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.
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…
The Four Corners power plant is about to be smaller and less dirty, a change that could significantly reduce the haze and high smog levels in the four corners region of New Mexico. Arizona Public Service, Inc., has announced it…
Four draft reports released Wednesday by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling say the Obama administration was not prepared for a spill the size of the one in the Gulf, which spewed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean. They detail the many stops and starts of the Unified Command, which was set up to organize response efforts. And they suggest that the administration sought desperately to keep the oil spill from becoming for Obama what Hurricane Katrina was for George Bush.
Between 50 and 150 New Mexicans’ deaths each year in San Juan County are caused by air pollution from coal-fired power plant emissions, according to estimates in a study released Thursday by the Clean Air Task Force…
The City of Albuquerque is getting a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to turn methane gas from the Cerro Colorado landfill into energy that will power a glass recycling facility, Sen. Tom Udall announced Tuesday.
Some…
The Albuquerquer-Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority will add more sensitive lab tests for toxic fuel additive to its suite of water quailty tests for southeast city wells near Kirtland Air Force Base, authority and U.S. Air Force official have announced.…
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is cracking down on pollution from cement manufacturing plants, announcing new rules this week intended to curb mercury and particulate pollution nationwide. Cement kilns are a leading source of mercury emissions in the U.S., according…
New Mexico has become the 13th state to side with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s new rules regulating greenhouse gas emissions from oil refineries, cement facilities and coal power plants, Attorney General Gary King announced Thursday.…
A nuclear waste watchdog group says the state hasn’t done enough to make sure radioactive and toxic waste isn’t leaking from Sandia National Labs’ mixed waste landfill. Rebuffed by regional EPA officials, Citizen Action New Mexico now wants agency brass in Washington, D.C. and New Mexico Attorney General Gary King’s office to review the state Environment Department’s regulation of the site.
A proposed federal tax on the oil and chemical industries would help New Mexico kick-start languishing clean-ups at some of its most dangerous toxic waste sites, according to the state Superfund Oversight Bureau’s program manager.
Uranium mining in Churchrock advanced last week as an appeals court cleared the way for Hydro Resources to start in-situ leaching in Northwest New Mexico. But residents and environmentalists worry that the mining will contaminate water. Because of the ongoing issue of abandoned mines that haven’t been cleaned up and a legacy of illness caused by exposure in the mines, the Navajo Nation banned uranium mining of all types in 2005.
Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) were widely used as flame retardants in furniture, carpets, and plastics until 2004.
Now, two new studies published in the public health journal Environmental Health Perspectives suggest PBDEs may impair women’s fertility and…
The Green Ridge Mutual Domestic Water Consumers Association in Tijeras plans to install a controversial aluminum-based treatment system designed by Bernalillo-based ARS-USA to treat high fluoride and arsenic levels, Association members and project engineer Andrew Robertson have told The Independent. Green Ridge will be the second water system in the U.S. to use the system, and hopes to avoid the expensive problems the first user, the Town of Bernalillo, has encountered.
By 2016, new cars should get an average of 35.5 miles per gallon, according to new vehicle emissions standards issued yesterday by the federal government.
The developers of the Desert Rock power plant don’t have any plans at the moment to resubmit an application for an air quality permit from the EPA, says freelance reporter Laura Paskus in a piece for the High Country…
Hydro Resources, Inc. can’t yet start mining for uranium in Church Rock until an appeals court decides whether or not 160 acres owned by HRI are subject to regulation by the EPA or the New Mexico Environment Department.
Two years after Bernalillo spent at least $4.9 million building new arsenic filtration systems for the Town’s drinking water, lab tests suggest they are not working. The state Environment Department issued a violation letter Tuesday, stating that water from one of the Town’s two active wells exceeds federal and state water standards for arsenic. The violation notice came just a week after the Town council voted to spend another $9.2 million to install the system on its remaining two wells — lest it lose $4 million in federal stimulus funding for the water system improvements.
The Sierra Club alleges that the San Juan Coal Company has improperly dumped more than 40 million tons of coal ash waste and sludge into unlined pits, resulting in the contamination of waterways and wells near the mine.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today that greenhouse gases endanger human health and the environment, and must be regulated.
“These long-overdue findings cement 2009’s place in history as the year when the United States Government began addressing the challenge…
A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department study, due next month, will show there are already significant threats posed to endangered species in the region by industrial and agricultural pollutants in the four corners region.
