On February 23rd we lost Eleanor Eisenmenger, a transplant from New York City, a music booster and connoisseur, animal lover and environmental champion.  Her loss is deeply felt.

For many years I could always rely on Eleanor Eisenmenger, who died Feb. 23, to join us in canvassing precincts in and around Santa Fe, and on occasion even in Albuquerque. Chauffeured by Tom Gorman,  Eleanor struck an elegant style knocking on doors and delivering the pitch. I doubt many folks resisted her ask.

Two years ago, after we had divvied up a precinct for Alma Castro in her successful run for Santa Fe City Council, Eleanor finished her turf in a way that left her temporarily stranded. Seeing a car she believed part of the campaign, she in effect successfully hitchhiked her way back to the starting spot. Try that when you’re in your 90s!

Last year I visited Eleanor in the hospital as she recovered from a spill. As I was leaving she said, “Be sure to save some doors for me to knock on.” I will always oblige that request.

Read Eleanor’s obituary that ran in the Santa Fe New Mexican here

For years, northern group volunteers have been monitoring four key sites on the Pecos River from Willow Creek tributary – that flows through the old Tererro Mine reclamation property – 14 miles down to the town of Pecos. Last year the analysis included looking at total metals, gross alpha and the presence of nutrient contaminants.

As the tests were more comprehensive in 2023, we can now see some undesirable trends in the upper Pecos River:

Total Metals – Elevated levels from July-August-September samples

• Calcium – U.S. average in drinking water is 10-20 mg/L
  Tererro-59 mg/L; Indian Creek-55 mg/L; Dalton Camp-37 mg/L; Pecos Bridge-40 mg/L
• Aluminum – health effects can occur at >0.05 mg/L
  Tererro-0.33 mg/L; Indian Creek-2.5 mg/L*; Dalton Camp-0.16 mg/L; Pecos-0.25 mg/L (* high spike, Indian Creek averages 0.15 mg/L)
• Iron – objectionable >0.3 mg/L, health effects 10 mg/L
  Tererro-0.4 mg/L; Indian Creek-3.1 mg/L
• Lead – minimum reporting level 0.001 mg/L
  Tererro-0.002 mg/L; Indian Creek-0.003 mg/L
• Other metals analyzed: Boron, Magnesium, Manganese, Antimony, Arsenic, Barium, Beryllium, Cadmium, Chromium, Cobalt, Molybdenum, Nickel, Selenium, Silver, Thallium, Uranium, Vanadium & Zinc (all below MRL)

Gross Alpha/Beta (radioactive elements) – All samples were below National Drinking Water Standards for Gross Alpha – 15 pCi/L but detectable at all sites

• Elevated Gross Alpha (SDL is the NM State Detection Level)
  (SDL 0.6) Tererro-0.9pCi/L; (SDL 0.7) Indian Creek-4.9 pCi/L
• Elevated Gross Beta
  (SDL 1.7) Indian Creek-4.9 pCi/L; (SDL 1.9) Dalton Camp-5.1 pCi/L, (SDL 1.5); Pecos-3.2 pCi/L

Nutrient Levels, often found in run-off from agricultural fields and livestock, showed slight elevations of nitrogen and phosphate at all sites, but all ammonia levels were acceptable.

Unfortunately, E. coli levels were elevated at all sites, ranging from low to high during the summer months. According to the World Health Organization – safe drinking water should have NO E. coli present

• 1-10 MPN/100ml = low risk/ 11-100 = medium risk/ > 100 = high risk
• Highest E. coli site – Tererro 209.8 MPN/100mL
• Lowest E. coli site – Dalton Camp 9.7 MPN/mL
• The upper Pecos River is still showing signs of acid mine drainage from the massive mine contamination left over from the Tererro Mine of the 1930s. The water is also showing significant impacts from unregulated sources of E. coli along the tributaries. However, the main river E. coli levels at Dalton Camp and Pecos bridge average in the low-medium risk category.

Thank you to Amigos Bravos and to Water Sentinels: Ginny Seamster, Tannis Fox, and Trout Unlimited: John Lopez.

John Buchser, Northern Group Chair

The Northern Group in Santa Fe must be the luckiest city in the U.S. Since 1981, more than 60 volunteers have shared their passion for hiking as volunteer outings leaders. Featuring a destination for visitors from all over the world, the 9th edition of the Sierra Club Northern New Mexico Group’s Day Hikes in the Santa Fe Area offers world-class documentation of the many trails in our region.

Outings leader Aku Oppenheimer was encouraged by Norbert Sperlich several years ago to update the 8th edition. Aku did not know that his passion for excellence would take so much of his time for two years. With the assistance of Ed Coderre’s background in digital media and Travel Bug owner Greg Ohlsen’s expertise in map creation, the latest version rivals the best hiking books in the world.

Given the varied climates surrounding Santa Fe created by the erosive forces of water and the tectonic forces of our planet, our area presents many opportunities for discovering the outdoors. Aku’s primary goal was to offer hikers options for most of the trails that ranged from easy to difficult. The end product went far beyond that, making directions to the trailheads clear and consistent. The many hikers and proofreaders ensured the clarity of description and respect for tribal and private properties.

Thanks also go to the Northern Group leadership over the years, who have ensured that there was always enough money in the bank to pay for reprinting and new editions. Sales of the book have benefited the Group, the bookstores that sell it, and the locals like me who have such a great resource to refer to when wondering where to go hiking next. Day Hikes in the Santa Fe Area can be purchased at Santa Fe bookstores and REI in both Albuquerque and Santa Fe. We hope to expand sales to local bookstores in Albuquerque. The Travel Bug will ship the book to other locales. It is my hope that this book will continue to create a passion for caring for the land through recognition of the beauty we have before us.

Books can shipped by mail from the Travel Bug in Santa Fe. $24.95 plus tax and shipping.  Call them at (505) 992-0418.

We keep quoting the maxim for untiring activists: “Sometimes it’s hard when you wake up in the morning to choose whether to save the Earth or savor it.” The Pajarito Group made a difference working in the company of our compatriots who share the passion for preserving the One World we’re traveling on together.

Thanks to each of you who responded to the online poll asking whether you would like to remain the separate Pajarito Group of the Rio Grande Chapter or rejoin the Northern Group from whence we separated in about 1998 to focus on Los Alamos National Laboratory issues and the Valles Caldera.

Votes were 68% to rejoin Northern Group; 32% to stay independent Pajarito, with many good suggestions.

Summarizing the comments: Most of us don’t have the time to commit to sustaining a separate group, but people want to remain connected by being a Los Alamos activist group focused on local issues (particularly county development and LANL) within the Northern New Mexico Group.

The rejoining will be finalized in January after we have met all the requirements from National about the “dissolution” of the group.

At that time, you will receive an official Northern New Mexico Group welcome.

That said, we are still Sierrans who now bring to the Northern Group a few hundred volunteers who want to: Be a conservation chair, organize a social event, watchdog a county initiative (and there are many many initiatives to watchdog!), join the Political Committee, be a hike leader, plant trees, participate in a community cleanup, work on open-space issues including the Pueblo Canyon bike-trail siting, and even run for government office.

Los Alamos can continue to contribute to saving the world, though, despite the nuclear-weapons triggers to be manufactured here, the climate emergency is so much more huge, difficult, and insidious than a war against a Russia. This problem is global; the primary enemy is attitude, ignorance, misdirected political posturing, and the failure to: create a cost-benefit analysis of sustainable energy; put the good of the nation before corporatocracy; rid politics of dark money — along with just plain laziness. But— here, in Los Alamos, at this local level, we’re working on it, and doing a darn good job.

Thank you for all the years and all your commitment and stewardship. We know our future — as our Right Now — depends on that work and caring. Let’s continue to save the Earth.

Featured image: Pajarito Group picnic 2013.

After battling two disastrous Northern New Mexico “escaped prescribed burns” this year, the U.S. Forest Service has recently completed a National Prescribed Fire Program Review. Responding to the historic fire intensity and widespread damage of the Hermit’s Peak and Calf Canyon fires, the report outlines many valuable lessons learned and new ignition rules, but does not provide prescriptive treatments to improve the forest conditions caused by climate change.

Fortunately, promising experimental fire-reduction treatments and new forest soil research is becoming available that can improve the multiple stresses forests face including soil aridity, loss of microorganisms, plant transpiration, hotter air temperatures, higher winds and “freak” gusty wind storms that can return without warning for weeks at a time, making for intense, uncontrollable fire.

The national review outlines many key changes to current prescribed burning practices:

1. New safeguards, such as same-day authorizations to burn, that keep pace with changing weather and ground conditions;
2. Mandatory practices that include more “robust scientific analysis of burn plans” and on-site assessment for spotting human error “linked to fatigue or inexperience”; and
3. Standardizing permissions to ignite fires and other essential communications with bosses and crews.

Part of the robust scientific findings related to the health and resilience of forests is the importance of maintaining cool, shaded moist soil and retaining the vast underground network of mature tree roots that provide the forest floor with stability and a flow of moisture, nutrients, essential bacteria and microorganisms.

President Biden’s recent Executive Order “Strengthening the Nation’s Forests, Communities and Local Economies” defines the protection of mature trees and old-growth forests on federal land as “one of the most cost-effective climate policies the U.S. can employ at this time. These forests contain the bulk of stored forest carbon and provide watershed functions, vital habitats and biodiversity benefits.”

A promising new mature tree-resiliency approach is being tested in the Ortiz Mountains Preserve south of Santa Fe by County Open Space and ornithologist Peggy Darr. A recent visit to the Ortiz 200-acre test site showed careful retention of mature trees, and a 50% removal of small trees (under 8 inches in diameter) and understory ladder fuels. This slash material was cut and used as a light mulch while bigger logs were used for small check dams and on steep slopes for erosion control. Large trees benefited from more groundwater, and the forest floor bloomed with regenerated oak, fir, piñon and ponderosa saplings, wildflowers and a host of insects and pollinating butterflies. The threatened Grace’s Warbler is the “test” species being monitored and shows early indications of population growth.

A Santa Fe County Commission is planning to hold apublic “listening session” on prescribed burns will be held on November 10th, via zoom, starting at 5:30 p.m.

Featured image: prescribed burn in Grande Canyon, from Flickr. 

New Mexico is full of rich lands that are worth protecting. From every corner of the State, you can admire our deserts, forests, rivers, lakes, and everything that makes New Mexico the Land of Enchantment.

The 107,068 acres on this plateau known as Caja del Rio are managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. These are sacred lands for the area’s pueblos. Caja del Rio is principally piñon-juniper savanna and grassland, with canyons plunging into the Santa Fe River and other tributaries of the Rio Grande. The land is dotted with cinder cones and features a dramatic basalt escarpment rich with petroglyphs. Caja is one of the most ecologically rich wildlife corridors in New Mexico. It provides vital habitat for a diverse range of plants and animals. The Caja is one of the last great opportunities to protect the West as it has existed for thousands of years.

Caja del Rio has an important significance to local and indigenous peoples in the area. Cochiti, Tesuque, Kewa (Santo Domingo) and Jemez Pueblos all have part in the rich history and cultural importance of this area of land. The Caja is also a critical crossroads for wildlife, connecting the northern edge of Cochiti Pueblo, the eastern edge of Bandelier National Monument and the uplands of the Valles Caldera National Preserve with valuable winter habitat. Nineteen miles of wild and untamed Rio Grande intersect the two landscapes, providing a critical migratory route for waterfowl, raptors, songbirds, bighorn sheep, elk, deer, bear and cougar.

Here are just a few of the reasons why protecting Caja is crucial to the well-being of public lands in New Mexico:

1. The natural character of the Caja del Rio supports wildlife diversity and connectivity.
2. Protecting Caja del Rio maintains the cultural and archeological integrity found there, while providing interpretive opportunities for the public to learn and value these resources in an area easily accessible to metropolitan Santa Fe.
3. The biological and cultural value of the area is recognized by locals and visitors.
4. Education and recreation opportunities exist with national historic trails that have local and national interest, including the Camino Real del Tierra Adentro and Route 66.
5. Existing utility line corridors will be maximized for additional utility line needs. If Caja is protected, new utility corridors and communication sites will not be allowed.

The Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter, along with other local organizations, is working to preserve this beautiful land and the species that live and thrive in it. In the coming months, we hope to participate in vital conversations and grassroots actions at the local level to ensure this land is protected. To become a part of our active grassroots team, please contact Luis at luis.guerrero@sierraclub.org.

Join us in the fight to protect and preserve access to Public Lands in New Mexico!

Photo by Teresa Seamster

Saturday, May 14, 10am-noon
Fred Baca Park

Sponsored by the Sierra Club, Amigos Bravos and other organizations.

Learn

• How to sample surface waters for basic parameters
• The basics about water quality
• How to become part of an existing Citizen Science Team: The Water Sentinels – Rios de Taos
• How the Water Sentinels data are used by decision makers

More information in the Data Brochure

Below is the profile on Gordon and Martia Glass by outings leader Hart Pierce that ran in our October  Sierran: 

By Hart Pierce

Lifetime Sierra Club members and Farmington residents Martia and Gordon Glass have been intimately involved at all levels of Sierra Club activities throughout their lives together, along with their children and grandchildren. The Glass family has explored our vast wild places in the West and is committed to protecting the planet. 

Gordon’s association with the Sierra Club began at age 2. His father, a Presbyterian minister, served as chaplain for the Protestant chapel in Yosemite National Park from 1945 to 1960. Gordon was reared in the shadow of Half Dome, Bridal Veil and Yosemite Falls. Throughout his youth, he and his father hiked and backpacked in the High Sierras. Through those adventures, the Sierra Club credo of exploring, enjoying and protecting the planet took hold and became part of his core. Gordon grew up with Sierra Club members like Ansel Adams, who for many years, while refining his photographic skills, was the caretaker of the Sierra Club’s LeConte Memorial Lodge, now the Yosemite Conservation Heritage Center. In recent years, pre-COVID, Gordon and Martia volunteered as docents at the Conservation Heritage Center, where they would share personal anecdotes highlighting their relationship to Yosemite. For instance, Gordon remembers his sister Gail and friend Ann Adams playing under the grand piano in the Adams apartment while Ansel, an accomplished concert pianist, and wife Virginia, an accomplished singer, would hold forth.

In 1965, after graduating from the University of Redlands, Gordon entered the Peace Corps and was assigned to teach in Malawi in Southeastern Africa. Martia, born in Houston, graduated from Austin College in Sherman, Texas, and entered the Peace Corps at the same time.She was assigned to teach in India. Upon returning, they met at the University of Pennsylvania while training to teach in inner-city Philadelphia schools. Gordon and Martia soon married and looked westward, securing teaching positions with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Aneth, Utah, on the Navajo Reservation, tucked between what is now the Bears Ears National Monument and the Canyons of the Ancients in Colorado. While in Aneth, the Glasses took young Navajo children on many hikes along the San Juan River. 

In the mid-’70s, they moved to Albuquerque, where Martia entered UNM Medical School and Gordon earned his master’s in counseling from the UNM College of Education. He worked in the City Court Clinic while Martia finished medical school. They also started a family, and son Justin and daughter Alisia would join in their many outdoor adventures. After relocating to Farmington in 1980, the family hiked and backpacked in San Pedro Parks Wilderness, Bandelier National Monument and other wild places in the Santa Fe, Cibola and San Juan National Forests. Later, the family volunteered for service projects in New Mexico’s Gila National Monument and the Valle Grande, now the Valles Caldera National Reserve. They spent summers clearing trails in Utah’s Uinta Mountains and installing erosion logs on Grand Canyon trails. The Glasses volunteered for a service project in Gran Paradiso National Park in the Alps of Northwestern Italy. As Gordon would later tell his grandchildren, “Our family likes to do hard things.”

In Farmington, Gordon worked for the state of New Mexico and Farmington Municipal Schools as a family counselor. Martia was a Public Health Service commissioned officer and served as a physician with the Navajo Area Indian Health Service In retirement, they continue to explore, camp, hike and volunteer with the Sierra Club, returning annually to Yosemite to visit and volunteer. Gordon and Martia are active in the Farmington Presbyterian Church, heading youth programs and fostering fellowship. Gordon was recently diagnosed with cancer and has had to curtail those outdoor activities that have been an integral part of their lives. But he continues to fight for the environment through service on the Farmington Public Utility Commission, where he is a forceful advocate for renewable energy, clean air and water, governmental ethics and transparency.

Gordon, Martia and their family have done “the hard things.” For that, the lives they have led, the values they hold dear, for their service to their fellow man and the environment, we recognize their contributions and truly thank them.

Hart Pierce is a Rio Grande Sierra Club Outings Leader in the Four Corners, a fellow FPUC commissioner, and a friend.

Photo: Gordon, Martia and kids in 1983.

For over 900 miles, the Pecos River stretches from its high-elevation headwaters in the Pecos Wilderness south through Tecolote, Santa Rosa, Roswell, Carlsbad and across the border to Pecos, Texas. The second-largest river in the state, it is the life-blood of eastern New Mexico towns, ranches, farms and natural landscapes. The value of the Pecos River is immeasurable to New Mexico people, livestock and wildlife, and permitted use of the water for industrial development has been low ever since the Terrero Mine and Molino (mill) in upper Pecos Canyon was officially closed in 1950 and was designated as a “Superfund-level” site in 1995.

Over $38 million and 20 years of reclamation later, the Pecos River is again threatened with a proposal to the Santa Fe National Forest by Australian mining company New World Resources LLC to start exploratory drilling on Jones Hill, 8 miles southwest of the closed Terrero mine, for base minerals (i.e., copper, gold, silver, lead and zinc).

Comexico project

New World Resources’ US subsidiary, Comexico, is applying for a permit to explore for the minerals on Jones Hill in the Pecos River watershed above the village of Pecos. Comexico proposes to use existing forest roads to access defined locations near the old Tererro Mine, the largest ore mine in the state, where enormous quantities of copper, lead, zinc, silver and gold were extracted from the 1920s to the 1950s. This new project will consist of 32 drilled boreholes on 1.65 acres with a 3-mile access road and easements totaling 7.6 acres of disturbance. If fully developed, the new mine and on-site milling operation would cover over 4,300 acres of critical watershed and impact 5 major tributaries of the Pecos River.

The estimated mineral resource to be mined is more than 5 million tons — more than twice the amount of mineral extraction from the original Tererro Mine.

Cultural Pueblo Sites

According to the Forest Service inventory of ancient cultural sites, monitoring for cultural impacts would be required by Comexico and any sites identified would be avoided through ongoing tribal consultation with area Pueblos. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains are considered sacred to Pueblo and tribal nations including the Hopi, with thousands of years of ceremonial use and traditions of careful use of resources and preservation of plants and animals.

A cultural buffer area of 67 acres was surveyed in 2019 and at least 3 sites were evaluated as eligible for protection. Tesuque and Jemez Pueblos disagree with the assessment that these sites can be adequately protected and have asked for further consultation along with representatives of Santa Clara and the Hopi Nation.

Opposition to project

A legal team of water and mine experts is working on behalf of a large coalition of local, tribal and statewide organizations to prepare expert testimony to halt the Comexico application. The US Forest Service has been requested by U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján and State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard to conduct a rigorous Environmental Impact Study under the National Environmental Protection Act. Instead, the Forest Service decided to do an Environmental Assessment and will issue a decision letter in November.

The Northern Group sent comments to the Mining and Minerals Division on behalf of the Rio Grande Chapter that said, in part:
“We remain extremely concerned that a) Comexico has been unable to provide adequate financial estimates or assurance to cover predicted reclamation costs regarding damage to roads, erodible slopes, contaminated streams, and area dependent wildlife, b) Comexico plans to construct on-site pits to contain drilling waste instead of removal to a proper disposal site, and c) key mitigation and restoration practices and costs are left unspecified or to be answered in the future.” 

Lela McFerrin, Pecos resident and Vice President of the Upper Pecos Watershed Association:
“The legacy of the original Tererro Mine and Molino Mill has been devastating to the environment and wildlife of the Pecos Canyon. The remediation efforts continue to this day.  Willow Creek (adjacent to the original mine site) was completely inundated, a mile of the Pecos was completely denuded of any life forms, acid runoff killed thousands of trout, and the old St. Vincent Hospital in Santa Fe reported exceptionally high rates of cancer patients from the Pecos area during the period of the mining operation.  The potential of another mining operation on Jones Hill poses even greater threat due to the size of the operation and its location directly above the major drainages of Indian Creek, Sawyer Creek, Macho Creek and Dalton Creek.” 

Ralph Vigil, Chairman of the New Mexico Acequia Commission and owner of Molino de la Isla Organics:
“As an 8th-generation resident and farmer of East Pecos, the Pecos River and the land it crosses have been a part of my everyday life for 43 years. It’s not just a river to me; it’s my home, my sanctuary, my family, and has sustained many different cultures for thousands of years. The health of our watershed is of the utmost importance to every community beneath it and crucial to the survival of the countless species of plants and wildlife it nourishes. We must protect these sacred and life-giving watersheds for generations to come and not leave our children to deal with the consequences of poor land-use decisions within watersheds today. Let us not forget the lessons of the past contamination of our waters as we move forward as a community of stewards of this precious land, and may we leave it in better shape than we found it.”

On Sept. 15, San Miguel County’s proposed mining ordinance was presented at a public meeting at Pecos High School, and some 20 residents and organizations spoke in strong support of the new ordinance and opposed any mining in Pecos Canyon.

For more information, please visit www.pecoswatershed.org.

Featured image: Ralph Vigil is a Pecos River Valley farmer, president of Molino de la Isla Farmers Cooperative, chair of the NM Acequia Commission, and an essential leader in the Stop Terrero Mine coalition.

When: Sunday, December 1, 2019, 4:00 – 7:00 pm
Where: Museum Hill Café
Details: $25/person, by November 10 to Alice Cox, auntiealice@comcast.net