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.
Congressman Ben Ray Luján presented his first bill on the House floor yesterday, HR 2729.
A vote on the bill is expected on the House floor later this week.
The bill which would help fund National Environmental Research Parks (NERPs) at seven national labs facilities throughout the nation, including a park around Los Alamos National Labs in Luján’s district.
Luján, D-N.M., said while introducing the bill:
I am pleased that the House is considering H.R. 2729, a bill that will formally authorize six National Environmental Research Parks at Department of Energy sites across the country, including one in my district at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Los Alamos National Laboratory includes a landscape of canyons, mesas, mountains, and the Rio Grande–providing a diverse range of ecosystems to explore. The Los Alamos Park conducts ongoing environmental studies on everything from contaminant transport to woodland productivity to long-term climate change effects on the land. These Parks have been a critical resource to the national and global environmental research community for decades, yet they have never had a clearly defined source of support in the Department before. This bill finally addresses this issue and provides important guidance for the Parks’ research, development, education, and outreach activities.
“The Parks have been funded through a variety of inconsistent funding streams, such as temporary grants or allocations from other existing programs at the labs,” Luján spokesman Mark Nicaste told me in an e-mail. “The Parks currently do not have a formal authorization to support National Environmental Research Park activities.”
The appropriation of funds would come from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, but Luján’s bill would authorize $5 million of funding for each of the seven NERPs for each fiscal year from 2010 to 2014.
