Advocacy Groups Urge Public to Help Save Environmental Funding in Rhode Island Budget.
Some 20 environmental groups are imploring their supporters to contact their members of the House ahead of its marathon budget vote scheduled for June 22 and ask them to restore $12.5 million to Rhode Island’s energy-efficiency program.
Gas and electric customers pay for energy-efficiency programs when they pay their utility bills.
In a letter, the coalition asks legislators not to defund a flourishing program.
“A cut of $12.5 million from our state’s ratepayer-funded energy efficiency programs will hinder growth and significantly impact savings for residents and businesses.
Energy efficiency is Rhode Island’s ‘first fuel’ and its lowest-cost energy resource.” Save The Bay wants the House to add two jobs proposed in Gov.
The environmental group also wants the House to restore $5 million “scooped” from the Narragansett Bay Commission to the General Fund.
Farm events.
Land trusts worry that the legislation allows this new class of “secondary agricultural operations” to trump local planning and zoning boards.
The Land Trust Council and the Rhode Island Farm Bureau say business interests crafted the bill without input from farmers.

In support of Gov.
Jerry Brown’s call for all customers to make water conservation a new way of life, even as he declared the official end to the current drought, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is announcing new water management tools for agricultural customers.
These supplies will continue to be a challenge for the state.
That’s one reason why PG&E is working with Wexus Technologies to enable conservation of both water and energy, through an energy management software system that is now available to agriculture customers.
Wexus remotely connects pumps, buildings, PG&E electric SmartMeters and water flow meters via cloud technology.
"Water conservation and energy management go hand-in-hand.
We’re glad to be working with PG&E to make water and energy conservation a way of life.” PG&E will continue to work with the agricultural community to manage water and energy use through a variety of existing programs and incentives.
PG&E agricultural customers have saved more than 538 million kilowatt hours and 19 million therms of energy through the company’s energy efficiency programs and rebates since 2011.
That adds up to more than $81 million dollars in rebates in the last six years, since the recent drought first began.
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