New Mexico & El Paso
The 2024 New Mexico legislative session is upon us, and as ever, our air, climate, land, water, wildlife, families and communities require our action. You have been an important grassroots environmental lobbyist and we so appreciate your participation, work and support. Please take some time to fill out the survey to indicate where and how you’d like to participate during the session and the lead up to it.
The author visited two Albuquerque manufacturing firms: Submaterial, which makes efforts to reuse or recycle their waste byproducts from their interior architectural products, and Soilutions, which takes organic materials that might otherwise end up in a landfill producing methane and turns them into prime topsoil.
If you’re a PNM customer, check the line item on your bill titled “San Juan ETA Settlement Credit” for a credit of around $9. The credits come as compensation for PNM’s delay in issuing Energy Transition bonds to refinance debt customers had been paying for San Juan Generating Station. Instead of issuing the low-interest bonds when the coal plant closed, PNM continued to collect its 10% rate of return on the debt from customers. The Public Regulation Commission in 2022 ordered PNM to credit customers to reflect the savings the bonds would have brought, but PNM appealed and won a stay at the state Supreme Court.
The devastation left after the northern wildfires last year has changed ways of thinking about what can burn and under what conditions. Scientists at the National Soil Moisture Monitoring Network Conference determined that fire managers must evaluate more factors, particularly the correlation between soil moisture and plant moisture to adequately predict fire risk and conditions of advanced drought. Ideal prescribed burn “windows” will be fewer.
In October, the New Mexico Game Commission unanimously voted to approve new bear and cougar hunting rules that will be in place for the next four years. Cougar-hunting quotas remain unjustifiably high in 16 of 18 cougar zones. Cougar hunting with dogs is already allowed year-round. Cougars and bears that die outside of hunting either, from depredation complaints or as roadkill, will not be counted against the hunting quotas.
After four days of hearings and dozens of hours of testimony and public comments, New Mexico adopted Clean Cars II standards through 2032, as well as Clean Trucks and Heavy-Duty Omnibus Standards on November 16. Starting in model year 2027, automakers must ensure that 43 percent of the new vehicles they sell in New Mexico are zero-emission vehicles (electric or plug-in hybrid).
By Antoinette Reyes, Chapter Permian and Southern NM organizer After 10 years of work by environmental and frontline communities in New Mexico and around the country, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham joined EPA Administrator Michael Regan at the UN
If you have hiked Petroglyph National Monument North, you know its rugged beauty and cultural significance. New Mexico Gas Company is proposing a $180 million facility for storing and regasifying liquefied natural gas (LNG) on 25 acres close to these petroglyphs, and just two miles from Ventana Ranch and Double Eagle Airport. The facility poses health and safety risks to surrounding communities and could raise the prices of gas by $3 a month for the next 30 years for ALL gas customers. The LNG proposal comes before the Public Regulation Commission on January 8.
The Greater Chaco Coalition commends New Mexico State Land Office Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard for the renewal of the 2019 Executive Order No. 2019-002. This order reinstates a moratorium on new oil and gas leasing covering 72,776 acres of state trust lands in the Greater Chaco area through December 21, 2043. The Commissioner’s commitment is one step on the path to ending the sacrifice of Indigenous lands and lives to toxic, destructive fossil fuels in Greater Chaco and beyond. 12/14/2023.
Winter 2024 outings for the Rio Grande Sierra Club Chapter, including bike tours, snowshoeing and zero-waste tours.