New Mexico & El Paso
This year is a “long” 60-day legislative session starting January 17, and there will be many exciting opportunities for Sierra Club members to provide input and participate (sometimes late into the night!) in the process. Here are a few of the bills we are expecting and will be advocating for or against in the coming session.
A delegation of Indigenous community leaders and Greater Chaco protectors traveled from New Mexico to Washington D.C. to lobby members of congress for Greater Chaco protections, and premiere a film screening of the award-winning Our Story: The Indigenous Led Fight to Protect Greater Chaco (film trailer) which showcases the threats the Greater Chaco Landscape and its communities face from continued oil and gas leasing and drilling.
Rio Grande Sierra Club hikes and outings for January – April 2023
Three candidates are running for three open spots on the Rio Grande Chapter Executive Committee. Only Sierra Club members may vote. Two-member households can vote separately. Ballots must be received by December 9. You can use the mail-in the ballot from the latest newsletter or the electronic ballot in this post.
Candidate biographies for the Rio Grande Sierra Club Chapter elections – statewide and regional groups. The ballot was included in your October/November/December newsletter. El Paso Group ballots will be mailed separately, but they can vote for chapter ExcComm candidates using the ballot in the newsletter.
On November 17, U.S. Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez and Sen. Ben Ray Lujan introduced the Chaco Cultural Heritage Area Protection Act. Though the Greater Chaco Coalition supports this legislation, more needs to be done to address the cumulative impact of extractive industries on the Greater Chaco Landscape and its communities.
On November 11, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a supplemental rule proposal that would establish strong, commonsense protections against methane and other harmful pollution from the oil and gas industry. This proposal improves upon a draft rule that EPA issued last November to curb methane from the oil and gas sector. A strong methane rule will help the United States meet its more ambitious emissions reduction commitments expected to be unveiled at COP27, and will go a long way in protecting the air families who are surrounded by oil and gas pollution on a daily basis have to breathe.
Adding to growing calls for President Biden to follow through on his promise to stop fossil fuel leasing on public lands, on November 3 groups delivered more protests in response to the Bureau of Land Management’s latest proposal to lease over 260,000 acres of public and ancestral tribal lands across Wyoming, New Mexico, and Kansas at its proposed May 2023 oil and gas lease sale.
As we await the results of legislative races and Congressional District 2, the Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter released the statements about the races that have been called.
In a disappointing ruling on 11/1, the New Mexico Supreme Court granted PNM a stay on the Public Regulation Commission’s order requiring the utility to credit customers an average of $8.19 a month.