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“We’re concerned about the pollution. Until you hear the compressors, smell the air, and see the contamination, it’s hard to believe…"
That’s Tweeti Blancett, a northern New Mexico rancher, talking about the impacts of oil and gas drilling on her land. Tweeti has been seeing her water supplies fouled and cattle dying since oil companies started drilling wells on her ranch a few years ago.
Could we in Albuquerque be living next to and exposed to these same pollution and contamination?
The answer is yes. And it could be soon.
Although most people in Albuquerque remain unaware, a Texas based oil company, Tecton, has signed a lease to drill for oil on 50,000 acres of the West Mesa. Tecton has already started looking for oil, using three wells. If Tecton strikes oil, Albuquerque residents could see more than a thousand wells on the horizon.
The medical and public health communities believe strongly that this is the wrong prescription for Albuquerque.
The actual act of drilling an oil well poses serious risks to Albuquerque’s way of life. Oil companies inject chemicals into underground aquifers, thus putting precious water supplies in danger. Oil wells also release toxic chemicals, increase ozone levels and smog, and contribute to air pollution.
There is good evidence linking these chemicals and “volatile organic compounds” to cancer, reduced fertility, birth defects, and neurological problems. The increase in smog and ozone also will likely lead to an increase in asthma and other respiratory illnesses – especially among children and the elderly.
Deb Meader, a nurse and mother who lives next to oil and gas wells in Colorado describes the risks more eloquently, “you can’t live next to a gas well and not get sick. We look around on the mesa and everyone’s got something… cancer… headaches… high blood pressure.”
If the drilling goes ahead as planned on the West Mesa, the problems described by Deb Meader are likely to happen to people living throughout Albuquerque– not just those living near the wells. Albuquerque is both downwind and below the proposed drilling location, which means that toxic emissions will tend to drift over and settle in the entire Rio Grande valley.
There was a time that oil and gas drilling took place in remote, isolated areas, thereby not putting people in immediate danger. But now with gas prices through the roof and big profits calling, oil companies are looking to drill everywhere: next to our homes, our neighborhoods, our schools, our hospitals, and our drinking water supplies.
Before drilling begins in earnest on the West Side, we should ask the simple question, “What to do we want Albuquerque to become?”
Do we want to become an oil and gas field? Or do we want to become a leader in renewable energy technologies, a leader in the new energy economy?
With a wealth of renewable resources, Albuquerque should be on the cutting edge of solar and wind energy. Our leaders should be recruiting solar companies, not oil companies. We should be creating high paying “green collar” jobs that will stay in our communities for decades to come – not short-term jobs that come from the boom and bust cycle of the oil industry.
We need leadership right now, which will stand up and protect our communities from oil and gas drilling and help develop a healthier direction for energy.
Over the last year, Santa Fe and Mora counties have been threatened with similar proposals for oil and gas drilling. Residents in those counties have obtained a moratorium on drilling until the environmental, health, and economic consequences can be fully evaluated.
Leaders in Bernalillo County have a choice.
Will they give in to outdated ways of thinking about economic development? Or, will they place a premium on human health by putting the breaks on drilling in their community?
Mallery Downs is the past president of the New Mexico Public Health Association and Dr. Lucy Boulanger is an internal medicine and public health physician who serves on the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
