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.
As it promised months ago, The Sierra Club on Thursday filed suit against the San Juan Coal Company and PNM, which operates the San Juan Power Generating Station, alleging that the dumping of ash and sludge from the power generating station into unlined pits at the San Juan mine is polluting the groundwater and causing damage to human health, livestock and wildlife.
Testing has shown that the levels of arsenic, lead, selenium, uranium, sulfate and many other toxins exceed safe levels in ground and surface water near the mine dump site, the Sierra Club said in a statement.
“The ‘minefilling’ of coal combustion waste in the San Juan coal mine has made it one of the largest illegal open dumps in the nation today,” said Jeff Stant of the Environmental Integrity Project, which is assisting with the lawsuit. “Dumping huge volumes of coal combustion waste every year into the San Juan Mine without meeting basic safeguards violates federal laws. It must end, and the San Juan Coal Company must cleanup the pollution it has caused.”
“For years the San Juan Coal Company and others have dumped toxic waste into this mine without regard to what it was doing to those living downstream,” said R.G. “Squeek” Hunt, a local sheep farmer, in the statement. Water on Mr. Hunt’s property has been repeatedly polluted by the dumping of coal combustion waste in the area, the Sierra Club said.
As The Independent reported last year, the Sierra Club provided notice of its intent to sue in December 2009 to the defendants as well as to the state and federal agencies responsible for regulating surface mining and waste disposal and for maintaining ground and surface water quality. The Sierra Club told The Independent in February they intended to go forward with the suit.
The company denies responsibility for any water pollution in the region.
“San Juan Coal Company is confident that allegations of water contamination as a result of coal combustion by-product (CCB ) placement at the San Juan Mine are incorrect and are not supported by water monitoring data,” Charles Roybal, senior counsel for the coal company’s parent company, BHP Billiton, told The Independent in an email last December.
And while New Mexico officials agree there may be a water contamination issue may exist, the source is unclear, they told The Independent.
