dramatically reduced electric bill. But in lowering their bill, utilities and regulators around the country have been trying to determine if solar customers are paying their fair share of the electric grid’s operating costs.
In Nevada, the Public Utility Commission ruled that there was a cost-shift from non-solar customers to solar customers.
“The customers who are participating in net metering were not sharing in the costs of the utility’s distributions and transmission system – the pipes and the wires that get the electricity to your home,” said Anne-Marie Cuneo, Staff Director of Regulatory Operations for the Nevada Public Utilities Commission.
In December, the Public Utility Commission increased the basic connection fee and reduced the value of the credit that homeowners receive for excess energy to help close the gap between non-solar and solar customers, which utility NV Energy calculated to be about $16 million a year.
Solar advocates say the change threatens the whole industry and many companies said they were moving operations out of the state, including SolarCity, which laid off 550 workers in January. Advocates argue that utilities have been pushing for changes in ‘net metering’ rules because they see solar as a threat to their business model.
“Solar is becoming real,” said Marco Krapels, Executive Vice President for Strategy and Structured Finance at Solar City. “The utility monopolies are saying, ‘well wait a minute, we’ve got to crush it before it gets too big.’ And that’s what’s happening now.”
SUMMARY: In Nevada, the debate on immigration reform has consequences beyond the political. Facing a mixed bag of law and executive action, many live with the fear that their families will be divided by deportation. Gwen Ifill reports on personal stakes at the heart of the political fight.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): The divide over immigration was a major theme of this year’s congressional elections. But the issue is not just roiling politicians.
As our Gwen found on a weekend trip to Nevada, the president’s policies and Republicans’ opposition to reform has meant difficult splits within many families.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Far from Washington’s politics, positioning and policy, here’s what the immigration debate looks like, a Saturday afternoon gathering of friends and relatives at a family-owned restaurant little more than a mile from the Strip in Las Vegas.
Susana Flores, the owner, is a legal resident who tried unsuccessfully to teach me how to make tortillas.
(LAUGHTER)
GWEN IFILL: Susana’s sister, Rocina Sandoval, who works as a waitress, is not here legally. She could easily be deported.
ROCINA SANDOVAL, Nevada (through interpreter): I would like some kind of documentation so I could work legally and help the family more.
GWEN IFILL: Most of the family members have lived in Las Vegas for decades. Rocina’s son, Juan Salazar, joined his parents here when he was just 7 years old. He is now covered by President Obama’s 2012 executive action which protects so called dreamers, young people who arrived in this country illegally when they were children.
He runs a pool business with his father, Juan Sr., and attends a local community college. But good fortune has its limits, even for a dreamer.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now to a story that takes us out to the Western U.S., to Nevada, where a standoff between the federal government and a local cattle rancher involving an armed militia almost turned violent.
Hari Sreenivasan is in our New York studio with this report.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Armed militiamen pointing guns at federal officials over cattle. For more than 20 years, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy has refused to pay fees for grazing cattle on public lands, some 80 miles north of Las Vegas.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management says Bundy now owes close to $1 million. He says his family has used the land since the 1870s and doesn’t recognize the federal government’s jurisdiction. Last year, a federal judge ordered Bundy to remove his livestock. He ignored the order, and two weeks ago, BLM agents rounded up more than 400 of his cattle.
Last weekend, armed militia members and states’ right protesters showed up to challenge the move.
FMR. SHERIFF RICHARD MACK, Graham County, AZ: I came here because I don’t believe the BLM has any authority whatsoever. They have no law enforcement authority in Clark County, and they have no business whatsoever destroying the pursuit of happiness of one of our friends and brothers.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Rather than risk violence, the BLM did an about-face and released the cattle. But the dust-up has put longstanding disputes over Western range rights squarely in the spotlight.
Last night, Nevada Democratic Senator Harry Reid blasted the protesters.
SEN. HARRY REID, D, Nev.: So, these people, who hold themselves out to be patriots, are not. They’re nothing more than domestic terrorists. And I think that we are a country that people should follow the law.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): The nation's largest outdoor art festival, Burning Man, and how it's massive sculptures are popping up beyond their annual desert home.
Our report is by Thuy Vu of KQED Public Television in San Francisco.
THUY VU, KQED Public Television: Every year, thousands of artists make the trek to Nevada to display their work in one of the most extreme environments imaginable.
For one week, five square miles of the Black Rock Desert is transformed into a more than 300-piece exhibition of radical self-expression.
TOMAS MCCABE, Black Rock Arts Foundation: It is like the greatest museum ever. You have your piece there. You don't see any other pieces around it and you see this vastness of the desert. Being able to see the change in scale from something from a distance, and then being able to get right up to it and climb on top of it and actually touch it is amazing.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): Next, another in our series looking at the dropout crisis in U.S. schools.
Tonight: The nation's fifth largest school district has one of the lowest graduation rates in the country, and is trying to do something about it.
From Las Vegas, Ray Suarez reports for our American Graduate project.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): In a city that bets against the odds 24 hours a day, David Wilson was unsure of his chances as he knocked on doors earlier in the door. The new principal of Chaparral High School in Las Vegas had an ambitious goal, to find dropouts where they live and bring them back to class.
The effort was part of a citywide push known as Reclaim Your Future, targeting dropouts in Clark County, Nevada, where nearly half of all high school students fail to graduate on time.
