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 ...
The 2017 New Mexico legislative session is in full swing. Below is a primer on some priority environmental legislation. Please click here if you’d like legislative updates and action alerts during the session.
Sen. Peter Wirth’s SB215, which makes it much easier for homeowners to finance rooftop solar, energy storage or water-conservation projects (and allows the financing to stay with the house after it’s sold), will be heard in Senate Conservation Committee Feb. 9. Update: This bill passed the Senate Conservation Committee but died in Senate Judiciary on a party-line vote.
Pro-environment legislation
Increase renewable energy (Senate Bill 312): The Clean-Energy Jobs Bill would require New Mexico investor-owned utilities to provide 50% of their electricity from renewable ...
By Mona Blaber
In October, Public Service Company of New Mexico withdrew its application to build a $100 million natural-gas plant, good news for ratepayers and those who don’t want increased dependence on climate-damaging energy.
Last year, PNM filed at the Public Regulation Commission for a 187-megawatt natural-gas plant as part of a deal with Gov. Susana Martinez’s administration to retire two units at coal-fired San Juan Generating Station.
The utility withdrew that request because it couldn’t show it needed the added power, and a PRC hearing examiner wrote that evidence showed that the power would be more cost-effectively procured through solar facilities.
This spring, PNM filed the current request — for a smaller, 80-megawatt gas plant and pipeline. Sierra ...
By Mona Blaber
The battle between the citizens of Sandoval County and oil and gas developers has seen many twists and turns in the past three months.
The county’s Planning and Zoning Commission initially appeared prepared to recommend to the county commission an application from financially troubled SandRidge Energy to drill an exploratory oil well just 2 miles outside of Rio Rancho.
But after a surge of citizen activism, including thousands of messages to commissioners and hundreds of residents packing meetings, the zoning commission found SandRidge’s application didn’t meet existing zoning requirements.
At its next meeting, the county commission was expected to deny the application and consider a moratorium on new drilling while it updated its ordinances to address oil ...
Allyson Siwik,
Rio Grande Chapter Executive Committee
Gila Resources Information Project Executive Director
New Mexico Copper Corporation wants to re-establish a polymetallic mine and processing facility near Hillsboro.
The Copper Flat Mine is not the answer to Sierra County’s economic woes. Just like Grant County’s copper mines, it will be subject to the boom-and-bust economic cycle caused by volatile global copper prices and will potentially create a huge environmental liability for the public to clean up. Read more about the problems with the Draft Environmental Impact Statement and mine plan here.
The 2,190-acre project would use BLM-managed public land and private property to mine and process copper and molybdenum. The Bureau of Land Management has requested public review and comment on its Draft ...
New Mexico Copper Corp. wants to re-establish a polymetallic mine and processing facility near Hillsboro, N.M.
The Copper Flat Mine is not the answer to Sierra County’s economic woes. Just like Grant County’s copper mines, it will be subject to the boom-and-bust economic cycle caused by volatile global copper prices and will potentially create a huge environmental liability for the public to clean up. Read more about the problems with the DEIS and proposed Copper Flat mine plan here.
Please click here to comment to the BLM about Copper Flat Mine.
The 2,190-acre project would use BLM-managed public land and private property to mine and process copper and molybdenum. The Bureau of Land Management has requested public review and comment on its Draft ...
In 2013, the Martinez Administration committed one of the most flagrant violations of the public trust in recent memory.
After years of work by technical experts and an advisory committee composed of stakeholders from all sides, a draft rule to protect the state’s groundwater from copper-mining pollution was submitted to the Environment Department by the department’s technical staff and consultant Bill Olson (a former Groundwater Quality Bureau chief for the department).
Freeport-McMoRan, the copper giant that owns the three biggest copper mines in New Mexico, submitted suggested changes to the draft, but Environment Department technical staff and lawyers and consultant Olson advised Environment Department General Counsel Ryan Flynn (now the Environment secretary), that those changes would violate our Water Quality Act because ...
