Air conditioning is a life-saving tool in southern Nevada, but more and more people are finding it difficult to afford.
Jacqueline Banderas, a mother of five, said there are times she’s received electricity bills of more than $1,000 to cool her home at the height of summer.
“Once, they even cut my power because I was just one dollar short on a payment. My food spoiled, and the heat was unbearable,” said Banderas, a musician in Las Dos de Sinaloa Band. “My son has asthma and depends on a nebulizer. I live in constant fear that one day I won’t be able to afford the bill, and his health will be at risk.”
She is one of nearly 32,000 Nevadans who had their power disconnected by NV Energy for nonpayment in 2024, according to the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada. Year-by-year the number of disconnections for nonpayment has increased as the cost of utilities have gone up, in large part as a result of extreme weather.
NV Energy is prohibited from cutting off power to delinquent residential customers when the temperature is forecast to exceed 105, but any lower and it’s free game. And once power is cut, NV Energy is not required to reconnect, no matter how high temperatures get.
Extreme heat in Southern Nevada led to at least 114 heat-related deaths in Clark County this year, according to the county’s coroner’s office.
Joanne Leovy, a family physician and the chair of Nevada Clinicians for Climate Action, said people often focus on the immediate fatalities caused by heat stroke, but prolonged exposure to extreme heat can negatively impact people’s health in a number of other ways.
“It’s a lot harder for us to keep in mind all the simple things that happen. We know the biggest cause of death and illness related to heat isn’t actually heat stroke, it’s cardiovascular problems like heart attacks,” Leovy said.
Regular exposure to extreme heat – like that experienced by outdoor workers – can also lead to kidney disease.
“I think most people with chronic kidney disease don’t understand that heat can be a part of that,” Leovy said.
During the EcoMadres’ 2nd Annual Summit Friday community advocates and lawmakers highlighted Nevada’s failure to address extreme heat and where the state has seen improvements.
Leovy said there is a real lack of education around heat’s impact on health in Nevada, including among physicians. Without education communities are less informed about how they can protect their health.
“We as a community in Las Vegas have only started talking about extreme heat in the last two to three years,” Leovy said.
“We can educate patients in the office. One of the issues with heat is that there are a number of medications that people take on a chronic daily basis that make them much more susceptible to heat illness” unbeknownst to the patient, Leovy said.
High blood pressure medications and most psychotropic medications – antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, stimulants, antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers – can make people more vulnerable to heat illness.
Health conditions such as diabetes and obesity can limit people’s ability to regulate their body heat and increase their exposure to extreme heat. Old age also increases risk of heat-related illness, and respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses, such as asthma, are exacerbated by heat, said Leovy.
While there are steps people can take to protect their health in extreme heat, a systemic approach and long-term investments will be required to increase public health as extreme heat grows.
“In patients I’ve treated, there’s an overlap between having difficulty cooling your home, having a job that gives you indoor or outdoor heat exposure, and having barriers to transportation,” Leovy said.
“As a community and as a state it’s good for us to address all those issues to help people be cooler,” she continued.
Nevada Assemblymembers Howard Watts and Cinthia Zermeño Moore spoke at the summit about legislative victories for environmental justice bills that address extreme heat.
One of those measures that passed was Assembly Bill 96, which requires the state’s two most populous counties to actively address extreme heat through urban planning strategies, like creating public cooling spaces, public water access, cool building practices, and shaded areas in their development plans.
“It took us two legislative sessions to get it done,” Watts said.
Nevada’s Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed a similar bill in 2023. His reasoning was that there’s “no data definitively supporting the proposition that development is causing rising temperatures in either Washoe County or Clark County.”
In reality, one of the major consequences of urban development is the urban heat island that results in cities being, on average, warmer than adjacent rural landscapes.
“We need to think much more broadly about heat,” Watts said. “How do we build cooler cities and communities? I’m hopeful that integrating that into how our cities and counties do planning across the board, and not in isolated silos, will make a meaningful difference for our communities.”
Lombardo also signed Assembly Bill 458, a bipartisan measure that expands access to rooftop solar for Nevada families living in affordable housing. The bill will help lower power utilities for low-income households, said Watts.
“As we’re looking for solutions, we’re looking for hope. That’s an example of something that we were able to do,” Watts said.
“Hopefully soon, when you look at apartment buildings and other affordable housing throughout our community, you’re going to start to see solar panels going up on those and know that folks that previously didn’t have access to solar energy are now going to be able to see those benefits and are going to be able to lower their bills,” he said.