State gives ‘outstanding’ designation to northern NM waters, enhancing pollution rules – By Megan Gleason, Source New Mexico
The state will soon enact heightened protection against any unauthorized water pollution or other damages across hundreds of miles of rivers and streams in northern New Mexico.
On Tuesday morning, the Water Quality Control Commission, a state water pollution control agency, unanimously passed the designation of Outstanding National Resource Waters for the Upper Pecos watershed as well as segments of Rio Grande, Rio Hondo, Lake Fork, East Fork Jemez River, San Antonio Creek and Redondo Creek.
This is the highest level of protection against water degradation the state can give.
These bodies of water will have unique protection against degradation — anything that harms water quality, pollutes, drops heavy metals, increases temperature or clouds water.
Pollution levels that were allowed per state health standards prior to this passage are no longer allowed. And anyone found violating these standards can be fined or taken to court by the state.
These efforts have been years in the making. A petition must be filed with the Water Quality Control Commission for any consideration for waters to be classified and protected as Outstanding National Resource Waters, and petitions for these waters stem back to 2020 and 2021.
Tannis Fox, senior attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center, was counsel to the authors for the separate but similar petitions. She said about 180 miles of the Upper Pecos watershed and around 125 miles of other streams and rivers in northern New Mexico will be protected.
One of the petitioners, Director of N.M. Outdoor Recreation Division Axie Navas, said this change could be used to help get more funding to protect watersheds or even as a marketing tool so people know New Mexicans are proud of their waters.
Any time there could be impacts to water quality, such as through restoration, road construction or discharges, organizations must go through the Environment Department or Water Quality Control Commission to get permission, Fox said.
Other human activities that could hurt water quality outlined in the petitions include mining, waste disposal, development and transportation. One of the petitioners, Ralph Vigil, owner of the organic farm Molino de la Isla Organics, said the Upper Pecos watershed has been threatened by mining in the past.
Mining operations in the late 1920s and early ‘30s severely damaged the Upper Pecos watershed, he said, killing fish and contaminating the water.
Now, there’s another proposed exploratory mine near Thompson Peak that wants to extract minerals out of the watershed. This designation will protect against that.
“We had to put some protections so that this doesn’t happen to us again, especially from the mining community,” Vigil said.
Pre-existing uses are allowed to continue, Fox said. Some examples Vigil gave include irrigation and grazing. In addition, the Village of Taos Ski Valley has a wastewater discharge permit in the Rio Hondo but will be allowed to continue that discharge, Fox said.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WATERS
A body of water can receive the designation if it provides one of any number of benefits, like being a cultural resource, existing within a national or state park or not being significantly altered by human activity.
“These streams represent some of the most ecologically diverse waters in our state, as well as some of the most aesthetically beautiful and recreated on streams in the state,” Fox said. “All of these waters are just majestic.”
The Upper Pecos watershed area is sacred to Pueblos nearby as well as other inhabitants of the area, Vigil said. His family has been in New Mexico for eight generations.
“It’s a special and sacred place to us with our acequia systems and our agricultural practices and our cultural practices,” Vigil said. “So I know there’s a lot of people that this river means a lot to as far as recreation is concerned as well.”
Navas said she was honored to work with all the counties that take pride and ownership in their bodies of water.
“We’re really excited about it because so much of these waters, the portions of these rivers are just enormously significant to individuals who live in these communities, traditional practices, cultural practices and then of course the outdoor recreation companies that make their livelihood from taking people out on adventures on these pristine waters,” Navas said.
There was a significant amount of public support. For the northern New Mexico rivers and streams, Navas said the petition received over 50 resolutions of formal support and over 2,200 public supportive comments. The Upper Pecos watershed petition also had many voices supporting it, including Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján as well as Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez.
N.M. Environment Department spokesperson Matthew Maez wrote via email that “today’s decision brings much needed protections to New Mexico’s most precious resource — our water.”
In the final deliberation stage, Commissioners Larry Dominguez and Bill Brancard brought up concerns about the designation taking effect on private land, and action Colorado could take to protect its side of the Rio Grande and the Village of Taos Ski Valley’s wastewater discharge permit.
Fox said all of these concerns were addressed in the evidence presented to the commission previously and are not issues. Both commissioners voted to pass the petitions.
Navas said now is the time to get the word out about the passage to all of the supporters.
“The quality of water and doing this now is not basically for us. This is for our grandchildren and for our future generations to be able to enjoy in such the same way that we did,” Vigil said. “So it was a very huge victory.”
The state must go through a formal publication process now before the classification becomes official. Maez said this will likely go into effect in September.
AG to review law enforcement actions that led to teen’s death in house fire - By Alice Fordham, KUNM News
New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas announced today that his office will review the actions of law enforcement that led to the death of Brett Rosenau on July 6.
In a statement, his office said that Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina sent a letter to Balderas on July 12, formally asking him to review, quote, “the recent critical incident”.
Balderas said in the statement that, quote, “The tragic death of this 15-year-old is a serious matter that warrants a comprehensive review, and we have already taken steps to assemble a team to examine the handling of the incident and conduct an analysis of the use of tactical devices.”
Rosenau died after a police SWAT team was involved in a house standoff with 27-year-old Qiaunt Kelley. Officers allegedly threw tear gas canisters and shot chemical munitions before the blaze started. Police said Rosenau had followed Kelley into the house. After the fire was extinguished, Rosenau was found dead.
New Mexico county blasts US over historic prescribed fire By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
Commissioners in a northern New Mexico county urged U.S. forest managers on Tuesday to do a more comprehensive environmental review of plans to restore large swaths of forest that border the capital city, passing a resolution fueled by frustrations that have been mounting in the wake of a devastating wildfire sparked by the government's planned burns.
The Santa Fe County Commission unanimously approved the resolution, but not before some of the elected officials and members of the public blasted the U.S. Forest Service for not taking into consideration the exceptionally dry conditions that have plagued many parts of the West for the last two decades.
Numerous missteps by the agency resulted in prescribed fires erupting this spring into the largest wildfire in New Mexico's recorded history. The blaze has yet to be fully contained after more than three months, and firefighters most recently have been focused on reseeding some of the blackened areas and trying to mitigate post-fire flooding.
Santa Fe resident Valerie Gremillion told the county commissioners that she has been reviewing the report that outlines mistakes made by the agency, including its failure to use updated fuel models, to take into account the extreme drought conditions or to follow through with other protocols.
"I would not let them run a carnival in my backyard, much less set a fire to the back of the Santa Fe National Forest," she said.
U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore in a statement released along with the report acknowledged the heartbreak among New Mexico families and communities. Several hundred homes were burned, thousands of people were forced to evacuate and farmers, ranchers and municipal officials are worried about the environmental and social consequences that will be felt over the coming decades.
"Fires are outpacing our models and, as the final report notes, we need to better understand how megadrought and climate change are affecting our actions on the ground," Moore wrote, adding that the agency must learn from the fire.
The resolution aims to push the agency further in that direction, specifically calling for forest officials to respond to "a full and fair discussion" of significant environmental impacts, examine alternatives that include preserving forests in their natural condition and document unavoidable adverse effects prior to starting any project aimed at clearing out overgrown and dead vegetation.
"I think it's very timely that we bring this forward and encourage the Forest Service to rethink its practices in a big way," said Commissioner Hank Hughes.
Moore halted his agency's prescribed burn operations pending a formal review, but Commissioner Anna Hansen, who introduced the resolution, said prescribed burns should be ceased until federal officials address the concerns of both community members and independent scientists.
Doctors urge access to psychedelic therapies in New Mexico - By Morgan Lee Associated Press
Physicians and researchers are urging New Mexico legislators to allow the use of psychedelic mushrooms in mental health therapy aimed at overcoming depression, anxiety, psychological trauma and alcoholism.
A legislative panel on Tuesday listened to advocates who hope to broaden the scope of medical treatment and research assisted by psilocybin, the psychedelic active ingredient in certain mushrooms.
Oregon is so far the only state to legalize the therapeutic use of psilocybin.
Recent studies indicate psilocybin could be useful in the treatment of major depression, including mental suffering among terminally ill patients, and for substance abuse including alcoholism, with low risks of addiction or overdose under medical supervision.
Physician Lawrence Leeman, a medicine professor at the University of New Mexico, urged legislators to move forward without waiting for federal decriminalization or regulatory approval to expand responsible therapies using doses of psilocybin.
Leeman and other advocates outlined emerging psilocybin protocols, involving six-hour supervised sessions and extensive discussions about the experience in subsequent counseling. He warned legislators that public interest is spawning illicit, underground experimentation without safeguards.
"I do think there is a lot of promise from these medications," said Leeman, who also directs a program providing prenatal and maternity care to women with substance abuse problems. "If this does go ahead, let's do this really safely, let's make sure we have people who are well trained (to administer the psychedelics) ... Let's make sure that people have counselors to see afterward."
It was unclear whether any New Mexico lawmakers will seek legislation for the medical use of psychedelics, which are still federally illegal. The Democratic-led Legislature convenes its next regular session in January 2023.
The study of psychedelics for therapy has made inroads in states led by Democrats and Republicans alike, including Hawaii, Connecticut, Texas, Utah and Oklahoma. And psilocybin has been decriminalized in the cities of Washington and Denver as well as Ann Arbor, Michigan; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Oakland and Santa Cruz in California.
In several states, military veterans are helping to persuade lawmakers to study psychedelic mushrooms for therapeutic use in addressing post-traumatic stress.
Currently in New Mexico, lawful access to psilocybin-assisted therapy is available mostly through clinical trials.
Yale University psychiatrist Gerald Valentine said that leaves out people with low incomes and severe afflictions. He said the University of New Mexico is expanding its expertise in psychedelics-based therapies, and that a supportive environment can be found in communities such as Santa Fe, known as a progressive hub for healing and the arts.
"These questions are starting to be answered about who might benefit from this therapy," Valentine said. "I just feel very fortunate to be in a position to really bring this forth into real world situations."
Classic psychedelics include LSD, mescaline, psilocybin and ayahuasca. Plant-based psychedelics have long been used in indigenous cultures around the world.
At least one New Mexico church group uses hallucinogenic ayahuasca tea from the Amazon as a sacrament. A 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision ensured access to ayahuasca imports for a temple on the outskirts of Santa Fe affiliated with the Brazil-based Centro Espìrita Beneficiente União do Vegetal.
Matt King, co-founder of arts collective Meow Wolf, dies - Associated Press
Matt King, a co-founder of the Santa Fe-based arts collective Meow Wolf that has grown into an offbeat, interactive entertainment juggernaut, has died. He was 37.
Meow Wolf spokeswoman Didi Bethurum on Tuesday confirmed King's death. He died Saturday, but the cause and location of his death was withheld.
In a statement, Meow Wolf called King a "pioneer of immersive art" who "had a joy for creation that was electric and expansive." CEO Jose Tolosa said "thousands have been deeply touched by the artistic genius of his work."
Meow Wolf coined a new brand of family entertainment with its "House of Eternal Return" exhibition in Santa Fe, which provides eye-popping psychedelic design work in a labyrinthine exhibit of spiral stairs and unmarked passageways.
The project has doubled as an educational workshop for children and nightlife music stage, as Meow Wolf opened major new venues last year in Denver and Las Vegas.
King was credited with working on 34 installations since the founding of Meow Wolf in 2008, according to an online visual tribute to his work.
John Feins of Santa Fe, who worked at Meow Wolf from 2017-2019, said King was a versatile, hands-on artist who even did the welding work on early installations.
"He was a major force in the 'House of Eternal Return'' and of course the ideation of other, newer installations," Feins said. "They realized how much more that kind of experiential, maximalist creativity could go."
Albuquerque police chief wants probe of teen's death in fire - Associated Press
The Albuquerque police chief is calling on the state's attorney general to review a teenage boy's death in a house fire, which broke out after authorities tried to arrest a man inside.
Albuquerque police announced Tuesday that Chief Harold Medina has asked Attorney General Hector Balderas to lead a probe of the incident.
In a letter to Balderas, Medina says he is making the request out of "an abundance of caution." He also asks for an independent analysis of the chemical device officers used at the time and deployment procedures.
Medina promised earlier this week that if police are found to have indirectly contributed to 15-year-old Brett Rosenau's death, "we will take steps to ensure this never happens again."
The teen's death has elicited an outcry from the community and "Black Lives Matter" protesters. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico has also called on Balderas to conduct an outside investigation.
A police SWAT team last Thursday was involved in a house standoff with 27-year-old Qiaunt Kelley. Police say Kelley was wanted for a probation violation and for questioning in a recent homicide and an officer-involved shooting.
Officers allegedly threw tear gas canisters and shot chemical munitions before the blaze started.
Police said Rosenau had followed Kelley into the house. After the fire was extinguished, Rosenau was found dead.
Arson investigators say the boy died from smoke inhalation.
Kelley was treated at a hospital for burn injuries before being booked into jail. Police say he has refused to talk. It was not clear Tuesday if he had an attorney who could speak for him.
Albuquerque Fire Department officials said Sunday it may take two weeks to determine the fire's cause.
APD was ‘mistaken’ about federal warrant for the man targeted in SWAT raid – By Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
In the days following a deadly SWAT raid on a house that burned down in Albuquerque’s International District, police and local media repeatedly said that the man they were trying to arrest that night was wanted on a federal warrant.
The morning after the incident, Police Chief Harold Medina said at a news conference that the Department’s Investigative Support Unit (ISU) was searching for Qiaunt Kelley who “had some felony warrants, one from the state level, one from the federal level.”
Later in the same news conference, a lieutenant said they had found “two active warrants for Mr. Kelley” in an internal police database, one for a “federal probation violation for carjacking” and another for “unlawful taking of a motor vehicle out of the city of Santa Fe.”
Over the course of the next three days, local media including the Albuquerque Journal, KRQE and KOB uncritically repeated this false information.
However, a search of federal court records over the past month by Source New Mexico shows no federal warrant issued against Kelley or any property associated with him.
There were no federal warrants for Kelley in N.M. when SWAT was called out to the house Kelley was visiting on July 6, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Tuesday.
“In the district of New Mexico, there were no federal warrants at that time,” said Scott Howell, spokesperson for the N.M. District Office.
On Monday, the Journal, again citing police, reported that Kelley was wanted “on felony warrants.” That is also not true.
In reality, New Mexico Corrections Department Probation and Parole Division Director Melanie Martinez on March 21 signed a warrant for Kelley’s arrest, saying he violated five conditions of his parole.
A parole violation is not a felony and is not handled by a criminal court. Instead, it is adjudicated by the state Probation and Parole board.
Kelley was on parole after having completed his sentence in a 2018 carjacking in Las Cruces, according to court records.
Albuquerque Police Department Det. Eric Endziel used the arrest warrant as part of his reasoning to ask Second Judicial District Court Judge Britt M. Baca-Miller for a search warrant, giving police legal authority to search the house where they found Kelley and 15-year-old Brett Rosenau and two cars parked in the driveway.
Source New Mexico reviewed copies of the arrest warrant and the search warrant.
Reached for comment on Tuesday, Albuquerque Police Department spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos said the references to a federal warrant were mistaken, and that detectives told him on Tuesday there is no federal warrant.
“There is an ongoing investigation by APD and a federal law enforcement agency that could result in federal charges,” Gallegos said. “I was under the impression on the morning of the incident that the investigation had resulted in a warrant.”
Gallegos did not respond to a question asking which federal police agency he was talking about.
Kelley was transferred from the Bernalillo County jail to a state prison on Monday and remains in custody as of Tuesday. He has not been charged with anything other than parole violations, according to a search of state court records on Tuesday.
Albuquerque police have also noted in news conferences and releases that Kelley is a “person of interest” in other crimes, but so far he has not been named as a suspect in any of them. His involvement in them, and whether he was involved at all, remains to be shown.
“In addition to being an absconder for the parole violation, our detectives wanted to get him into custody and attempt to question him for that investigation, as well as separate investigations into a homicide and an officer-involved shooting,” Gallegos said Tuesday. “The fact that he was considered a person of interest in three different violent crimes also led to making his apprehension a priority.”
After hours of SWAT tactics on Wednesday night, where officers launched cannisters of tear gas, pepper spray and flash-bang devices into the home where Kelley was, the residence caught fire.
Firefighters delayed entering the building because, Medina said, there were concerns Kelley was armed, and he was still inside. When he surrendered after the house was burning, Albuquerque Fire Rescue entered and found Rosenau dead, according to news releases.
Early reports from the Office of the Medical Investigator indicate the teen died of smoke inhalation, and police say investigators are looking into whether the munitions police used ignited the blaze.
When things go wrong with police actions, folks are often demonized, said Barron Jones. He is a senior policy strategist at the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico and a former journalist.
“This is a situation where we want that person to look as bad as we possibly can, to either justify or mitigate the actions taken by APD that night,” Jones said. “I’m not saying that is the case, but that is a thing that happens.”
The fact that Kelley was wanted on a parole violation is significant, because right now, the way the warrant is written, we don’t see that there was any immediate danger, Jones said. And the police response resulted in a tragedy — all over parole violations.
“It’s significant because we believe this is not an immediate call to where this person is in the community, wreaking havoc, where you have to take the steps that were taken that night that led to the tragic loss of life of a 15-year-old boy and the destruction of a person’s home,” Jones said. “If a little patience were exercised, I think there would have been a different outcome.”
It’s also an unfortunate example of how the media sometimes takes law enforcement’s statements as gospel, Jones said.
“Overpolicing of communities of color is a major problem,” Jones said. “And I just wonder if the approach would have been a little bit different if it was in another part of town.”
These kinds of SWAT callouts, he added, do not make us safer.
“The community is traumatized. A family lost their home. A family is displaced. A young child who barely started living lost their life, which is a horrible tragedy,” Jones said, “and there is a further erosion of trust between the community and APD.”
New Mexico’s Oil and Gas Revenues Are Breaking Records and Complicating Budgets – Jerry Redfern, Capital and Main
Oil and gas revenues added more than $1.7 billion to New Mexico coffers in the first four months of the year — more than in any other four-month period in state history.
A lot more.
Records compiled by the New Mexico Tax and Revenue Department show that year-on-year, revenues from January through April more than doubled from $782 million in 2021 — itself a record year. (Records lag by two months to allow producers time to report their production numbers.) This money gusher comes from increasing production in New Mexico’s portion of the Permian Basin — currently the most productive oilfield on the planet — and skyrocketing oil and gas prices brought on by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
State Sen. George Muñoz (D-Gallup), vice chair of the powerful Legislative Finance Committee, says that committee economists peg the state’s likely take from oil and gas at $5.2 billion for the fiscal year — roughly a billion more than last year’s oil and gas revenue. That tally may rise if world oil prices remain high.
Mountains of money are generally a good thing for anyone, but the unplanned windfall does come with complications. The first is the kind of money brought in by oil and gas production. Roughly speaking, state government views revenues in two ways: as one-time or recurring income. Recurring money remains fairly steady year after year. For example, people will generally remain employed and use their earnings to buy things, making income and sales taxes a reliable source of steady, recurring revenue for the state.
However, record-breaking fossil fuel revenue is treated as one-time money: It can’t be counted on to repeat, so it can’t be used to create new programs, add permanent jobs or increase pay for state employees across the board. One-time money can build police stations and water treatment plants and schools, but it can’t pay the people to fill them. And that makes budgeting difficult. “When you have that one-time money surpassing recurring money, it becomes a little topsy-turvy,” Muñoz says. And he says that his committee’s economists are predicting that that is exactly what is about to happen.
The second problem stems from the first: This is oil money, and oil money has a roller-coaster history and a murky, finite future.
“I have ridden the roller coaster,” Muñoz says. “I came in in [2009] where we had to cut a billion dollars out of the budget” because fossil fuel production had tanked during the Great Recession. It’s not something he wants to do again.
Kelly O’Donnell, a New Mexico economist who keeps tabs on the oil and gas industry, agrees that this isn’t the state’s first boom year — but that history rarely serves as a guide. “New Mexico has had a tendency towards selective amnesia about these things,” she says. “We are always surprised when the bad times show up.” Yet they always do.
“To progress economically, over time, we are going to have to get out of this boom-bust resource cycle,” she says. “When it goes down next time, it may not come back up, and we have to be prepared for that reality.”
* * *
New Mexico sits atop half of the Delaware Basin, the most lucrative portion of the greater Permian Basin, and the state’s fossil fuel production continues to grow. New Mexico was the first state to return to — and then exceed — pre-pandemic oil production levels earlier this year after they cratered in early 2020 as the planet closed down in the face of COVID-19. Nationally, only Texas and the offshore fields in the Gulf of Mexico produce more oil.
The Tax and Revenue Department’s figures do not account for all oil and gas revenues collected by the state — they don’t include revenue from federal mineral leases, for example — but they do reflect how much is coming in. The total is calculated during the state’s fiscal year, which runs from July 1 to June 30 of the following year.
And while oil and gas revenues tallied by Tax and Revenue for the full 2022 fiscal year won’t be known for another two months due to the reporting lag, they are already nearly double all of last year’s take: $3.6 billion this year compared to nearly $2 billion last fiscal year.
A large chunk of the oil and gas tax bonanza will go to long-term economic and social investment, primarily the Early Childhood Trust Fund. Set up in 2020, the fund invests in the health and education of the state’s toddlers, with an eye on their — and the state’s — future development. “If we invest in our people, if we have the workforce ready to attract employers, if we have the schools ready to attract employers … over the long term that will improve our situation,” says State Rep. Matthew McQueen (D-Galisteo), chair of the House Energy, Environment and Natural Resources committee.
McQueen also argues that the windfall should be used to cap abandoned oil and gas wells. “We should do that while the money is flowing,” he says. “When it’s not flowing, the state can get left holding the bag.” And he says that “maybe even a higher priority” is hiring more oil and gas field inspectors at the Oil Conservation Division and Environment Department to find leaks and prosecute offenders. “The reason you cap abandoned wells is because of the methane leaks, right? They’re tied together,” he says. But hiring inspectors for more than a year requires long-term funding, not a one-time windfall.
“Funding additional oversight programs and positions is unfortunately not ultimately up to the executive,” says Nora Meyers Sackett, press secretary to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. “Last year the administration proposed funding for additional regulatory staff at both [the Oil Conservation Division and Environment Department] that were not funded by the Legislature, which does affect the state’s ability to monitor and enforce pollution regulations.”
Sen. Muñoz says he’s eyeing funding increases for capital projects that were approved last year. “All those projects are underfunded,” he says, because of recent sharp inflation — which is also driven by increasing energy prices. One-time money could cover those increases.
But his ongoing concern is paying state employees a wage that can compete with private-sector jobs. “We’re going to have to raise those payments in order to recruit engineers, lawyers, those degreed staff to get them back to state work,” he says. But once again, that would require recurring money, not one-time oil and gas payouts.
“It’s like you only get one apple off the tree,” Muñoz says. And everyone will try to get a bite during New Mexico’s notoriously short legislative session. Last year’s session was 30 days. And though the upcoming session will be twice as long, it still may not be enough time to thoughtfully deal with the complications of this sudden cash infusion. “The bigger the budget gets,” he says, “the harder it becomes to manage.”
* * *
“I think that the resource curse really explains a lot of New Mexico’s difficulties,” O’Donnell says. Before going into the private sector and becoming a research professor of economics at the University of New Mexico, she held a number of leadership roles under former Gov. Bill Richardson, including director of state tax policy, deputy cabinet secretary for economic development and superintendent of the New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Department.
The resource curse theory explains why developing countries often underperform when their revenues are based on extractive resources — usually fossil fuels. The developing economy relies heavily on the one money stream, both because it is lucrative and because of fears of upsetting the apple cart. Thus, it locks itself into an economic cycle tied to natural resources.
“We have to start planning in a more concrete fashion for a future where oil and gas has a less prominent role in the economy,” she says. “That seems inevitable.” Inevitable because world economies are turning ever more quickly away from fossil fuels to renewables as the effects of climate change become ever more obvious and dire.
“It’s becoming increasingly clear to New Mexicans, in the wake of the most recent fires, that climate change is here, and that it has the potential to destroy the state and, really, to destroy the economy,” O’Donnell says. “Putting all of our eggs in the oil and gas basket, to mix a metaphor terribly, becomes increasingly problematic.”
“A productive industry can and should also be a responsible one,” says Meyers Sackett at the governor’s office. “We remain committed to holding those who do not comply with our methane and ozone rules accountable. There is no situation where we will accept anything less than compliance, but there is every opportunity for the industry to exceed our requirements.”
“I don’t care how high oil and gas gets this year,” says Lucas Herndon, energy and policy director of ProgressNow New Mexico. “I don’t care if it stays high this year. I don’t even care if it stays high next year. What I can guarantee is that sometime in the next two to five years, oil and gas will crash again.”
He says that oil and gas is not a sustainable method for funding the state government. “It never has been and it never will be … It always goes back down.”
US awards $3B contract to manage nuclear waste repository - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
Management of the U.S. government's only underground nuclear waste repository will be taken over later this year by a company created by one of the largest engineering, construction and project management firms in the world.
The U.S. Energy Department announced Monday that the new contract with the Bechtel company to oversee the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico is worth up to $3 billion if all options are exercised over the next decade.
The current contract with Nuclear Waste Partnership will expire at the end of September, when Bechtel's Tularosa Basin Range Services LLC is scheduled to take over.
Nuclear watchdog groups have been pushing for years for a change at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, citing problems that included a 2014 fire and radiation release. The incidents forced a nearly three-year closure and a costly overhaul of the policies and procedures that govern the nation's cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons research and bomb making.
The Energy Department's Office of Environmental Management received five proposals for the lucrative contract. The agency did not disclose the other bidders.
Dena Volovar, Bechtel National Inc.'s executive vice president, called it an honor for the company to be chosen.
"The mission to safely dispose of defense-related nuclear waste is vitally important for protecting people and the planet," she said in a statement.
Over more than 20 years, tons of Cold War-era waste have been stashed deep in the salt caverns that make up the repository, with officials saying the shifting salt will eventually entomb the radioactive waste. The waste includes special boxes and barrels packed with lab coats, rubber gloves, tools and debris contaminated with plutonium and other radioactive elements.
The repository's current footprint includes several sections, which the U.S. Energy Department estimates will be filled in a few years. Federal officials confirmed during a community meeting last week that more space is needed and the mining of additional sections would have to go through an environmental approval process that would include an opportunity for public comment.
Environmentalists and residents shared concerns during the meeting about New Mexico becoming a sacrifice zone for the nation's nuclear waste and about the safety of continuously transporting waste across the country.
Bechtel also will inherit a couple of multimillion-dollar infrastructure projects that are underway at the repository, including the construction of a new ventilation system necessitated by the radiation release. Adequate airflow will be needed to ramp up waste disposal operations and for the mining of more disposal space.
New Mexico officer testifies at ex-partner's murder trial - Associated Press
A New Mexico police officer got emotional on the witness stand Tuesday at his former professional partner's murder trial when recalling the danger that he believed he faced in trying to arrest a man who died in a 2020 struggle with officers.
Las Cruces Officer Andrew Tuton said he believed Antonio Valenzuela had a gun and was reaching for it during his struggle with Tuton and Officer Christopher Smelser, who is charged with murder in the death. In the end, though, no gun was found on Valenzuela.
Tuton, who paused to gather himself when describing the dangers in the encounter, said he became concerned about a gun when he felt one of Valenzuela's hands moving around. "I knew in that moment I was going to get shot," Tuton said.
Smelser eventually put Valenzuela into a chokehold that prosecutors alleged gradually ended his life. Smelser was later fired.
A medical examiner had concluded Valenzuela died from asphyxial injuries due to physical restraint — and that methamphetamine in his system was a contributing factor in his death.
The autopsy found Valenzuela had hemorrhaging in his eyes and eyelids, which is indicative of asphyxiation and may occur when the neck or chest is compressed. His neck had a deep muscle hemorrhage, his Adam's apple was crushed, and there was swelling in his brain.
The struggle grew from a traffic stop of a truck in which Valenzuela was a passenger. Valenzuela, who was wanted on a warrant for a probation violation, bolted from officers once he exited the truck.
When catching up with Valenzuela in a dirt lot next to a church, officers took him to the ground, struggled to handcuff him, struck him with their hands and shot at him with a Taser.
Then Smelser used the chokehold. Once Valenzuela stopped moving and was handcuffed, Tuton put one of his knees on his back as Valenzuela lay on his stomach. Smelser then took Tuton's place, putting a knee on the back of Valenzuela, who was unconscious.
At one point during the encounter, Smelser profanely told Valenzuela that he was going to "choke you out, bro."
Tuton also said Valenzuela had reached for pockets on his pants, where police found an all-in-one pliers set that contained a knife that folded out. The defense characterized it as a knife, while prosecutors called it a tool.
When Tuton was getting emotional during his trial testimony, prosecutor Zachary Jones commented that he didn't remember the officer getting so upset at an earlier hearing in the case.
Under questioning from Smelser's attorney, Amy Orlando, Tuton denied he was faking his emotional reaction.
Orlando had previously told jurors that officers repeatedly urged Valenzuela to stop resisting and that the force used on Valenzuela before the chokehold didn't faze him.
Orlando said physical restraint alone didn't kill Valenzuela, explaining that the autopsy found he also experienced the toxic effects of methamphetamine use.
Valenzuela's death led to Smelser's termination and a settlement in which the city agreed to pay Valenzuela's family $6.5 million and ban the use of chokeholds by its police officers.
Construction prep begins on La Bajada hill – Santa Fe New Mexican, KUNM News
Commuters between Albuquerque and Santa Fe can expect some delays on I-25 over the coming weeks as construction preparation has begun on La Bajada hill.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that while the project is expected to last into the fall of 2024, significant impacts to drivers should be much shorter-lived – only a few weeks.
A spokesperson for the New Mexico Department of Transportation told the newspaper that they’re building alternative routes to keep traffic flowing in two lanes each direction on the familiar stretch of highway linking the state’s largest city with its capital.
During rush hour, drivers can expect all lanes to be open. Though — until about the end of the month — traffic will likely be moving at about half the usual speed.
The interstate construction on La Bajada is meant to improve the roadway’s stability and drainage and will cost over $42 million, according to DOT.
- Associated Press
The Albuquerque police chief is calling on the state's attorney general to review a teenage boy's death in a house fire, which broke out after authorities tried to arrest a man inside.
Albuquerque police announced Tuesday that Chief Harold Medina has asked Attorney General Hector Balderas to lead a probe of the incident.
In a letter to Balderas, Medina says he is making the request out of "an abundance of caution." He also asks for an independent analysis of the chemical device officers used at the time and deployment procedures.
Medina promised earlier this week that if police are found to have indirectly contributed to 15-year-old Brett Rosenau's death, "we will take steps to ensure this never happens again."
The teen's death has elicited an outcry from the community and "Black Lives Matter" protesters. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico has also called on Balderas to conduct an outside investigation.
A police SWAT team last Thursday was involved in a house standoff with 27-year-old Qiaunt Kelley. Police say Kelley was wanted for a probation violation and for questioning in a recent homicide and an officer-involved shooting.
Officers allegedly threw tear gas canisters and shot chemical munitions before the blaze started.
Police said Rosenau had followed Kelley into the house. After the fire was extinguished, Rosenau was found dead.
Arson investigators say the boy died from smoke inhalation.
Kelley was treated at a hospital for burn injuries before being booked into jail. Police say he has refused to talk. It was not clear Tuesday if he had an attorney who could speak for him.
Albuquerque Fire Department officials said Sunday it may take two weeks to determine the fire's cause.
APD was ‘mistaken’ about federal warrant for the man targeted in SWAT raid – By Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
In the days following a deadly SWAT raid on a house that burned down in Albuquerque’s International District, police and local media repeatedly said that the man they were trying to arrest that night was wanted on a federal warrant.
The morning after the incident, Police Chief Harold Medina said at a news conference that the Department’s Investigative Support Unit (ISU) was searching for Qiaunt Kelley who “had some felony warrants, one from the state level, one from the federal level.”
Later in the same news conference, a lieutenant said they had found “two active warrants for Mr. Kelley” in an internal police database, one for a “federal probation violation for carjacking” and another for “unlawful taking of a motor vehicle out of the city of Santa Fe.”
Over the course of the next three days, local media including the Albuquerque Journal, KRQE and KOB uncritically repeated this false information.
However, a search of federal court records over the past month by Source New Mexico shows no federal warrant issued against Kelley or any property associated with him.
There were no federal warrants for Kelley in N.M. when SWAT was called out to the house Kelley was visiting on July 6, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Tuesday.
“In the district of New Mexico, there were no federal warrants at that time,” said Scott Howell, spokesperson for the N.M. District Office.
On Monday, the Journal, again citing police, reported that Kelley was wanted “on felony warrants.” That is also not true.
In reality, New Mexico Corrections Department Probation and Parole Division Director Melanie Martinez on March 21 signed a warrant for Kelley’s arrest, saying he violated five conditions of his parole.
A parole violation is not a felony and is not handled by a criminal court. Instead, it is adjudicated by the state Probation and Parole board.
Kelley was on parole after having completed his sentence in a 2018 carjacking in Las Cruces, according to court records.
Albuquerque Police Department Det. Eric Endziel used the arrest warrant as part of his reasoning to ask Second Judicial District Court Judge Britt M. Baca-Miller for a search warrant, giving police legal authority to search the house where they found Kelley and 15-year-old Brett Rosenau and two cars parked in the driveway.
Source New Mexico reviewed copies of the arrest warrant and the search warrant.
Reached for comment on Tuesday, Albuquerque Police Department spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos said the references to a federal warrant were mistaken, and that detectives told him on Tuesday there is no federal warrant.
“There is an ongoing investigation by APD and a federal law enforcement agency that could result in federal charges,” Gallegos said. “I was under the impression on the morning of the incident that the investigation had resulted in a warrant.”
Gallegos did not respond to a question asking which federal police agency he was talking about.
Kelley was transferred from the Bernalillo County jail to a state prison on Monday and remains in custody as of Tuesday. He has not been charged with anything other than parole violations, according to a search of state court records on Tuesday.
Albuquerque police have also noted in news conferences and releases that Kelley is a “person of interest” in other crimes, but so far he has not been named as a suspect in any of them. His involvement in them, and whether he was involved at all, remains to be shown.
“In addition to being an absconder for the parole violation, our detectives wanted to get him into custody and attempt to question him for that investigation, as well as separate investigations into a homicide and an officer-involved shooting,” Gallegos said Tuesday. “The fact that he was considered a person of interest in three different violent crimes also led to making his apprehension a priority.”
After hours of SWAT tactics on Wednesday night, where officers launched cannisters of tear gas, pepper spray and flash-bang devices into the home where Kelley was, the residence caught fire.
Firefighters delayed entering the building because, Medina said, there were concerns Kelley was armed, and he was still inside. When he surrendered after the house was burning, Albuquerque Fire Rescue entered and found Rosenau dead, according to news releases.
Early reports from the Office of the Medical Investigator indicate the teen died of smoke inhalation, and police say investigators are looking into whether the munitions police used ignited the blaze.
When things go wrong with police actions, folks are often demonized, said Barron Jones. He is a senior policy strategist at the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico and a former journalist.
“This is a situation where we want that person to look as bad as we possibly can, to either justify or mitigate the actions taken by APD that night,” Jones said. “I’m not saying that is the case, but that is a thing that happens.”
The fact that Kelley was wanted on a parole violation is significant, because right now, the way the warrant is written, we don’t see that there was any immediate danger, Jones said. And the police response resulted in a tragedy — all over parole violations.
“It’s significant because we believe this is not an immediate call to where this person is in the community, wreaking havoc, where you have to take the steps that were taken that night that led to the tragic loss of life of a 15-year-old boy and the destruction of a person’s home,” Jones said. “If a little patience were exercised, I think there would have been a different outcome.”
It’s also an unfortunate example of how the media sometimes takes law enforcement’s statements as gospel, Jones said.
“Overpolicing of communities of color is a major problem,” Jones said. “And I just wonder if the approach would have been a little bit different if it was in another part of town.”
These kinds of SWAT callouts, he added, do not make us safer.
“The community is traumatized. A family lost their home. A family is displaced. A young child who barely started living lost their life, which is a horrible tragedy,” Jones said, “and there is a further erosion of trust between the community and APD.”
New Mexico county blasts US over historic prescribed fire By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
Commissioners in a northern New Mexico county urged U.S. forest managers on Tuesday to do a more comprehensive environmental review of plans to restore large swaths of forest that border the capital city, passing a resolution fueled by frustrations that have been mounting in the wake of a devastating wildfire sparked by the government's planned burns.
The Santa Fe County Commission unanimously approved the resolution, but not before some of the elected officials and members of the public blasted the U.S. Forest Service for not taking into consideration the exceptionally dry conditions that have plagued many parts of the West for the last two decades.
Numerous missteps by the agency resulted in prescribed fires erupting this spring into the largest wildfire in New Mexico's recorded history. The blaze has yet to be fully contained after more than three months, and firefighters most recently have been focused on reseeding some of the blackened areas and trying to mitigate post-fire flooding.
Santa Fe resident Valerie Gremillion told the county commissioners that she has been reviewing the report that outlines mistakes made by the agency, including its failure to use updated fuel models, to take into account the extreme drought conditions or to follow through with other protocols.
"I would not let them run a carnival in my backyard, much less set a fire to the back of the Santa Fe National Forest," she said.
U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore in a statement released along with the report acknowledged the heartbreak among New Mexico families and communities. Several hundred homes were burned, thousands of people were forced to evacuate and farmers, ranchers and municipal officials are worried about the environmental and social consequences that will be felt over the coming decades.
"Fires are outpacing our models and, as the final report notes, we need to better understand how megadrought and climate change are affecting our actions on the ground," Moore wrote, adding that the agency must learn from the fire.
The resolution aims to push the agency further in that direction, specifically calling for forest officials to respond to "a full and fair discussion" of significant environmental impacts, examine alternatives that include preserving forests in their natural condition and document unavoidable adverse effects prior to starting any project aimed at clearing out overgrown and dead vegetation.
"I think it's very timely that we bring this forward and encourage the Forest Service to rethink its practices in a big way," said Commissioner Hank Hughes.
Moore halted his agency's prescribed burn operations pending a formal review, but Commissioner Anna Hansen, who introduced the resolution, said prescribed burns should be ceased until federal officials address the concerns of both community members and independent scientists.
Doctors urge access to psychedelic therapies in New Mexico - By Morgan Lee Associated Press
Physicians and researchers are urging New Mexico legislators to allow the use of psychedelic mushrooms in mental health therapy aimed at overcoming depression, anxiety, psychological trauma and alcoholism.
A legislative panel on Tuesday listened to advocates who hope to broaden the scope of medical treatment and research assisted by psilocybin, the psychedelic active ingredient in certain mushrooms.
Oregon is so far the only state to legalize the therapeutic use of psilocybin.
Recent studies indicate psilocybin could be useful in the treatment of major depression, including mental suffering among terminally ill patients, and for substance abuse including alcoholism, with low risks of addiction or overdose under medical supervision.
Physician Lawrence Leeman, a medicine professor at the University of New Mexico, urged legislators to move forward without waiting for federal decriminalization or regulatory approval to expand responsible therapies using doses of psilocybin.
Leeman and other advocates outlined emerging psilocybin protocols, involving six-hour supervised sessions and extensive discussions about the experience in subsequent counseling. He warned legislators that public interest is spawning illicit, underground experimentation without safeguards.
"I do think there is a lot of promise from these medications," said Leeman, who also directs a program providing prenatal and maternity care to women with substance abuse problems. "If this does go ahead, let's do this really safely, let's make sure we have people who are well trained (to administer the psychedelics) ... Let's make sure that people have counselors to see afterward."
It was unclear whether any New Mexico lawmakers will seek legislation for the medical use of psychedelics, which are still federally illegal. The Democratic-led Legislature convenes its next regular session in January 2023.
The study of psychedelics for therapy has made inroads in states led by Democrats and Republicans alike, including Hawaii, Connecticut, Texas, Utah and Oklahoma. And psilocybin has been decriminalized in the cities of Washington and Denver as well as Ann Arbor, Michigan; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Oakland and Santa Cruz in California.
In several states, military veterans are helping to persuade lawmakers to study psychedelic mushrooms for therapeutic use in addressing post-traumatic stress.
Currently in New Mexico, lawful access to psilocybin-assisted therapy is available mostly through clinical trials.
Yale University psychiatrist Gerald Valentine said that leaves out people with low incomes and severe afflictions. He said the University of New Mexico is expanding its expertise in psychedelics-based therapies, and that a supportive environment can be found in communities such as Santa Fe, known as a progressive hub for healing and the arts.
"These questions are starting to be answered about who might benefit from this therapy," Valentine said. "I just feel very fortunate to be in a position to really bring this forth into real world situations."
Classic psychedelics include LSD, mescaline, psilocybin and ayahuasca. Plant-based psychedelics have long been used in indigenous cultures around the world.
At least one New Mexico church group uses hallucinogenic ayahuasca tea from the Amazon as a sacrament. A 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision ensured access to ayahuasca imports for a temple on the outskirts of Santa Fe affiliated with the Brazil-based Centro Espìrita Beneficiente União do Vegetal.
New Mexico’s Oil and Gas Revenues Are Breaking Records and Complicating Budgets – Jerry Redfern, Capital and Main
Oil and gas revenues added more than $1.7 billion to New Mexico coffers in the first four months of the year — more than in any other four-month period in state history.
A lot more.
Records compiled by the New Mexico Tax and Revenue Department show that year-on-year, revenues from January through April more than doubled from $782 million in 2021 — itself a record year. (Records lag by two months to allow producers time to report their production numbers.) This money gusher comes from increasing production in New Mexico’s portion of the Permian Basin — currently the most productive oilfield on the planet — and skyrocketing oil and gas prices brought on by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
State Sen. George Muñoz (D-Gallup), vice chair of the powerful Legislative Finance Committee, says that committee economists peg the state’s likely take from oil and gas at $5.2 billion for the fiscal year — roughly a billion more than last year’s oil and gas revenue. That tally may rise if world oil prices remain high.
Mountains of money are generally a good thing for anyone, but the unplanned windfall does come with complications. The first is the kind of money brought in by oil and gas production. Roughly speaking, state government views revenues in two ways: as one-time or recurring income. Recurring money remains fairly steady year after year. For example, people will generally remain employed and use their earnings to buy things, making income and sales taxes a reliable source of steady, recurring revenue for the state.
However, record-breaking fossil fuel revenue is treated as one-time money: It can’t be counted on to repeat, so it can’t be used to create new programs, add permanent jobs or increase pay for state employees across the board. One-time money can build police stations and water treatment plants and schools, but it can’t pay the people to fill them. And that makes budgeting difficult. “When you have that one-time money surpassing recurring money, it becomes a little topsy-turvy,” Muñoz says. And he says that his committee’s economists are predicting that that is exactly what is about to happen.
The second problem stems from the first: This is oil money, and oil money has a roller-coaster history and a murky, finite future.
“I have ridden the roller coaster,” Muñoz says. “I came in in [2009] where we had to cut a billion dollars out of the budget” because fossil fuel production had tanked during the Great Recession. It’s not something he wants to do again.
Kelly O’Donnell, a New Mexico economist who keeps tabs on the oil and gas industry, agrees that this isn’t the state’s first boom year — but that history rarely serves as a guide. “New Mexico has had a tendency towards selective amnesia about these things,” she says. “We are always surprised when the bad times show up.” Yet they always do.
“To progress economically, over time, we are going to have to get out of this boom-bust resource cycle,” she says. “When it goes down next time, it may not come back up, and we have to be prepared for that reality.”
* * *
New Mexico sits atop half of the Delaware Basin, the most lucrative portion of the greater Permian Basin, and the state’s fossil fuel production continues to grow. New Mexico was the first state to return to — and then exceed — pre-pandemic oil production levels earlier this year after they cratered in early 2020 as the planet closed down in the face of COVID-19. Nationally, only Texas and the offshore fields in the Gulf of Mexico produce more oil.
The Tax and Revenue Department’s figures do not account for all oil and gas revenues collected by the state — they don’t include revenue from federal mineral leases, for example — but they do reflect how much is coming in. The total is calculated during the state’s fiscal year, which runs from July 1 to June 30 of the following year.
And while oil and gas revenues tallied by Tax and Revenue for the full 2022 fiscal year won’t be known for another two months due to the reporting lag, they are already nearly double all of last year’s take: $3.6 billion this year compared to nearly $2 billion last fiscal year.
A large chunk of the oil and gas tax bonanza will go to long-term economic and social investment, primarily the Early Childhood Trust Fund. Set up in 2020, the fund invests in the health and education of the state’s toddlers, with an eye on their — and the state’s — future development. “If we invest in our people, if we have the workforce ready to attract employers, if we have the schools ready to attract employers … over the long term that will improve our situation,” says State Rep. Matthew McQueen (D-Galisteo), chair of the House Energy, Environment and Natural Resources committee.
McQueen also argues that the windfall should be used to cap abandoned oil and gas wells. “We should do that while the money is flowing,” he says. “When it’s not flowing, the state can get left holding the bag.” And he says that “maybe even a higher priority” is hiring more oil and gas field inspectors at the Oil Conservation Division and Environment Department to find leaks and prosecute offenders. “The reason you cap abandoned wells is because of the methane leaks, right? They’re tied together,” he says. But hiring inspectors for more than a year requires long-term funding, not a one-time windfall.
“Funding additional oversight programs and positions is unfortunately not ultimately up to the executive,” says Nora Meyers Sackett, press secretary to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. “Last year the administration proposed funding for additional regulatory staff at both [the Oil Conservation Division and Environment Department] that were not funded by the Legislature, which does affect the state’s ability to monitor and enforce pollution regulations.”
Sen. Muñoz says he’s eyeing funding increases for capital projects that were approved last year. “All those projects are underfunded,” he says, because of recent sharp inflation — which is also driven by increasing energy prices. One-time money could cover those increases.
But his ongoing concern is paying state employees a wage that can compete with private-sector jobs. “We’re going to have to raise those payments in order to recruit engineers, lawyers, those degreed staff to get them back to state work,” he says. But once again, that would require recurring money, not one-time oil and gas payouts.
“It’s like you only get one apple off the tree,” Muñoz says. And everyone will try to get a bite during New Mexico’s notoriously short legislative session. Last year’s session was 30 days. And though the upcoming session will be twice as long, it still may not be enough time to thoughtfully deal with the complications of this sudden cash infusion. “The bigger the budget gets,” he says, “the harder it becomes to manage.”
* * *
“I think that the resource curse really explains a lot of New Mexico’s difficulties,” O’Donnell says. Before going into the private sector and becoming a research professor of economics at the University of New Mexico, she held a number of leadership roles under former Gov. Bill Richardson, including director of state tax policy, deputy cabinet secretary for economic development and superintendent of the New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Department.
The resource curse theory explains why developing countries often underperform when their revenues are based on extractive resources — usually fossil fuels. The developing economy relies heavily on the one money stream, both because it is lucrative and because of fears of upsetting the apple cart. Thus, it locks itself into an economic cycle tied to natural resources.
“We have to start planning in a more concrete fashion for a future where oil and gas has a less prominent role in the economy,” she says. “That seems inevitable.” Inevitable because world economies are turning ever more quickly away from fossil fuels to renewables as the effects of climate change become ever more obvious and dire.
“It’s becoming increasingly clear to New Mexicans, in the wake of the most recent fires, that climate change is here, and that it has the potential to destroy the state and, really, to destroy the economy,” O’Donnell says. “Putting all of our eggs in the oil and gas basket, to mix a metaphor terribly, becomes increasingly problematic.”
“A productive industry can and should also be a responsible one,” says Meyers Sackett at the governor’s office. “We remain committed to holding those who do not comply with our methane and ozone rules accountable. There is no situation where we will accept anything less than compliance, but there is every opportunity for the industry to exceed our requirements.”
“I don’t care how high oil and gas gets this year,” says Lucas Herndon, energy and policy director of ProgressNow New Mexico. “I don’t care if it stays high this year. I don’t even care if it stays high next year. What I can guarantee is that sometime in the next two to five years, oil and gas will crash again.”
He says that oil and gas is not a sustainable method for funding the state government. “It never has been and it never will be … It always goes back down.”
Matt King, co-founder of arts collective Meow Wolf, dies - Associated Press
Matt King, a co-founder of the Santa Fe-based arts collective Meow Wolf that has grown into an offbeat, interactive entertainment juggernaut, has died. He was 37.
Meow Wolf spokeswoman Didi Bethurum on Tuesday confirmed King's death. He died Saturday, but the cause and location of his death was withheld.
In a statement, Meow Wolf called King a "pioneer of immersive art" who "had a joy for creation that was electric and expansive." CEO Jose Tolosa said "thousands have been deeply touched by the artistic genius of his work."
Meow Wolf coined a new brand of family entertainment with its "House of Eternal Return" exhibition in Santa Fe, which provides eye-popping psychedelic design work in a labyrinthine exhibit of spiral stairs and unmarked passageways.
The project has doubled as an educational workshop for children and nightlife music stage, as Meow Wolf opened major new venues last year in Denver and Las Vegas.
King was credited with working on 34 installations since the founding of Meow Wolf in 2008, according to an online visual tribute to his work.
John Feins of Santa Fe, who worked at Meow Wolf from 2017-2019, said King was a versatile, hands-on artist who even did the welding work on early installations.
"He was a major force in the 'House of Eternal Return'' and of course the ideation of other, newer installations," Feins said. "They realized how much more that kind of experiential, maximalist creativity could go."
US awards $3B contract to manage nuclear waste repository - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
Management of the U.S. government's only underground nuclear waste repository will be taken over later this year by a company created by one of the largest engineering, construction and project management firms in the world.
The U.S. Energy Department announced Monday that the new contract with the Bechtel company to oversee the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico is worth up to $3 billion if all options are exercised over the next decade.
The current contract with Nuclear Waste Partnership will expire at the end of September, when Bechtel's Tularosa Basin Range Services LLC is scheduled to take over.
Nuclear watchdog groups have been pushing for years for a change at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, citing problems that included a 2014 fire and radiation release. The incidents forced a nearly three-year closure and a costly overhaul of the policies and procedures that govern the nation's cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons research and bomb making.
The Energy Department's Office of Environmental Management received five proposals for the lucrative contract. The agency did not disclose the other bidders.
Dena Volovar, Bechtel National Inc.'s executive vice president, called it an honor for the company to be chosen.
"The mission to safely dispose of defense-related nuclear waste is vitally important for protecting people and the planet," she said in a statement.
Over more than 20 years, tons of Cold War-era waste have been stashed deep in the salt caverns that make up the repository, with officials saying the shifting salt will eventually entomb the radioactive waste. The waste includes special boxes and barrels packed with lab coats, rubber gloves, tools and debris contaminated with plutonium and other radioactive elements.
The repository's current footprint includes several sections, which the U.S. Energy Department estimates will be filled in a few years. Federal officials confirmed during a community meeting last week that more space is needed and the mining of additional sections would have to go through an environmental approval process that would include an opportunity for public comment.
Environmentalists and residents shared concerns during the meeting about New Mexico becoming a sacrifice zone for the nation's nuclear waste and about the safety of continuously transporting waste across the country.
Bechtel also will inherit a couple of multimillion-dollar infrastructure projects that are underway at the repository, including the construction of a new ventilation system necessitated by the radiation release. Adequate airflow will be needed to ramp up waste disposal operations and for the mining of more disposal space.
New Mexico officer testifies at ex-partner's murder trial - Associated Press
A New Mexico police officer got emotional on the witness stand Tuesday at his former professional partner's murder trial when recalling the danger that he believed he faced in trying to arrest a man who died in a 2020 struggle with officers.
Las Cruces Officer Andrew Tuton said he believed Antonio Valenzuela had a gun and was reaching for it during his struggle with Tuton and Officer Christopher Smelser, who is charged with murder in the death. In the end, though, no gun was found on Valenzuela.
Tuton, who paused to gather himself when describing the dangers in the encounter, said he became concerned about a gun when he felt one of Valenzuela's hands moving around. "I knew in that moment I was going to get shot," Tuton said.
Smelser eventually put Valenzuela into a chokehold that prosecutors alleged gradually ended his life. Smelser was later fired.
A medical examiner had concluded Valenzuela died from asphyxial injuries due to physical restraint — and that methamphetamine in his system was a contributing factor in his death.
The autopsy found Valenzuela had hemorrhaging in his eyes and eyelids, which is indicative of asphyxiation and may occur when the neck or chest is compressed. His neck had a deep muscle hemorrhage, his Adam's apple was crushed, and there was swelling in his brain.
The struggle grew from a traffic stop of a truck in which Valenzuela was a passenger. Valenzuela, who was wanted on a warrant for a probation violation, bolted from officers once he exited the truck.
When catching up with Valenzuela in a dirt lot next to a church, officers took him to the ground, struggled to handcuff him, struck him with their hands and shot at him with a Taser.
Then Smelser used the chokehold. Once Valenzuela stopped moving and was handcuffed, Tuton put one of his knees on his back as Valenzuela lay on his stomach. Smelser then took Tuton's place, putting a knee on the back of Valenzuela, who was unconscious.
At one point during the encounter, Smelser profanely told Valenzuela that he was going to "choke you out, bro."
Tuton also said Valenzuela had reached for pockets on his pants, where police found an all-in-one pliers set that contained a knife that folded out. The defense characterized it as a knife, while prosecutors called it a tool.
When Tuton was getting emotional during his trial testimony, prosecutor Zachary Jones commented that he didn't remember the officer getting so upset at an earlier hearing in the case.
Under questioning from Smelser's attorney, Amy Orlando, Tuton denied he was faking his emotional reaction.
Orlando had previously told jurors that officers repeatedly urged Valenzuela to stop resisting and that the force used on Valenzuela before the chokehold didn't faze him.
Orlando said physical restraint alone didn't kill Valenzuela, explaining that the autopsy found he also experienced the toxic effects of methamphetamine use.
Valenzuela's death led to Smelser's termination and a settlement in which the city agreed to pay Valenzuela's family $6.5 million and ban the use of chokeholds by its police officers.
Construction prep begins on La Bajada hill – Santa Fe New Mexican, KUNM News
Commuters between Albuquerque and Santa Fe can expect some delays on I-25 over the coming weeks as construction preparation has begun on La Bajada hill.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that while the project is expected to last into the fall of 2024, significant impacts to drivers should be much shorter-lived – only a few weeks.
A spokesperson for the New Mexico Department of Transportation told the newspaper that they’re building alternative routes to keep traffic flowing in two lanes each direction on the familiar stretch of highway linking the state’s largest city with its capital.
During rush hour, drivers can expect all lanes to be open. Though — until about the end of the month — traffic will likely be moving at about half the usual speed.
The interstate construction on La Bajada is meant to improve the roadway’s stability and drainage and will cost over $42 million, according to DOT.