New Mexico & El Paso
Health advocates, Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, and members of Northern Arizona University’s Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals, with decades of expertise in monitoring air quality and community outreach, are considering funding to install air monitors in possibly all 150 Navajo Nation schools.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all Sierra Club outings and in-person events have been cancelled through February 28th, 2021. Our do-it-yourself outings are designed to offer a range of difficulties and outdoor experiences. Our first is a hike in the mountains east of Albuquerque.
Why are voting rights not just a lawful right, but a privilege?
Why is your right to exercise your vote and make your voice heard vital?
The Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club, New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light, Environment New Mexico, and Western Leaders Network are co-hosting a webinar on Thursday, August 27th at 2pm with U.S. Representative Ben Ray Luján to highlight the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis’ report on Solving the Climate Crisis and its importance for New Mexico.
We are grateful that the Lujan Grisham Administration is moving forward with rules, addressing the global climate crisis, even while facing the urgency of the pandemic
On August 14, the US EPA finalized its proposals to eliminate methane protections from the EPA’s New Source Performance Standards. This rollback undermines EPA’s own mission by threatening public health, and disproportionately hurts Black and Brown communities who are already exposed to air pollution from oil and gas development at much higher rates – the same communities that are already suffering the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The New Mexico Construction Industries Commission voted on 8/7 to adopt a statewide energy conservation code based on the 2018 International Energy Conservation Code. This new code will bring NM up to date with its energy code for new buildings, reducing energy use in new residential and commercial buildings by about 25 percent.
As federal and state health guidelines were announced in March in response to COVID-19, New Mexico’s entire congressional delegation, Tribal leaders, Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Dept., and multiple groups called on Interior Secretary Bernhardt to extend the May 28 comment deadline to allow for the public and state and tribal governments to meaningfully engage. Instead of heeding pleas to extend the comment period, 15 days before the deadline the BLM and BIA held four virtual meetings. That did not go well.
In a surprise move in May, the SunZia Southwest Transmission Project announced that it is abandoning its proposed electrical transmission line on the White Sands Missile Range and the Rio Grande crossing at Escondida just north of Socorro and Bosque del Apache that had drawn deep concerns about the harm the overhead lines posed to migratory birds, especially Sandhill cranes, raptors and other waterfowl.
Mexican wolves, the most imperiled canine species in the world, have made progress in the last three months but have also suffered setbacks. In May, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that a record 20 pups were cross-fostered from captive wolves into wild dens. FWS has been using this practice to insert profoundly needed genes from the captive population into the wild. Cross-fostering requires that pups from captivity be within days of the same age as pups in the wild, which means that wolf managers have to move quickly. The genetic bottleneck of the wild population is one of the largest looming threats to wolf recovery.