Millions In Taxpayer Revenues Go Up In Flames
As the sun set April 7, passersby were able to make out an image projected onto the building at 300 San Mateo, at the corner of San Mateo and Central. The image prominently featured a ticker of the value  of natural gas being wasted by industry on public and tribal lands in New Mexico, totaling more than $100 million ...
Your help needed to protect methane reductions

By Camilla Feibelman, Rio Grande Chapter director

You’ve read it here more than once. Oil and gas operations throughout the state are wasting natural gas they extract from our public lands.

Methane — the key component of natural gas that also happens to be a powerful greenhouse gas — is leaked, vented or flared throughout the oil and gas drilling, transport and storage processes. As part of the Paris Climate Agreement, the Obama Administration passed rules at the EPA and BLM that would slow this waste, protect health, reduce climate change and brought more royalties into the state treasury.

That these methane rules (against all odds) are still in effect is thanks to you. The Trump Administration has done its ...

Rule allows pollution in New Mexico’s groundwater

SANTA FE, N.M.—The New Mexico Supreme Court issued a stunning and puzzling decision in its long-awaited review of the Copper Rule. The case could set precedent for how the State of New Mexico protects water at all industrial sites.

“We are very disappointed with the New Mexico Supreme Court’s decision today to uphold the Martinez Administration’s rule to weaken New Mexico’s Water Quality Act” said Allyson Siwik, executive director of Silver City-based Gila Resources Information Project.

“The Supreme Court has effectively sanctioned the idea of groundwater sacrifice zones in the area of copper mines. In Grant County, we are 100% dependent upon our groundwater aquifer. Allowing Freeport-McMoRan to pollute rather than prevent groundwater ...

Greater Chaco Employs “Warning” Signs to Combat Fracking
Ignored by the Bureau of Land Management, which continues to auction off their community to fracking, community members in the Greater Chaco region are taking a stand against unchecked drilling and oil and gas leasing near their homes by planting signs along U.S. 550 in Counselor, N.M. The messages read: Entering Energy Sacrifice Zone, We Are Greater Chaco, Violence Against Land is Violence Against Us, Extraction Threatens Our Health and Safety, Selloff Of Sacred Lands Dooda, and Methane Gas: Odorless Toxic in Our Air ...
#ItsNotOver -- Greater Chaco advocates descend on BLM

Celebrating Lease-sale deferral, pressing for permanent protections and planning

For Immediate Release: Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Santa Fe — Dozens of Greater Chaco advocates rallied in front of the Bureau of Land Management state office in Santa Fe Wednesday to claim victory over last week’s announcement that land slated for auction near Chaco Culture National Historical Park would be deferred until further action. Impacted community members delivered resolutions from Navajo Nation Chapters and Pueblos and more than 200,000 public comments pressing for a moratorium on fracking in the region, for environmental and public-health protections, and for meaningful consultation and consent from tribes.

“We are thankful that Senators Udall and Heinrich and Representatives Michelle Lujan-Grisham and Ben Ray Lujan stood up for ...

Our volunteer-led Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter works to elect environmental champions who seek equity and inclusion.

Our thousands of members in the Santa Fe area are part of a grassroots organization dependent on volunteers acting locally to achieve national and even global results.

The chapter’s environmental endorsements are the product of research, candidate interviews, questionnaire review and thoughtful deliberations. Each endorsement requires a 2/3 vote of two separate chapter committees. 

Here are the Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter’s endorsements for the 2018 Santa Fe elections:

Mayor: Alan Webber
Alan Webber distinguished himself in a strong field of candidates with his thoughtful ideas, knowledge and commitment to environmental and progressive issues. His heart is in making the city more livable, ...

Greater Chaco spared from fracking auction
On Thursday, March 2, the Interior Department announced the cancellation of an oil and gas lease sale near Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a UNESCO Heritage Site in northern New Mexico. The leases would have auctioned off an additional 4,434 acres in the Greater Chaco region for industrialized fracking, exposing local communities to increased pollution and threatening ancient ruins considered sacred by Indigenous Nations ...
NRC: store radioactive wastes in NM
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday accepted Holtec International’s application to store up to 100,000 metric tons of spent fuel rods from the more than 100 U.S. commercial nuclear reactors at a site between Carlsbad and Hobbs ...