New Mexico Supreme Court outlines guidance for handling gerrymandering lawsuit - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
The New Mexico Supreme Court issued guidance Wednesday to a lower court on how to handle a challenge to the state's new congressional maps.
The high court also set a deadline of Oct. 1 for a district court in Roswell to resolve the case.
The state's Republican Party sued last year, claiming that newly redrawn maps of New Mexico's three congressional districts amounted to gerrymandering. Democrat defendants argued that the maps were a policy matter that fell under the purview of the Democratic-controlled Legislature.
The state Supreme Court, which is made up of Democrats, stated in its order that given the political nature of redistricting, a reasonable degree of partisan gerrymandering is permissible under the New Mexico Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment.
"At this stage in the proceedings, it is unnecessary to determine the precise degree that is permissible so long as the degree is not egregious in intent and effect," the order states.
Among the things the judge will have to consider is evidence comparing the district's voter registration data under the new maps and the data associated with the prior maps.
Republicans have argued that the congressional districts drawn by Democrats diluted GOP voting strength in violation of the equal protection clause of the New Mexico State Constitution. They cited public comments by top Democratic legislators as evidence of partisan bias in decisions about the district's boundaries.
Consultants to the Legislature have said the redrawn maps gave Democrats an advantage in all three districts to varying degrees, based on past voting behavior.
For example, the traditionally conservative-leaning 2nd District shifted to incorporate heavily Hispanic neighborhoods of Albuquerque and cede parts of an oil-producing region in southeastern New Mexico.
The outcome holds implications for the southern New Mexico district, where Republican incumbent Yvette Herrell was ousted by Democrat Gabe Vasquez, a former Las Cruces city councilor, in a close race during the 2022 midterm elections.
Herrell pointed to the redrawn map at the time, saying it was enough to give Democrats an advantage. She announced in April that she would be running for the seat again in 2024.
US judge recommends settlement over management of the Rio Grande - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
A federal judge has recommended that the U.S. Supreme Court approve a settlement between three Western states over the management of one of North America's longest rivers.
U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Melloy, the special master overseeing the case, outlined his recommendation in a report filed Monday. He called the proposal fair, reasonable and consistent with a decadeslong water-sharing agreement that spells out how Colorado, New Mexico and Texas must share the Rio Grande.
It was unclear when the Supreme Court will take up the recommendation. The court just wrapped up a busy term last week, issuing rulings on affirmative action, gay rights and President Joe Biden's $400 billion plan to cancel or reduce federal student loan debt.
The states reached the proposed settlement last year. The federal government objected for several reasons, including that the proposal did not mandate specific water capture or use limitations within New Mexico.
"The end result today may be a delay in final resolution of all of the United States' concerns. But as a matter of paramount importance to the compact, the Texas apportionment and the treaty water will be delivered," Melloy wrote in his report.
New Mexico officials have said implementing the settlement will require reducing the use of Rio Grande water through a combination of efforts that range from paying farmers to leave their fields barren to making infrastructure improvements.
Former New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas, whose office was part of the negotiations, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he was grateful the judge is recommending approval.
Balderas, who finished his final term in 2022, said the proposed settlement was "a historic victory for New Mexico's farmers and ranchers and will protect New Mexico's most precious resource for future generations."
Some New Mexico lawmakers voiced concerns during a recent legislative meeting, saying the settlement will create a battle between users in southern and northern New Mexico and that most farmers won't sell their land for the prices being offered by the state through a fallowing program.
Farmers in southern New Mexico had to rely more heavily on groundwater wells over the last two decades as drought and climate change resulted in reduced flows and less water in reservoirs along the Rio Grande. That groundwater pumping is what prompted Texas to sue, claiming that the practice was cutting into the amount of water that was ultimately delivered as part of the interstate compact.
Melloy noted that the proposal recognizes the new use of a gauging station near El Paso, Texas, and several other measurements to ensure New Mexico delivers what's owed to Texas. New Mexico is agreeing to drop its challenges against Texas in exchange for clarifying how water will be accounted for as it flows downstream.
The proposal also places a duty on New Mexico to manage citizens' water use to meet delivery requirements at the new gauging station. Melloy pointed out that the proposal does not specify how New Mexico must accomplish its internal water management goals.
If New Mexico fails to send enough water to Texas, then the Elephant Butte Irrigation District — the largest in New Mexico — must temporarily transfer rights to an irrigation district in Texas. If Texas receives too much, there would be a similar transfer from the El Paso district to the Elephant Butte district.
Melloy said there's nothing in the proposal that protects New Mexico or users in the state against future claims from the federal Bureau of Reclamation or from other New Mexicans.
"Simply put, if usable water arrives in the reservoir, is released for use downstream, and reaches Texas and Mexico in the proper amounts," Melloy wrote, "fights over who in New Mexico is taking too much and paying too little (and whether New Mexico itself is doing enough to address and police the situation) can be resolved somewhere other than the Supreme Court."
Carson National Forest introduces fire restrictions - Alice Fordham, KUNM News
With warm, dry weather set to continue, the Carson National Forest is introducing Stage 1 fire restrictions from Monday, July 10.
The restrictions will mean that fires, charcoal grills and stoves will only be permitted at developed campgrounds, or picnic spots with permanent fire rings. Fires at dispersed campgrounds are prohibited. Propane stoves and smoking are only allowed in areas with three feet of cleared area around them.
Last month, lightning sparked the Comanche fire in the forest, which spread to nearly 2,000 acres. While forest management policy is to allow fire to burn as it naturally does in that ecosystem, the blaze ultimately took more than 80 personnel about three weeks to extinguish and caused some partial road closures.
The Albuquerque office of the National Weather Service last week released its 2023 Monsoon Outlook, finding that there will probably be above average temperatures and below average rainfall through September.
Governor appoints new Interstate Stream Commission director - By Nash Jones, KUNM News
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham Wednesday appointed a new director to the commission charged with protecting and conserving New Mexico’s waterways.
Hannah Riseley-White will take the helm at the Interstate Stream Commission following the retirement of Rolf Schmidt-Petersen earlier this year.
Riseley-White holds a master’s degree in water resources management and has been with New Mexico’s stream commission for nearly a decade, according to the Governor’s Office. She led its Pecos Bureau before becoming the deputy director in 2020.
The Interstate Stream Commission is responsible for settling water disputes with other states as well as analyzing stream system data. It also works to develop New Mexico’s supplies.
Las Cruces school board chooses a new superintendent after a national search - Associated Press
One of New Mexico' largest school districts has chosen an administrator from Nevada as its next leader.
The Las Cruces school board voted on Saturday to approve the selection of Ignacio Ruiz. His first day will be Aug. 1 and his annual salary will be set at $200,000 under the terms of the two-year contract.
Ruíz is an assistant superintendent for the Clark County School District in Nevada, the fifth largest school district in the nation. He previously led translation and language interpretation services for the Tucson Unified School District in Arizona.
Ruíz was among the finalists named following a national search that began in April after former Las Cruces Superintendent Ralph Ramos retired, after serving in the position for two years.
Ruíz attended Saturday's board meeting remotely, addressing the board in both English and Spanish.
"I'm glad for this opportunity, and I'm honored and humbled to be selected as the new superintendent," he said. "It was evident from the beginning that the board values what's best for kids, and I look forward to being part of the Las Cruces community."
Located just north of the U.S.-Mexico border, Las Cruces is home to about 91,000 people and the school district serves 25,000 students, most being Hispanic.
Human exposure to wildfires has more than doubled in two decades - Mojtaba Sadegh, The Conversation via Source New Mexico
Over the past two decades, a staggering 21.8 million Americans found themselves living within 3 miles of a large wildfire. Most of those residents would have had to evacuate, and many would have been exposed to smoke and emotional trauma from the fire.
Nearly 600,000 of them were directly exposed to the fire, with their homes inside the wildfire perimeter.
Those statistics reflect how the number of people directly exposed to wildfires more than doubled from 2000 to 2019, my team’s new research shows.
But while commentators often blame the rising risk on homebuilders pushing deeper into the wildland areas, we found that the population growth in these high-risk areas explained only a small part of the increase in the number of people who were exposed to wildfires.
Instead, three-quarters of this trend was driven by intense fires growing out of control and encroaching on existing communities.
WHERE WILDFIRE EXPOSURE WAS HIGHEST
I am a climate scientist who studies the wildfire-climate relationship and its socioenvironmental impacts. For the new study, colleagues and I analyzed the annual boundaries of more than 15,000 large wildfires across the Lower 48 states and annual population distribution data to estimate the number of people exposed to those fires.
Not every home within a wildfire boundary burns. If you picture wildfire photos taken from a plane, fires generally burn in patches rather than as a wall of flame, and pockets of homes survive.
We found that 80% of the human exposure to wildfires – involving people living within a wildfire boundary from 2000 to 2019 – was in Western states.
California stood out in our analysis. More than 70% of Americans directly exposed to wildfires were in California, but only 15% of the area burned was there.
WHAT CLIMATE CHANGE HAS TO DO WITH WILDFIRES
Hot, dry weather pulls moisture from plants and soil, leaving dry fuel that can easily burn. On a windy day – such as California often sees during its hottest, driest months – a spark, for example from a power line, campfire or lightning, can start a wildfire that quickly spreads.
Recent research published in June 2023 shows that almost all of the increase in California’s burned area in recent decades has been due to anthropogenic climate change – meaning climate change caused by humans.
Our new research looked beyond just the area burned and asked: Where were people exposed to wildfires, and why?
We found that while the population has grown in the wildland-urban interface, where houses intermingle with forests, shrublands or grasslands, that accounted for only about one-quarter of the increase in the number of humans directly exposed to wildfires across the Lower 48 states from 2000 to 2019.
Three-quarters of that 125% increase in exposure was due to fires’ increasingly encroaching on existing communities. The total burned area increased only 38%, but the locations of intense fires near towns and cities put lives at risk.
In California, which was in drought during much of that period, several wildfire catastrophes hit communities that had existed long before 2000. Almost all these catastrophes occurred during dry, hot, windy conditions that have become increasingly frequent because of climate change.
Wildfires in the high mountains in recent decades provide another way to look at the role that rising temperatures play in increasing fire activity.
High mountain forests have few cars, homes and power lines that could spark fires, and humans have historically done little to clear brush there or fight fires that could interfere with natural fire regimes. These regions were long considered too wet and cool to regularly burn. Yet my team’s past research showed fires have been burning there at unprecedented rates in recent years, mainly because of warming and drying trends in the Western U.S.
WHAT CAN COMMUNITIES DO TO LOWER THE RISK?
Wildfire risk isn’t slowing. Studies have shown that even in conservative scenarios, the amount of area that burns in Western wildfires is projected to grow in the next few decades.
How much these fires grow and how intense they become depends largely on warming trends. Reducing emissions will help slow warming, but the risk is already high. Communities will have to both adapt to more wildfires and take steps to mitigate their impacts.
Developing community-level wildfire response plans, reducing human ignitions of wildfires and improving zoning and building codes can help prevent fires from becoming destructive. Building wildfire shelters in remote communities and ensuring resources are available to the most vulnerable people are also necessary to lessen the adverse societal impacts of wildfires.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Suspect in fatal shooting at a New Mexico movie theater will remain jailed until his trial - Associated Press
A man accused in a deadly movie theater shooting in Albuquerque will remain in jail until trial, a judge ruled.
Enrique Padilla is being held on multiple charges including first-degree murder, shooting at an occupied building, conspiracy and tampering with evidence, according to authorities.
The 19-year-old was arrested after an argument over seating at an Albuquerque movie theater on June 25 escalated into a shooting that left a 52-year-old man dead and sent frightened filmgoers scrambling.
Witnesses told police that a man, later identified as Padilla, arrived at the theater with his girlfriend and found another couple in at least one of their reserved seats.
According to a criminal complaint, theater staff attempted to help resolve the dispute but it escalated with a hurled bucket of popcorn, shoving and ultimately, gunfire.
Authorities said Michael Tenorio was shot twice and died at the scene.
Padilla has no previous criminal record, but a judge on Monday granted prosecutors' request that he be held until trial.
Court records show Padilla has yet to be appointed an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
County seeks applications for state House seat- By Nash Jones, KUNM News
The seat in the New Mexico House of Representatives for District 25 in Albuquerque is now vacant and Bernalillo County is looking for someone to fill it.
Democratic Rep. Christine Trujillo’s resignation went into effect on July 1. Her replacement will serve out the remainder of her term, through the end of next year.
Her district encompasses Albuquerque’s Uptown as far east as Louisiana and stretches down I-40 as far west as Carlisle between Montgomery and Lomas.
Applicants must live in the district and be at least 21 years old. The county asks those who are interested to submit a letter and resume to County Manager Julie Morgas Baca by July 28. Those can be submitted by email, snail mail or in person.
The County Commission will then appoint the replacement. The date of that special administrative meeting has yet to be announced.
4 people, including a baby, died crossing the Rio Grande into Texas over the holiday weekend - Associated Press
An infant was among four people who died while crossing the Rio Grande in the Texas border city of Eagle Pass in a 48-hour period over the Fourth of July weekend, authorities said.
The Texas Department of Public Safety's Tactical Marine Unit on Saturday recovered four people from the river, including a woman and baby girl who were unresponsive, Texas Department of Public Safety Lt. Chris Olivarez said on Twitter on Monday.
Officials immediately began chest compressions on the woman and baby, and both were taken to the hospital, Olivarez said. Both were pronounced dead at the hospital, he said.
The two survivors were turned over to U.S. Border Patrol, Olivarez said.
On Sunday, the body of a man was recovered from the river, and on Monday, the body of a woman was found, Olivarez said.
The identities of the dead weren't known because none had identifying documents on them, he said.
The bodies were round in the same region where nine migrants died while attempting to cross the river in September.
During Texas' regular legislative session, which ended in May, lawmakers allocated over $5 billion for border security. Days later, Gov. Greg Abbott unveiled a new initiative — floating marine barriers that will be deployed at "hotspots along the Rio Grande River."
According to a June announcement from Abbott's office, the first 1,000 feet (305 meters) of the water-based border security device will be deployed near Eagle Pass.
New proposed rule would boost New Mexico’s share of EVs for sale - KUNM, Albuquerque Journal
A new law proposed by Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham Monday is aiming to bring more electric vehicles to New Mexicans by the year 2027.
As the Albuquerque Journal reports, the rule would require 43% of 2027 model vehicles brought into the state to meet “zero-emission” standards. Over time, that number would grow to 82% by 2032.
A zero-emission vehicle, or ZEV, is a vehicle that does not emit exhaust gas or other pollutants from the onboard source of power.
That means vehicles powered by electricity and hydrogen would fall under the new rule –– though, plug-in hybrid vehicles would not.
The governor’s administration is planning to propose the clean car standards to the Environmental Improvement Board, which would then have to hold a hearing and public comment period before acting on it.
The New Mexico Environment Department’s website says zero-emission vehicles fight climate change and improve local air quality. Unlike gasoline and diesel fuels, the department claims electric cars and hydrogen truck fueling stations will not pollute groundwater throughout New Mexico.