I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The first step is to admit you have a problem.
“We have deficit spending that we’ve been doing for a long time, and we’ve become fairly addicted to it,” said Bob Wessely.
This is how the Albuquerque Journal’s John Fleck starts a column that can be found on today’s front page.
As Fleck explains, Wessely is not talking about the state’s budget, but about New Mexico’s water use.
Fleck attended a recent state water use meeting in Bernalillo and what he and others who attended heard wasn’t necessarily brand new to their ears. But Fleck writes that what was said bears repeating to us out here in reader-land who use the water that is one of New Mexico’s most perishable resources. And who am I to disagree.
The most compelling paragraphs in Fleck’s column, at least for me, were these:
There are a lot of ways to slice and dice water data. But the message on Gretel Follingstad’s PowerPoint slide was simple.
On the right side of the slide was demand. It’s expected to get bigger, as we continue to grow. On the left side of the slide is water supply. It’s not getting bigger.
“The point of it, at the end of the day, is that supply doesn’t meet demand,” Follingstad, a water planner with the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer, patiently explained to me as we huddled over her slides after the meeting.
It’s probably worth remembering what’s on that slide as New Mexico debates the pros and cons of growth, as well as the types of growth to allow, over the next several decades.
