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 been testifying before the Environmental Improvement Board during hearings on repealing a year-old law to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, did the same.

In a Manichean battle pitting good versus evil, one of Wednesday’s key witnesses was none other than a man labeled in 2002 as the “Clean air villain of the month,” who was testifying on behalf of Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, an oil, gas and utility interests seeking to overturn the EIB’s 2010 measure.

As outlined in an earlier New Mexico Independent story, Governor Susana Martinez has been seeking a repeal of the EIB’s 2010 edict that the state require its utility industries and other large emitters of carbon dioxide to cut their emissions of the gas by two percent a year beginning in 2012 and running through 2020.

Martinez has argued — along with the representatives of the Public Service Company of New Mexico, the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association and other oil and gas and utility companies — that the measure harms these businesses, incurs unjust fees on them  and that any climate change regulation ought to take place on a national, not state level.

The hearings started on Tuesday and are set to finish up next Tuesday.

Yesterday’s star witness for the anti-cap-and-trade activists was former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Jeffrey Holmstead, who said that the likelihood of any national cap-and-trade program is lower than ever — despite repeated actions of the EPA. Holmstead also said he believes that the state’s rule would have little to no impact on climate change and that costs would outweigh benefits.

In 2002, after refusing requests from former Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont to reveal internal documentation on the Clean Air Act, the Clean Air Trust named Holmstead its “Clear air villain of the month.” Holmstead came in as a hired lobbyist working on behalf of Tri-State, a wholesale electric supply utility company that runs 44 systems in Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, and New Mexico.

Later, in 2010, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and lobbyist Roger Martella Jr. enlisted Holmstead to help craft legislation intended to disable the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gasses. Just before doing so, Holmstead,  his employer and two of their major clients donated over $125,000 to Murkowski.

Holmstead has also worked as an “adjunct scholar” for Citizens for the Environment, a spinoff of Citizens for a Sound Economy.

Citizens for the Environment, according to a report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, has “labeled most environment problems—including acid rain . . . as myths.”

Citizens for a Sound Economy was founded and funded by the Koch brothers, Charles and David, the notorious right-wing and libertarian billionaire duo who have been linked to the Tea Party movement and who, according to Kert Davies of Greenpeace, have since 1997 given close to $55 million to climate change deniers.

Among the group’s opposing the opposers is the New Energy Economy, the Santa Fe-based clean-energy advocacy organization established in 2004. Along with WildEarth Guardians and other environmental activist groups, the NEE sees the about-face by the IB has essentially politically motivated.

“A party is not supposed to take one position in front of a body and then adopt a different position later on,” said its executive director Mariel Nanasi. “Courts don’t generally favor that sort of switch. Unless there’s some actual basis for that change, it’s very unusual. The EIB can’t just turn on a dime like that.”

While the solar-paneled protestors, who’d been organized into action by the NEE, sang their songs, their opponents gave the EIB estimates on costs of the board’s 2010 regulations — both to their companies and their customers. The figures ranged from $840 million to $1.6 billion over the 20 years. Representatives of New Mexico’s electric cooperatives then presented the board with more than 16,000 petition signatures in favor of repeal.

Nanansi said that the claims of exorbitant retrofitting and higher heating bills for those who can least afford it and lost jobs all amount to shell games.

“It’s a ruse — all these arguments,” she said. “This is the most important issue of our time, and they’re externalizing their costs for decades. It sounds good that they care about their customers, but PNM has raised its rates three times in the last four years. And that’s not because of the EIB’s new regulations. That’s because PNM made the risky decision to invest in coal.”

“It’s an ideological game,” added Nanansi. “The problem is, there are real consequences. Governor Martinez is doing her damnedest to tear everything down. But we’re going to continue to build momentum for clean energy. And if the EIB buckles to these utility and oil and gas interests, we’re going to appeal. There are a lot of legal opportunities to oppose this.”

New Mexico is considering reversing former Gov. Richardson’s cap and trade program on carbon dioxide emissions because the upfront costs are proving too much to bear.

Deputy Secretary of the state’s Environment Department, Butch Tongate, testified before the Environmental Improvement Board to explain why New Mexico alone cannot combat pollution, and why efforts to curb toxins should be a national and global priority.

From the AP:

“The cap-and-trade program does not come free. It requires significant investment from industry as well as the state and it will have an impact on every citizen of the state,” he said.

While he acknowledged not being an economic expert, Tongate pointed to the 80,000 New Mexico households that received federal assistance to pay their energy bills in 2009. He also said nearly 20 percent of New Mexicans live below the federal poverty level.

“With the cap-and-trade rules and increases in energy and transportation costs, the poorest people of the state will be required to pay higher bills and that’s equivalent to a regressive tax,” Tongate said.

The arguments over whether New Mexico should regulate greenhouse gases haven’t changed since the debate first began nearly three years ago. Approval of the regulations last year followed battles before the state’s highest court and days of testimony by economists, climate experts and the public.

And while federal greenhouse measures have been a divisive issue among pundits and the business community, influential figures in New Mexico have also griped about Washington intervention on environmental matters.

On Friday Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly criticized the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement that it would pressure a coal-fired plant that services and employs tribal members.

Also from the AP:

Shelly says in a letter to the EPA that he supports the state of New Mexico and Public Service Company of New Mexico in their efforts to appeal the agency’s decision.

New Mexico contends the agency infringed on its ability to adopt its own plan for curbing haze-causing pollution at the San Juan Generating Station.

Shelly describes the EPA’s mandate as “enormously burdensome.” He accuses the agency of ignoring the culture, geography and economics of the Four Corners region.

And yesterday, a public health scare in La Bajada, a roughly 40-resident area in the center of Santa Fe county*, was caused over detection of the bacterial strain E.Coli in the city’s water supply. The Environment Department issued a “boil water advisory,” and made specific mention of the risk children and the elderly have in growing ill from the water.

In 2010, a New Mexican article cited a scientific report that Santa Fe water exceeded EPA limits on contaminants on numerous occasions over a multi-year period.

*This post as been updated to clarify the specific area within Sante Fe county affected by the E. Coli detection

Late last week, an amendment proposed by Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D), of New Mexico’s third district, attempting to alter a deal between the U.S. government and a major mining firm was voted down. Luján had been seeking to tweak the Southeast Arizona Land Exchange and Conservation Act of 2009, legislation originally introduced by Senators John Kyl and John McCain allowing for an exchange of land between the federal government and the Resolution Copper Co. Lujan had hoped to protect this land, considered sacred and of cultural and historical significance to Native peoples not just in Arizona and New Mexico but throughout the United States.

Luján stood staunchly against the bill in his proposal.“You have heard my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that their bill offers protection for the sacred, traditional, and cultural sites in the proposed area to be exchanged, but I don’t believe that to be true,” he said. “If it were true, then why is every major tribal organization in the country opposing this bill?”

Luján cited the National Congress of American Indians, the All-Indian Pueblo Council of New Mexico, the San Carlos Apache Tribe (whose 2,400 acres of land on the Tonto National Forest is most affected by the Act), and the Jicarilla and Mescalero Apache tribes of New Mexico, among many other U.S. tribes as having spoken out against the land swap. “We have a Trust responsibility to our tribal brothers and sisters, and those who oppose this responsibility will dismantle it piece by piece with a scalpel and not all at once with an axe,” he said.

Among those who voted against Luján’s proposed amendment were fellow New Mexico Representative Steve Pearce, who, according to MapLight, a website that tracks the voting records and campaign contributions of U.S. Congressmen, received $9,600 from mining interests. Similarly, Representatives Jeff Flake and Ben Quayle of Arizona also voted down the amendment, and received, respectively, $5,000 and $2,500 each from the mining industry.

Rep. Luján sent the New Mexico Independent this statement:

“It was unfortunate that my amendment to protect Native American sacred and cultural sites was not adopted.  Adoption of this simple amendment would have shown respect for the religious and cultural sites that are important to the many tribes in the region, in addition to recognizing that we have a responsibility to work with our tribal brothers and sisters on issues that impact their communities.  Opponents of my amendment will say that tribal consultation is part of the exchange, but frankly what is outlined in the bill is not sufficient to ensure protection of sacred sites.”

Last week, a number of publications reported on research about “Halloween sadism”, the deliberate poisoning or tampering of candy in order to harm children. The research claims that the phenomenon appears to be non-existent, with most outlets calling it an urban myth.

But an incident in Santa Fe may have just proven that the myth is not totally bunk. A razor blade was actually found in the Reese’s peanut butter cup of a 15-year-old trick-or-treater.

KRQE reports:

“There’s a high probability this is not the only tainted chocolate,” said Lt. Louis Carlos with the Santa Fe Police Department.

But police aren’t sure which house the teen got the tainted candy from. They are warning kids who trick or treated within two miles of Ragle Park to be extra vigilant and make sure to check their candy.

The police also told KRQE that they don’t believe the razor was a prank, but was deliberately placed in the candy by whoever gave it to the teenager.

University of Delaware sociologist Joel Best has said “Halloween sadism” is exceedingly rare and mostly an urban legend. Best investigated various reports of razor blades, poison or other hazardous material in Halloween candy resulting in the death of a trick-or-treater, and found no evidence that it has ever occurred. He also found that many reports of poisoned candy were actually pranks by the trick-or-treaters themselves.

Late last week, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals reinforced an earlier decision by the 9th Circuit Court, in reestablishing a Bill Clinton-era ban on roadway construction on almost 60 million acres of forest and grassland in 38 states, including over one million acres in New Mexico. “It’s not a surprise but it is a welcome relief,” said Bryan Bird of WildEarth Guardians, the Santa Fe-based environmental-advocacy group. “We’ve always known the Clinton ruling was sound.”

Only days before he left the White House, President Clinton signed the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which placed a hold on roadways and commercial-timber harvesting in areas such as the national forests surrounding the Pecos Wilderness, along the Rio Chama River north of Española, and between Taos and Questa. The Rule allowed for controlled burning and other fire mitigation, and the reestablishment of Clinton’s rule also maintains such practices.

But in 2005, the Bush administration rescinded Clinton’s protective regulations, giving states authority over what to do with these wilderness areas. Attorneys general in several western states, though, including New Mexico, sued to reinstate Clinton’s Rule.

New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce (R), cosponsor of HR 1581, the Wilderness and Roadless Area Release bill, which would effectively undo any manner of roadless designation, vowed to forge ahead legislatively. “A court ruling cannot kill the bill,” Pearce pointed out after the 10th Circuit’s ruling. Indeed, only Congress or the Supreme Court have that power. Both sides, though, seem to view the latter as an unlikely pursuit at this point.

“Representative Pearce doesn’t seem to understand that these areas are of far greater value undeveloped than they are developed,” said Bird. “Once you open up these pristine areas to development you jeopardize the watershed. They’re highly valuable to wildlife and for water.”

Pearce countered that HR 1581 would “allow more Americans to enjoy our federal lands and actually protect the habitats of wildlife through proper management.” It would also, he said, “return the ability of land managers to allow for responsible development and multiple uses.”

“This issue’s certainly not dead in the water but it provides a buffer until Congress designates these areas as wilderness areas,” said Bird. “We’re confident now that the Obama administration would not sign anything that’d weaken this ruling.”

Consumer prices in the Western states, including New Mexico, rose 0.4 percent in September, and 3.5 percent in the past year. The New Mexico Business Weekly reports:

Transportation costs — including gas — were again the biggest contributor to the West’s year-over-year price spike last month, up 9.6 percent from a year earlier, BLS said. Food and beverage prices rose 4.4 percent from year-ago levels, and apparel costs rose 3.7 percent. Month-over-month, the greatest increase from August to September in the western states was for apparel, up 3.8 percent.

Compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer Price Index measures headline inflation, which includes changes in the prices of energy and food. The high year-to-year change of global fuel prices, which economists say is driven by a combination of increasing demand from emerging markets and speculation, means that ordinary American consumers typically experience higher average expenses than they would otherwise.

Core inflation, a measure of inflation that strips out volatile fuel and food, remains relatively stagnant even as expectations of higher nationwide inflation rose a small amount in September. The Cleveland Federal Reserve announced today that the public expects average annual inflation to be 1.4 percent over the next ten years, up from 1.37 last month. That’s significantly lower than the unofficial target of the Federal Reserve, which is 2 percent.

The Western states had the lowest amount of headline inflation in the past year, with the highest being in the South which experienced a 4.1 percent increase.

As part of the required National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process, officials from the U.S. Air Force and Clovis’s Cannon Air Force Base held another public hearing last night in Las Vegas about its plans for low-altitude tactical navigation (LATN) training flights over southeast Colorado and eastern New Mexico. As has been the case at other meetings held over the past year, more opponents than supporters showed up. But for the first time, one of the plan’s legislative doubters made an appearance.

The mission flights would occur Monday through Friday and often at night, with 700 missions planned annually, and the LATN map includes 36 Colorado counties and 19 in New Mexico and consists of parts of Santa Fe County and the towns of Las Vegas and Taos. The military says the flights are essential to national security (and operates them as part of a special operations program at Cannon). The aircraft flying at altitudes as low as 300 feet would include the C-22 Osprey and the C-130 Hercules.

“We ran a bill last year that said there would be no low-level flyovers over Colorado,” Colorado state representative Wes McKinley told last night’s crowd. “The reason being protecting the property rights. And low-level flying is a property taking.”

In the eyes of Carol Miller, of the Peaceful Skies Coalition, one of many groups who’ve organized in opposition to LATN proposal, and who also attended last night’s hearing, these flights are about far more than just property rights.

“It’s destructive to the environment, it’s destructive to the community economies, and it’s a waste of money for more militarism while many more important needs are being cut or eliminated,” said Miller. “This was another very powerful outpouring of community anger against this proposal, but for the military, it’s another checkbox in the NEPA process.”

Citing the possible impact of the flights on tourism, on outdoor recreation, on local wildlife, and pointing out too the possibility of airplane crashes (the Osprey has a notorious reputation as being accident-prone) or refueling accidents, as well as pointing out the concerns over the high decibel levels of noise generated by the planes, Peaceful Skies and other groups and opponents again voiced their dismay at the proposed flights, which constitute 60,000 square miles and would comprise an area four times larger than the current largest U.S. Air Force airspace in Nevada.

“We are focused on helping to increase public comment to the Environmental Assessment,” said Miller, referring to the hearings, which are scheduled to end on November 5th. “Unless the New Mexico and Colorado congressional delegations request a 60-day extension.”

After November 5th, the Air Force will issue its final decision to either move forward with its LATN plan or to implement an Environmental Impact Statement, which most groups advocate as something already needed. Several groups, Peaceful Skies among them, have said they will sue for if the Air Force does not go ahead with one.

“This is not a Taos issue, it is a national issue,” said Miller. “Nor is it about who’s patriotic and who isn’t. It’s about the military upholding the laws of the U.S. They’re not. They’re mocking the constitution.”

Or, as McKinley put it to the crowd last night: “What’s the Environmental Assessment of our constitutional rights?”

Miller later claimed that the Air Force has already taken some of the $300 million it received from Congress and and the $5 million it has received from the state of New Mexico to buy water rights, to construct a new school in Clovis and for a new gate for Cannon. And all of which, said Miller, is a violation. “It’s illegal for them to be spending money while the NEPA process is under way.”

Officials in the Martinez administration announced Tuesday that revenue for the state government will be lower than previously estimated. The Associated Press reports:

A new revenue forecast released Tuesday lowered projections for tax collections by $123 million in the fiscal year that starts next July and about $21 million in the current budget year.

Much of the decline is because economists expect oil and natural gas prices to be lower than anticipated.

Last week, Gov. Susana Martinez (R) was in Midland, Texas, touting her anti-regulation record to the annual meeting of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association. She told the crowd that oil and gas revenue makes up about 30 percent of the state’s general fund and 95 percent of the permanent fund, and yet, “Often, the industry is vilified, vilified even in our state.”

But the new depressed revenue figures suggests there are weaknesses to a state relying on oil and gas revenue to finance itself. Although economists say increased economic growth leads to spiking fuel prices, the Federal Reserve’s commitment to tamping down on rising headline inflation, a measure of inflation that includes energy and food prices, means that states like New Mexico must exist in an unpredictable budgetary situation.

The Legislative Finance Committee was told in July they had around $350 million in “new money” to use in the next legislative session. The decreased oil and gas revenue means only $200 million will now be available.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) is cosponsoring legislation with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) that would preserve existing funding support for counties containing National Forest System lands. The bill would maintain Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) given to counties in compensation for containing federal land, as well as funding for rural schools, forest management, and other county government initiatives. KTVZ reports:

Sen. Bingaman said: “Over the past few years, Secure Rural Schools and PILT have been lifelines for financially-strapped rural counties and the thousands of Americans they employ and contract with. While we all have different perspectives on the county payments programs, we recognize how critical they are to our communities and the necessity of bringing together a broad, bipartisan coalition to support this plan if we are to have any chance of successfully securing funding.”

Sen. Murkowski said: “Until Congress can return federal land management to a system where our forests generate the jobs and economic activity they once did, Secure Rural Schools provides crucial funding to keep whole some of our most remote communities. I support this legislation as a temporary fix, fully aware that the only permanent solution is for the Forest Service to reinstate regular timber sales to provide some economic benefit to the communities within the national forest system.

“The PILT program was put in place to compensate communities with federal lands within their jurisdictions for lost tax revenue. Since I don’t expect Congress to grant local municipalities the right to tax federal lands, I see no reason why we should not continue funding this program for the foreseeable future.”

New Mexico would receive $56 million in county payments over the next five years. In addition, Bingaman estimates that New Mexico gets about $35 million in lieu of taxes each year, although that figure could vary depending on the distribution of federal land.

PILT would not be subject to the normal appropriations process, but would be reduced by five percent each year for the next five years, with the hope that it will eventually be phased out.

The federal government receives $13 billion annually from commercial activities on federal lands. As Murkowski’s comments indicate, some in Congress wish to expand logging, livestock grazing, and oil and gas leasing operations within federal lands, and allow states to have a larger stake in this economic activity. But conservationists caution against excessively exploiting national forest lands.

Current funding for PILT was provided in the emergency stimulus act passed under the Bush administration in 2008.

Yesterday The National Nuclear Security Administration confirmed its plans to replace an aging Los Alamos National Labs facility, which runs across a major fault line, with an estimated $4-6 billion plutonium lab. According to the NNSA notice, the new building “would provide vitally essential technical support capabilities to NNSA’s national security mission.”

However, according to Greg Mello of the Albuquerque-based Los Alamos Study Group, a LANL watchdog, the project creates very few new jobs for New Mexicans — perhaps as few as 300 — over its projected 10-year-long construction. Moreover, the unofficial cost of the building by the time of its actual completion could run as high as $12 billion. And, he says, its real purpose is the creation of nuclear warheads, each of which would have 50 times greater capacity and impact than the bomb used on Nagasaki in 1945. “Basically,” said Mello, “it’s making weapons of mass destruction.”

Although federal officials assented to the their plans (which, by LASG’s estimation, has already cost $458 million just to get it to this planning stage) for the construction of the new lab, approval by both the U.S. House and Senate is still necessary.