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 Representatives Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján were in attendance as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sent the Pigford and Cobell settlements to President Barack Obama after the bills passed both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate. The bill included a $3.4 billion settlement for Native American trust account holders and a $1.15 billion for black farmers.
Water experts and advocates converged in Albuquerque recently at the New Mexico Watershed Forum to talk government policy and the health of the state’s rivers and waterways. While touting accomplishments such as restoration work along the Rio Grande and Pecos rivers, many acknowledged much remains to be done.
That’s the intriguing notion Albuquerque Journal’s John Fleck set out in a post on his personal blog over the weekend.
Fleck, who covers water issues pretty darn closely and always conscientiously for New Mexico’s largest newspaper, says that he’s…
Pilot testing with iron treatments has successfully reduced arsenic levels in Bernalillo‘s drinking water, town engineering firm Wilson & Co will report to the Town Council Monday night.
Earlier this year The Independent broke the story of how…
In a guest opinion column in the Albuquerque Journal Thursday, former Bernalillo Town manager Stephen Jerge argued that fired Town engineer Ramesh Narasimhan’s engineering is not to blame for Bernalillo’s malfunctioning drinking water treatment…
A state Environment Department official disputes a former Bernalillo engineer’s claim that arsenic levels in the Town wells climbed sharply over recent years.
Former Bernalillo engineer Ramesh Narasimhan told The Independent and Town officials in February that…
Several New Mexico water systems are struggling to bring down arsenic levels, but when it comes to reducing the amount of fecal matter in the drinking water, the state is seeing tangible gains, state records suggest.
Bacterial contamination events…
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.
Drinking water at Cannon Air Force Base has become contaminated with high levels of the bacteria E. coli, possibly from sewage, prompting a “boil water” advisory from the state Environment Department Wednesday.
Criminal charges against one Public Regulation Commission (PRC) commissioner, the conviction earlier this month of another on two felony charges, a costly sexual harassment lawsuit, the hiring of a convicted embezzler, and repeated violations of the Open Meetings Act…
It sounds like something you’d read in a history book: a community with no running water and no electricity; residents who carry water to wash dishes and take showers; unnamed dirt roads instead of paved thoroughfares that residents use.
And yet there Pajarito Mesa sits, on the ridge overlooking a modern American city; in this case, Albuquerque. The community’s plight was enough to draw the interest of the New York Times, which profiled Pajarito Mesa in today’s paper.
Bernalillo has been operating its troubled drinking water arsenic filtration system in violation of state law since 2008, according to Environment Department officials. But the state’s own documentation of the project is missing at least two key documents, The Independent has found. The state has no plans to take enforcement action against the Town, which has cooperated fully with the state in its efforts to fix the malfunctioning system, officials say.
After a controversial system failed to bring Bernalillo’s tap water into compliance with federal regulations, the town’s new contract water engineering firm has received approval from the state Environment Department to begin using iron treatments to reduce levels of arsenic in the water. But tackling a problem with aluminum sludge, caused by the old system, is too difficult and expensive to tackle just yet.
Bernalillo has suspended plans to construct a $9.2 million arsenic treatment system at two of the Town’s four wells, Mayor Jack Torres announced this week. Town engineers are now attempting to fix problems at new treatment facilities already installed at the two other wells, he said.
The Environmental Protection Agency will impose some stricter water standards, including some that will effect New Mexico. The Associated Press is reporting that one of the compounds that the EPA will be regulating is trichloroethylene, or TCE , which was used…
Contract water system engineer Ramesh Narasimhan’s firm, NCS, was fired Tuesday and the Town will seek undisclosed damages, Mayor Patricia Chavez announced. The move followed news that the state Environment Department would issue a second drinking water violation for high arsenic levels.
Arsenic levels at both of Bernalillo’s active wells have jumped over the past three years, and the New Mexico Environment Department announced Tuesday it will issue the Town a second arsenic violation notice by next week. The town’s project engineer, Ramesh Narasimhan, is now considering supplementation of the Town’s aluminum-based arsenic removal system with iron treatments — an approach recommended in a 2006 engineering report scuttled by former town manager Stephen Jerge. At Narasimhan’s recommendation, Jerge opted instead for the Town’s no-bid purchase of the aluminum-based system, which is produced by a Bernalillo firm.
Two years after Bernalillo spent at least $4.9 million installing new water treatment equipment, the state Environment Department will now step in to help the town address problems with the system and drinking water quality, a Department spokeswoman told The Independent.
Instead of consistently bringing the town drinking water’s arsenic levels into compliance with federal drinking water standards, Bernalillo’s new water treatment system has repeatedly pushed aluminum to levels exceeding federal standards. Residents’ complaints started in summer 2009 and occurred as recently as last month–but the town’s contract engineer Ramesh Narasimhan knew about the problem nearly a year earlier, as did former Town manager Stephen Jerge, Narasimhan claims.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who has led the charge on bad actors in the investment world, including one or two here in New Mexico, now is going after Intel Corp, which has a big presence in the…
