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

With the construction of a “spaceport” underway in the southern New Mexico town of Upham, NASA has made moves to take advantage of the new flight center by striking a $4.5 million contract agreement with owners Virgin Galactic.

From Fox News:

Under the deal, NASA will charter up to three flights on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, an air-launched spacecraft designed to carry eight people on trips to suborbital space.

[…]

Each suborbital spaceflight for NASA could carry up to 1,300 pounds (590 kilograms) of scientific experiments, allowing up to 600 different payloads per mission, Virgin Galactic officials said.

The company will provide a flight test engineer on every mission to help monitor and conduct experiments as necessary, they added.

In the deal, NASA committed to chartering one flight with Virgin Galactic, with options for two more. If the space agency exercises those options and charters all three flights, the contract will be worth $4.5 million, officials said.

New Mexico is home to several aeronautic and space discovery projects. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory just completed a decade-long renovation that upped its technological capacities; previously, the often-filmed space center relied on technology from the 1970s. The facility is requesting name changes in recognition of its new array of services.

And as reported by The New Mexico Independent previously, two research firms in New Mexico were awarded $4 million to develop technology for a set of NASA’s unammned flight programs.

Two New Mexico-based technology firms have been awarded nearly $4 million in research grants as part of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration project to the update unmanned flight program.

The Dryden Flight Research Center of Edwards Air Force Base in Calif. granted LE Tech of Santa Fe and Honeywell International of Albuquerque $2.9 million and $942,000. The Santa Fe company is charged with budget forecasting and cost assessment, while Honeywell will look into developing traffic models that assess safety and flight pattern risks.

In total, The Dryden Center distributed roughly $12 million in grants to six firms as part of its mission to expand and make safer unmanned aircraft while helping policy makers understand the available technology and its limitations.

From a Dryden Center press release:

Current Federal Aviation Administration safety of flight rules and certification standards were written with the assumption of having a pilot aboard the aircraft. These standards limit operation of unmanned aircraft systems in the national airspace. The goal…is to reduce technical barriers related to the safety and operational challenges associated with enabling routine access for unmanned aircraft systems to the [National Airspace System].

The awards were finalized in late September.

President Obama awarded Sgt. 1st Class Leroy A. Petry the Medal of Honor yesterday in the White House, only the ninth person (second living) to receive it during the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.

President Obama:

“Finally, the service of Leroy Petry speaks to the very essence of America — that spirit that says, no matter how hard the journey, no matter how steep the climb, we don’t quit.  We don’t give up.  Leroy lost a hand and those wounds in his legs sometimes make it hard for him to stand.  But he pushes on, and even joined his fellow Rangers for a grueling 20-mile march.  He could have focused only on his own recovery, but today he helps care for other wounded warriors, inspiring them with his example. Given his wounds, he could have retired from the Army, with honor, but he chose to re-enlist — indefinitely.  And this past year he returned to Afghanistan — his eighth deployment — back with his Ranger brothers on another mission to keep our country safe.

Petry lost his hand in Eastern Afghanistan while trying to find a top al-Qaeda commander. The Army News Service wrote about his bravery:

Recognizing the threat that the enemy grenade posed to his fellow Rangers, Petry — despite his own wounds and with complete disregard for his personal safety — consciously and deliberately risked his life to move to and secure the live enemy grenade and throw it away from his fellow Rangers, according to battlefield reports.

As Petry released the grenade in the direction of the enemy, preventing the serious injury or death of Higgins and Robinson, it detonated and amputated his right hand.

Petry assessed his wound and placed a tourniquet on his right arm. He then reported that he was still in contact with the enemy and that he had been wounded again.

Petry, a Santa Fe native, was flunking out of Santa Fe High School before transferring to St. Catherine’s Indian School and graduating in 1998. He enlisted in the Army in September 1999. The Santa Fe New Mexican has a special section devoted to Petry.

The Santa Fe Public Schools District refuses to send district budget records via e-mail to the The Rio Grande Foundation due to a policy that protects transmitting information electronically. The district asks $1,200 for a paper copy of its budget.

The Las Vegas Optic reports despite the economic downturn, Las Vegas fell within one percentage point of its projected revenue for the last fiscal year.

A public hearing on proposed ordinances to restrict the amount of junk and trash collected drew more than 220 residents of San Juan County who objected to the suggested rules, reports The Farmington Daily Times.

Training will also be available Friday, April 30, at the San Juan Community College in Farmington (Room 7126) from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Trujillo said.

The Santa Fe training will be offered at the Secretary of State’s office, 325 Don Gaspar (Suite 300) next Wednesday. Appointments may be made for times between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., Trujillo said.

Next Friday, May 7, training will be held at the Clovis Community College (Room 170), 417 Schepps Blvd. in Clovis, from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

For additional information and to register, contact Hari Singh at hari.singh@state.nm.us or (505) 795-5871 (505) 795-5871.

A new Santa Fe advocacy and education group, Bike Santa Fe, is taking LaHood up on the new vision, which the transportation secretary articulated at the National Bike Summit in Washington D.C., much to the chagrin of some.

What Bike Santa Fe hopes to do is leverage the slowly changing face of transportation nationally — the numbers of adults biking to work is growing — to act locally by changing city ordinances and make cycling safer and more convenient for everyone.

“Our first focus is to get a three- (but preferably five-) foot passing ordinance within city limits, similar to the one Albuquerque passed,” Bike Santa Fe board member Lisa Miles told The Independent.

That would increase rider safety.

Bike Santa Fe also hopes to educate bicyclists and drivers about safe riding practices to encourage more people to take up alternative transportation.

The group hopes to push New Mexico’s capital city toward Albuquerque’s more pro-active attitude toward biking. Last month Albuquerque was named the 17^th most bike-friendly city in the country by Bicycling magazine (Minneapolis, Minn. was No. 1).

Achieving those goals

Bike Santa Fe will take a step toward its goal of getting a five-foot pass law by attending a meeting 5:30 p.m. today of the Bicycle Trails Advisory Committee (BTAC) at city hall. BTAC has asked community members to attend so they can take their findings to the city council on the possible ordinance.

“Behavior needs to change before something happens,” Bike Santa Fe board member Christopher Ryan said at the group’s Wednesday meeting. He was emphasizing the importance not to advocate after an accident occurs and someone is seriously injured, but before.

There are other fringe benefits to increased bicycling too: increased health.

The Center for Disease Control’s Kids Walk-to-School program encourages kids to walk and bike to school in order to fight childhood obesity and raise the level of physical activity in youth. Additional neighborhood friendly side effects that the CDC anticipates from the program are “improved neighborhood safety” and “fewer cars congesting the pick-up and drop-off points at the school.”

The current state of affairs in Santa Fe

According to the city of Santa Fe’s Bikeways and Trails map only Santa Fe High School, Santa Fe Indian School and New Mexico School for the Deaf are accessible from bike-only trails, with the majority of elementary and middle schools located off roads and only a few located on roads with bike lanes. The city’s three colleges fare worse, with none accessible from lower-speed, shared roads.

The city, however, is working to improve things one bike path at a time and has a survey available for commuters to let the city know how and why they commute the way they do.

Tom Towbridge, Bicycle, Pedestrian and Equestrian Coordinator  for the state’s transportation agency, told the Independent future plans include extending the Santa Fe River Trail – which currently runs a portion of Alameda from downtown through the Casa Solana neighborhood – to Frenchy’s Park. That would alleviate one of Santa Fe’s most dodgy routes, a part of Agua Fria Road on which bike lanes disappear and reappear seemingly out of nowhere.

Despite efforts such as city sponsored Bike to Work Week (Santa Fe’s takes place from May 17-21) and advocacy groups such as Bike Santa Fe, adults in town are less likely to bicycle than kids like their counterparts across the nation.

The national picture

A 2005 survey of 250,000 people living in population centers of 65,000 or more people found that only 0.4 percent of Americans commute to work and another 2.5 percent walk.

Bicyclists beat out only motorcyclists at 0.2 percent and cab riders at 0.1 percent. A whopping 77 percent of the population drives alone and 10.7 percent carpool, the survey found. Even the city with the highest percentage of bicyclists (Portland, Oregon) found only 3.5 percent of its population cycling to work.

While that’s a small segment of the population, the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (PDF) found that in 2008 alone 716 cyclists were killed nationally in traffic-related accidents while another approximately 52,000 suffered injuries. That same year seven of New Mexico’s 366 traffic fatalities were bicyclists.

Cycling advocates cite a variety of reasons for death and injury, the most numerous causes being driver error and road design.

Santa Fe’s most hazardous intersection, at Cerrillos Road and St. Francis Drive, poses an additional hazard to cyclists with railroad tracks running right through the intersection, through which one of the city’s bike paths takes riders – though the trail ends shortly before the intersection and picks up again on the other side.

But the event in liberal-leaning Santa Fe (the county voted 76.8 percent for Obama in 2008), found supporters and opponents side by side.

While speaking about health care, J.R. Damron pointed out a group of teenagers and 20-somethings near the back of the crowd and announced from the gazebo that “the Hitler Youth back there aren’t with us,” adding that “everyone should know that, especially the media.” The young people, whose mocking signs (“Go home old rich white people” and “Nazi youth for lower taxes”) mugged for the camera.

But several of the tea party opponents who showed up made attempts to dialogue with the those who wanted to cut taxes, but the dialogue wasn’t always pleasant, as evidenced in the video below.

State Rep. Brian Egolf, who represents Santa Fe, came to the event and told The Independent although he supported the tea partiers’ efforts to be heard and to get involved, their views aren’t in-line with his own. Egolf also told The Independent that before heading to this evening’s protest he checked some stats, saying, ”We have fewer state employees now than we did when Gary Johnson was in office.”

Asked to participate in The Independent’s non-scientific poll, GOP congressional candidate Adam Kokesh said preferred not to answer, insinuating that he would wait until after the primary to officially endorse a candidate.

The Huffington Post reports that the letter “comes intriguingly close to assigning blame for ongoing gun violence to the Obama administration.”

In January, Obama’s presidency was given a failing grade from the gun control group the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns had sent a report to the Obama administration in August 2009 that was a “blueprint for federal action on illegal guns.”

“The time has come for action,” the letter says, citing the fact that “approximately 6,000 Americans have been gunned down in intentional acts of violence” since the blueprint was sent to Obama’s administration.

The letter is embedded below.

BloombergObama –

“The state transportation commission felt strongly that there was not clear cut evidence that they actually make the roads safer,” New Mexico Department of Transportation Spokesperson Mark Slimp told KRQE yesterday.

Some have said that the cameras are just ways for the city to make money; the Paseo del Norte red light camera is the one where the most drivers have been caught speeding or running red lights.

The change in policy will also affect two red light cameras in Las Cruces and Santa Fe.

“There seems to be many competing studies out there that make confusing claims about the efficacy of the devices currently in use,” State Transportation Commission Chairman Johnny Cope said in a press release. “While the true safety impact of the use of these cameras is still murky at best, one thing has become clear to the Commission — more and more New Mexico cities seem to be putting driver-generated revenues ahead of sound traffic management techniques; frankly, that concept really troubles me.”

Update:

Governor Bill Richardson says that he is on board with the red light camera ban.

“After six years of red light cameras in New Mexico, I remain deeply skeptical of this excessive, big-brother approach to public safety,” Richardson said in a press release. “I fully support the ban of these cameras and vans on state and federal roads and highways, and I commend the Transportation Commission for taking a decisive stand on this issue.”