New Mexico environmental regulators plan to roll out a revamped proposal for governing cleanup of Cold War-era waste from one of the federal government's premier nuclear laboratories. State Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn is scheduled to outline the changes to the consent order with Los Alamos National Laboratory during a meeting there this afternoon. The presentation will kick off a public comment period. The previous agreement ran out in December as cleanup at the northern New Mexico lab and other national defense sites were derailed. Work had to be halted because of the closure of the federal government's underground nuclear repository – WIPP - due to a radiation leak. State officials have been working on the revisions for months. Goals included an agreement that would result in actual cleanup and the remediation of radioactive and other hazardous wastes.
The Ruidoso Moon Mountain Fire has claimed about 125 acres since it was sparked Monday afternoon. About 143 people are assigned to the fire – still at 30-percent containment with no injuries. But crews have had man-made challenges. Now that wildfire season is in full swing in New Mexico, land managers are warning people not to fly drones while crews are trying to battle flames. There was a report of a drone flying near Ruidoso where firefighters and air tankers have been busy trying to douse a blaze that has charred an area at the edge of the mountain village. Loretta Benavidez with the U.S. Forest Service said Tuesday the report of the drone came in after aircraft assigned to the fire flew their missions. Had the report come in sooner, officials would have been forced to ground any air support. Benavidez says the message is clear: If you fly, we can't. She says a temporary flight restriction is in place over the fire so no drones allowed.
Game and Fish managers in the state want to reintroduce the Gila trout to the Gila National Forests’s waterways in southwestern New Mexico, but the pesticide they plan to use is the subject of concern. Today’s Santa Fe New Mexican reports that the pesticide, Rotenone has been selected by the NM Game and Fish Department to kill off rainbow and brown trout along the Whitewater Creek so as to give the Gila trout a better chance of survival. The fish were wiped out by a huge wildfire in 2012. The author of a study on Rotenone says there is a link between ingestion of the pesticide, and Parkinson’s disease. Game and Fish staff say a person would have to take in 23,000 gallons of water treated with Rotenone before it would pose a health threat to humans.
New Mexico's governor and economic development secretary are hoping to lure businesses and jobs home with them during a three-day trip to Southern California. Economic Development Secretary Jon Barela says the mission ending today includes meetings with site selection consultants to California businesses. He says many of New Mexico's corporate tax rates and wage provisions compare favorably to California from an employer's standpoint. New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez is not the only Republican governor to court California businesses in recent years. Governors Rick Scott of Florida and Rick Perry of Texas have made high-profile visits there touting home-state advantages on taxes and regulation. New Mexico's unemployment rate has hovered near 6.4 percent for the past year, while the national rate declined to 4.9 percent in January.
The board of directors for one of New Mexico's major irrigation districts has voted to intervene in a lawsuit concerning decades-old permits and the authority to pull water from the Rio Grande. Environmentalists are challenging the office of the state engineer, saying New Mexico's top water managers have failed to force the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District to prove it's putting the water to beneficial use. The district's counsel, Chuck DuMars, contends the irrigation district demonstrated that water rights were placed into beneficial use through the construction and operation of the district's diversion and distribution system under a plan approved in 1928. DuMars says the lawsuit should be dismissed. WildEarth Guardians argued in its suit that the state engineer has effectively given the district a blank water check for decades.
New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas has joined a coalition of 17 state attorneys general to combat global warming by examining whether fossil fuel companies misled investors or the public on the impact of their business. State Deputy Attorney General Tania Maestas met Tuesday in New York with other prosecutors in the coalition. New Mexico depends heavily on the oil and natural gas industries to fund government operations and endowments. New York, California, Massachusetts and the U.S. Virgin Islands are actively investigating whether Exxon Mobile deceived shareholders and the public about the effects of climate change. Those investigations follow news reports by Inside Climate News and others about internal Exxon documents from the late 1970s. Those records showed an awareness that global warming might threaten the company's existence.
In national news:
U.S. officials say the Pentagon will be deploying an armored brigade combat team to Eastern Europe next February as part of the ongoing effort to rotate troops in and out of the region to reassure allies worried about threats from an increasingly aggressive Russia. The officials say the Army will announce today that it will be sending a full set of equipment with the brigade to Europe. Earlier plans had called for the Pentagon to rotate troops into Europe, where they would use a set of training equipment that had been pre-positioned there. There are about 4,500 soldiers in an armored brigade, along with dozens of heavy vehicles, tanks and other equipment.
Many relatives and friends providing financial support or care to people with dementia have dipped into their retirement savings, cut back on spending and sold assets to pay for expenses tied to the disease. A survey by the Alzheimer's Association also finds that about one in five go hungry because they don't have enough money. Keith Fargo, the Alzheimer's Association director of scientific programs and outreach, says the survey shows that people are not prepared for the high costs of home care or nursing home care. The median cost of a home care aide is $20 per hour and the average cost of a semi-private room in a nursing home is $80,300 per year. Nationwide, there are 5.4 million people with Alzheimer's, the most common cause of dementia.