Thursday, June 16, 2016

Three NM Environment Blogs Worth Reading Today

Three blogs today deal with two important environmental issues facing New Mexico, oil and gas pollution and the water table in the the Albuquerque metro area.

Two blogs deal with oil and gas pollution in our oil patches.  ProgressNow NM (click here) has a map of each state purporting to show areas of high oil and gas pollution.  The New Mexico map (click here) shows the Northwest corner and the Southeast corner as being in danger zones for public safety, and claims 145,000 New Mexicans reside within these areas.  NMPolitics.net (click here) has an op-ed piece by a state senate candidate, Aubrey Dunn (the son of the incumbent NM Land Commissioner) who opposes a proposed rule (the so-called "venting and flaring" rule) by the BLM to curb such pollution.  To get down to the nitty gritty of this issue will take a little more than reading these two blogs, but it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to click from these sites to more information.  Dunn is running for Senate District 13, in Albuquerque, which extends roughly from I-40 north to the Sandoval County line, bounded on the east and west by the river and I-25.

The other issue, from NMpoliticalreport.com (click here), deals with a proposed change to the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility long term plan for water management.  The writer, Dennis Domrzalski, of the Albuquerque Free Press, (where the piece was originally published), suggests the proposed dropping of a key sentence from an update to the strategic plan might originate from lobbying by the Santolina project on the West Mesa.  The article also suggests the proposed changes to the language of the long-term plan could result in a drastic drop in the water table, which has risen 50 feet since 2009, the result of decreased groundwater pumping.
These are major issues affecting large numbers of people in the state, and they deserve your attention as a citizen.


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