A New Mexico agency has stepped up vigilance of the state's limited water resources.

On Tuesday, the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission approved a designation to protect more than 250 miles in five watersheds, including the Rio Grande. A coalition of state groups including anglers, local governments, acequia members and conservation groups were seeking the "Outstanding National Resource Waters" designation.

Ralph Vigil, northern organizer for the nonprofit New Mexico Wild, said the classification will protect traditional community water uses and safeguard waterways from the degradation new uses often inflict.

"I think that we, as people living in this time, need to take the necessary steps," Vigil asserted. "Because I believe we're living in a tipping point where either we do it or we're going to get to a point that it's so far gone that there's no such thing as clean water anymore."

The designation protects traditional community water uses and safeguard waterways from degradation from mining, development and transportation, waste disposal, recreational overuse and the effects of climate change. It will also help sustain outdoor activities such as fishing, hunting, hiking and camping.

Nick Streit, executive director of Friends of Rio Grande del Norte National Monument and co-owner of the Taos Fly Shop, explained the value of protecting the resource.

"My father started the business back in 1980 and I've been running it with my wife for the last 20 years and it's our sole income," Streit explained. "Protecting the water is also protecting kind-of our livelihood."

Vigil, an organic farmer, said clean rivers and streams are vital to New Mexico's agricultural economy, which depends on clean water to grow healthy crops.

"As we move forward with uncertainty as far as what might happen to our protections for clean water throughout the state this whole ONRW designation will help ensure that more of our streams within our state are protected," Vigil emphasized.

Some conservationists worry the incoming Trump administration will repeal clean water legislation approved by President Joe Biden, including an order for utilities to start ridding the nation's drinking water of forever chemicals known as PFAS, which are linked to cancer and other health risks.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

The Nevada Conservation League says its policy priorities for this year's legislative session reflect what Nevadans value - protecting the state's unique landscapes and wildlife, ensuring families can afford to power their homes, and advancing the state's clean energy economy.

The league's Deputy Director, Christi Cabrera-Georgeson, said recent polling finds that Nevadans want lawmakers to do more to expand clean energy and hold monopoly utility companies accountable.

But with Democratic majorities in both legislative chambers, a Republican governor, and a president that is stepping away from global climate action, it is uncertain if progress in the Silver State could be derailed.

Cabrera-Georgeson said the league won't sit back.

"Nevadans continue to really support clean energy," said Cabrera-Georgeson. "They want lower bills, they want utilities held accountable and they want a cleaner grid. All of this was very overwhelmingly supported - whether that be Democrats, Republicans, or nonpartisans, really across the board - these clean-energy issues are popular."

That is why Cabrera-Georgeson said one of the league's legislative priorities will focus on ratepayer protections.

It's working to ensure utilities such as NV Energy and Southwest Gas spend ratepayer dollars responsibly.

Utilities claim they need to increase rates to ensure quality service, but Cabrera-Georgeson said more transparency of funds is needed.

Most of Nevada is made up of public lands. But conservationists are concerned about how these lands, as well as national monuments, could be impacted under Trump's pro-fossil fuel agenda.

Just last week the Trump administration called for a review of protections of national monuments.

But for Cabrera-Georgeson, a native Nevadan, having access to the great outdoors is part of the Nevada way of life.

"I don't think I know a single person that doesn't do some kind of outdoor recreation," said Cabrera-Georgeson. "It is really part of Nevada, and we'll continue to push back on any effort to take away our access to public lands, to take away our access to clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment."

Another hot-button issue taking center stage this legislative session will be affordable housing. Cabrera-Georgeson said the NCL has asked policymakers to not pit public lands against the housing issue.

"Ultimately, we can absolutely have both," said Cabrera-Georgeson. "We have affordable housing, we can have affordable utility bills and we can also protect our public lands and make sure we continue to have access to the outdoors for all Nevadans."

Some North Dakota school districts are part of a movement that has embraced electric school buses, but the federal funding shakeup carried out by the Trump administration leaves administrators in limbo.

Spending deals approved by Congress in the Biden era committed more than $5 billion to help schools with these big-ticket purchases so they can save on transportation costs and make bus routes less polluted. But President Donald Trump's desire to claw back such funds has created uncertainty.

Robert Lukens, superintendent of Harvey Public Schools, said they'll soon receive a clean bus through the program - but there's no assurances three others will be covered.

"When you lose those federal funds," he said, "it makes it difficult for districts and taxpayers to justify that type of cost."

Lukens said the school district faces a deadline of whether to pursue the additional buses for its fleet. The average cost for a zero-emissions bus is $350,000.

An assistance group reports similar dilemmas around the United States, with districts being locked out of a funding portal. An Environmental Protection Agency memo circulated this week has ordered agency money to flow again, but it isn't clear yet which programs will resume.

Lukens also has a background in agriculture, and said he's seen how technology has brought similar efficiencies to big farm equipment. He suggested it's unfortunate the Harvey school district might not be able to see the full benefits of non-diesel buses.

"Based on other districts that I've talked to before we applied for this, you're seeing a lot of drop in emissions," he said, "and they've seen almost $30 to $40 a day savings in fuel."

Advocates have said the federal funding confusion also hurts bus manufacturers. In some states, funds for cleaner bus fleets have been awarded by legislatures, along with utilities, but federal grants still make up the biggest share. Since his return to the White House, Trump has emphasized production of fossil fuels and scaling back programs aligned with clean energy.


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By Taylor Haelterman for Triple Pundit.
Broadcast version by Eric Tegethoff for North Carolina News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Like most tourism destinations, North Carolina's Outer Banks spent decades trying to attract as many visitors as possible. While more and more people flock to its beautiful beaches, historical sites, and thousands of vacation homes, locals question if the advertising was too successful.

"For years and years and years, the tourism industry as a whole was really, really focused on marketing," said Whitney Knollenberg, associate professor and extension department specialist in tourism at North Carolina State University. "The paradigm that the industry followed was 'heads and beds.' That means we want to get as many people into hotel rooms for as many nights as possible, because that is what is going to generate the economic impact that we want from tourism."

In the Outer Banks, the growing industry needs to find ways to adapt to serious environmental impacts to sustain the level of tourism it built. The natural shifting of the sandbars these communities were constructed on is causing homes to fall into the ocean and doubling the length of ferry rides to southernmost Ocracoke Island, which can only be reached by boat, Knollenberg said. Like many coastal communities, the Outer Banks also face fallout from increasingly frequent and severe weather events. The barrier islands were dealt serious damage by severe flooding and high winds from Hurricanes Hermine and Matthew in 2016, Tropical Storm Michael in 2018, and Hurricane Dorian a year later.

Along with adapting to the natural world, the industry has impacts of its own. The wild horse herd that calls the northern beaches of Currituck County home has dwindled from thousands to around 100 horses due to habitat loss and deadly run-ins with humans. Increased visitors also means increased energy demand, water use and consumption, which come with their own environmental consequences and feed into the larger impacts the islands are already trying to manage.

Meanwhile, local workers find themselves pushed out by the very industry that employs them. It's difficult to find affordable housing, and when workers leave, local businesses become too short-staffed to stay open.

The search for solutions led the North Carolina State College of Natural Resources to team up with Twiddy and Company, a family-owned vacation rental business in the Outer Banks, to launch the Lighthouse Fund for Sustainable Tourism in 2021. The fund supported Knollenberg's research on sustainable tourism development in the Outer Banks. She stayed on the islands for two months that summer, having over 40 conversations with residents, business owners, workers, elected officials, and other stakeholders to learn more about the tourism-related challenges they faced and what the region can do to address them.

From destination marketing to destination management

Destination marketing organizations, like visitors bureaus, are typically funded by the occupancy taxes travelers pay when they stay in hotel rooms, which can be anywhere from 6 percent to 17 percent, Knollenberg said. They're incentivized to keep following the same model because the more heads and beds they get, the bigger their budget.

Dare, Currituck and Hyde counties, which make up the 200-mile chain of barrier islands known as the Outer Banks, saw combined visitor spending of almost $2.8 billion in 2023.

Visitation has exploded since the COVID-19 pandemic. Dare County alone reported a 40 percent increase in visitor occupancy at the end of the peak tourism season in September 2020 compared to a year earlier and marked another increase of almost 15 percent the following year.

"We are at insane levels of occupancy. I'm talking in 2021, they were at 97, 98 percent occupancy," Knollenberg said. "Which means even if you wanted to come to the Outer Banks, you couldn't because there's no place for you to stay."

Occupancy numbers in Dare County leveled out after that, then decreased by nearly 12 percent this year. But the county is still seeing hundreds of thousands more visitors than in the years before the pandemic. That trend continues across county lines.

"What happens oftentimes is they do a really good job, and they get a lot of people to come, and they get a lot of heads and beds. Now we're starting to see the consequences of that," she said. "We really succeeded in getting people here. Now what do we do?"

One of the recommendations from Knollenberg's research is to move away from the industry norm of destination marketing, replacing it with destination management.

"That is happening in the industry worldwide at this point," Knollenberg said. "We're starting to say, 'Okay, we're no longer destination marketing organizations. We're destination management organizations.' It's not about this paradigm of heads and beds. It's more about: How do we make sure tourism does the most good for our community that we can? And you're starting to see that change."

"It should happen with the community"

Dare County started considering this shift when the Outer Banks was overwhelmed with visitors during the pandemic. The county's visitors bureau, named the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau, created a Long Range Tourism Management Plan that aligns with this idea of destination management.

"That whole process kind of fundamentally changed the way we go about our business," said Lee Nettles, executive director of the bureau. "Visitors bureaus like ours, destination marketing organizations, have traditionally been all about demand generation. You couldn't help but notice that something had to change, that more was not better, more was not the answer."

Released in 2023, the plan was informed by over 4,500 responses from locals during town hall meetings and through surveys, Nettles said.

"It's kind of terrifying, as the director of the tourism promotion entity, to put a survey out there, but it was really constructive," Nettles said. "The consultant said it was far and away their largest response. And we're a small community. We're only 38,000 or so people ... It said to us that the people who live here, obviously, care greatly about the place. But also, I don't think you respond to something like that unless you believe things can change and your input can make a difference."

The plan calls for creating a dedicated task force to curate the input of thousands of residents and tourism community stakeholders.

"Tourism is something that shouldn't happen to a community," Nettles said. "It should happen with a community."

As organizations shift from destination marketing to destination management, Knollenberg recommends they create a staff position dedicated to advancing sustainable tourism and working with the community.

Dare County created a similar position alongside the new tourism management plan called the director of community engagement, who is tasked with bringing the plan to life, Nettles said. They work with a committee of 22 people from across the Outer Banks - think: residents and representatives from local institutions like hospitals and schools - to figure out the best ways to tackle the goals in the plan and coordinate efforts with community groups.

And the bureau isn't leaving tourists out of the work. One of the key goals of the management plan is to strengthen resident and visitor engagement and keep the gap between the two from widening to resentment, an issue present in other popular destinations. Now, every time the visitors bureau develops a new advertisement or program, it considers how to tie in a local nonprofit or encourage visitors to be better environmental stewards, Nettles said.

Dare County has about 100 active nonprofits that do things like run attractions, work with sea turtles and organize beach cleanups - and the bureau is working to connect them with more visitors for volun-tourism opportunities, Nettles said. Many Outer Banks visitors return to their favorite island spot year after year, some for generations. Volunteering gives them a more nuanced view of what it takes to preserve the place they love and inspires them to become better stewards. And visitors who roll up their sleeves alongside residents help change the local perception of what a tourist is, making it clear they're working on the same side.

It's a lofty challenge to inform and motivate hundreds of thousands of new guests to be more conscious visitors every week during the summer, but Nettles said he's optimistic about what the community can accomplish when it works together. "I would say, yeah, we're definitely having an impact, and people are feeling that," he said.

"On the one hand, we have millions of visitors, which means you have to plan your municipal government and your systems and all that like a big city. But on the other hand, we're small towns and villages," Nettles said. "We all know each other, and that makes us nimble. We can get together behind a shared vision and, I believe, really accomplish it. It's kind of cool. It's part of what makes this place special."

Is destination management working?

The work seems promising so far, but it's too early to know the true impact of destination management in the Outer Banks. Changing the way an entire industry has functioned for decades across 200 miles of different towns and counties is a slow process that takes a lot of energy on top of the day-to-day strain of the tourism sector, Knollenberg said.

"Everyone is exhausted. They've just had a hard three months getting hundreds of thousands of people through their vacations, and they don't want to think about this stuff. They wanna turn their brains off and not worry about it until it's April," she said. "It's going to take time. It's going to be a two steps forward, one step back kind of thing. We should have been doing this a while ago. Let's not go another 30 years .... Let's start doing this now."

Clark Twiddy, president of Twiddy and Company - the local vacation rental business that co-launched the Lighthouse Fund - noticed the destination management idea isn't popular with everyone. A lack of widespread support, especially while the communities were already struggling to keep up after the pandemic, kept the research from having the powerful initial impact he hoped.

"We weren't ready to hear it," he said. "We were so busy getting alligators out of the boat that we didn't wanna think about the alligators on the shore, which is perfectly valid."

It can also be scary to change the way tourism is done, Twiddy said. Some might fear change will bring even more people and the local communities will become unlivable. Others might feel overwhelmed by the problems tourism brings and prefer to look away.

"How do you address fears? Not in a fear-mongering way," Twiddy said. "That's the crossroads we are at as a community, and we're not alone. There are a lot of places in the United States from a destination tourism management side that are really struggling with that."

Twiddy said he thinks research like this would benefit from upfront work like discussing community fears, ensuring people are ready to have a conversation about a controversial topic, and making it a collaborative effort between government agencies, nonprofits and businesses across the chain of islands.

Growing pains aside, Twiddy still believes the work is important. He used some of the Lighthouse Fund findings to inform how he helps his employees access affordable housing and schooling for their children. "I don't regret it," he said. "It was money well spent. The findings were legit. We learned a lot."

There are bound to be skeptics of this kind of work, Nettles said. But it's hard to argue with results. "We have to continue to do the work, and over time, the skeptics and the cynics will become the minority."

Though it will likely take many years to see if this work actually makes the industry more sustainable and keeps the Outer Banks livable, locals seem hopeful that this is the right way forward, celebrating the little wins along the way.

"I really do think that we can change the culture of tourism on the Outer Banks," Nettles said. "We're doing it right now."


Taylor Haelterman wrote this article for Triple Pundit.


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