Attorney General sues property owners for blocking river access – KUNM News, Santa Fe New Mexican
The state of New Mexico is suing a San Miguel County property owner to protect what it says is the public’s constitutional right to access public streams and watercourses.
In a complaint filed in Fourth Judicial District Court Attorney General Raul Torrez argues Erik Briones and other unnamed participants have used threats of physical violence and obstructions like fences to prevent access to part of the Pecos River that abuts his land.
The state is seeking a preliminary injunction against Briones and others to halt their actions, which Torrez argues violate a 2022 ruling by the New Mexico Supreme Court protecting the public’s right to fish and recreate on and through rivers and water courses. That includes access to streams passing through privately owned land.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports despite the ruling, some landowners continue to put up water barriers that block access to their properties but also to adjacent public lands.
The complaint states Briones has threated violence against people entering part of the river that abuts his property. He has also blocked access to the Pecos with fences using barbed wire and concertina wire. He has put up signs claiming parts of the river are privately owned, which the attorney general argues is false.
It was not immediately clear if Briones had an attorney to respond to the suit.
Aid without ceasefire in Gaza ‘illogical and impossible,’ protesters say - By Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
A group of New Mexicans arrested last week while protesting the United States’ support for Israel’s bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip told New Mexico’s senators on Monday that without a full ceasefire, the humanitarian crisis there will only get worse.
Gaza’s health ministry has recorded more than 8,300 Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes since Oct. 7, including more than 3,000 children. More than 21,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been wounded so far.
Rep. Melanie Stansbury on Friday called for a “humanitarian pause” in the conflict. Sen. Martin Heinrich followed with a similar statement on Saturday.
No American political leader has defined how long such a pause would last, or which parts of Gaza it would cover. Source NM on Friday asked Stansbury and Heinrich to specify what they mean, but they have not yet responded.
Spokespeople for Rep. Gabe Vasquez and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez have so far not responded to previous written requests for comment on calls for a ceasefire by congressional staffers.
52,000 pregnant people and more than 30,000 babies under 6 months of age are drinking brackish or contaminated water in Gaza, according to an internal U.S. State Department assessment published by Israel’s newspaper of record on Sunday.
Heinrich and New Mexico’s other senator, Ben Ray Luján on Friday “encouraged” the Biden administration to work with Israel, Egypt and the United Nations to ship fuel into Gaza “where it can be used immediately to prevent the deaths of innocent civilians.”
“We condemn Hamas’ horrific terrorist attacks against Israel, for which Israel must hold Hamas accountable,” the senators said. “In the course of that endeavor, every effort must be made to protect innocent civilians.”
But local peace advocates implied that senators’ language is weak and would result in a Band-Aid approach.
After an hours-long sit-in on Oct. 23 at the senators’ field offices in Albuquerque, police arrested nine demonstrators.
That group, now calling themselves the “Ceasefire 9,” issued a statement Monday pointing out the senators’ call for aid makes no mention of the siege on Gaza, the thousands of lives already lost, and the intensifying violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
“Our New Mexico representatives have an obligation to support their constituents’ demands and stand on the right side of history by endorsing a full ceasefire immediately,” the Ceasefire 9 wrote.
“While we appreciate that the Senators are aware that Israeli bombardment is causing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, aid without a ceasefire is an illogical and impossible suggestion,” they wrote. “Fuel for hospitals to treat those injured because of the constant bombardment? A call to keep babies alive while nearly 3,000 Palestinian children have been killed? Fuel for generators to pump clean water so civilians can be hydrated when they are killed in airstrikes?”
The group added that they refuse the senators’ “attempt at sidestepping the real issue.”
The United Nations General Assembly on Friday passed a nonbinding resolution calling for a ceasefire by a vote of 120-14. In the U.S., 66% of American voters and 80% of Democrats are in favor of a ceasefire.
A representative for families of more than 220 hostages being held in Gaza urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday to stop the airstrikes that could harm their relatives.
That same day, more than 1,000 people joined a protest led by Palestinian young people in Albuquerque calling for a ceasefire. According to the event’s organizers, it was the largest demonstration in New Mexico since Oct. 7.
“The current bombing campaign of Gazan people, as well as the decades-long occupation is funded by U.S. tax dollars and supported almost unilaterally by U.S. politicians, including those in our own state,” said Southwest Coalition for Palestine Chair Samia Assed. “We urge people and political leaders to support a ceasefire and stop the killing of innocent Gazans.”
U.S. Rep. Vasquez introduces border bills ahead of 2024 election - Santa Fe New Mexican, KUNM News
New Mexico U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez this week introduced a package of bills dealing with issues of security and immigration on the U.S./Mexico border. The move comes ahead of a likely 2024 rematch with his predecessor, Republican Yvette Herrell.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports Vasquez called the measures “commonsense, bipartisan bills” at a press conference at the Santa Teresa Port of Entry.
However, with a Republican-controlled U.S. House, and the GOP looking to unseat the first-year lawmaker, it’s unclear how far his proposals will get.
They include $570 million for personnel, technology and infrastructure at ports of entry. Vasquez called technological upgrades a “game changer” for efforts to slow drug trafficking.
Other acts in the package would aim to curb trafficking of children, lower residency barriers for those in certain specialized and understaffed fields, and protect people in immigration detention from inhumane conditions.
Amid vacancies, New Mexico IT department asks lawmakers to fund more positions - Megan Gleason, Source New Mexico
The New Mexico Department of Information Technology is missing nearly a quarter of its workforce. With increasingly complicated and prominent technology needs, the department’s acting secretary wants lawmakers to set aside more money to pay for additional positions at the agency.
The agency is looking for more funds overall as the 2024 session nears, which runs Jan. 16 to Feb. 15.
Raja Sambandam is the acting cabinet secretary and state chief information security officer at the New Mexico IT department. He told the legislative Science, Technology and Telecommunications Committee on Monday that 21% of the jobs at his agency are vacant.
Of 166 positions at the department, 131 are filled, leaving 35 empty roles, he said.
He said that level of vacancy isn’t sustainable for the workers who are there and have to pick up a heavier workload.
“Recruitment has been tough. I’m not going to try to sugarcoat this,” he said. “It has been a difficult task for me in my role.”
He said he also expects a significant number of employees to retire soon. Sambandam said he didn’t have the exact number, but it’s in the double digits.
Sambandam anticipates 10 or 11 positions will be filled soon following a recent hiring event, after background checks and offer letters come through.
Rep. Debra Sariñana (D-Albuquerque), chair of the committee, suggested IT jobs can be hybrid so the agency can pull and hire from a wider pool of workers, like out-of-state employees. Sambandam said that could be an opportunity.
“Having that flexibility will improve our scope of hiring,” he said.
While the number of workers at the IT department is down, the need for those services is not. Sambandam said the department is asking lawmakers to fund another 16 full-time employees in fiscal year 2025.
That would increase the department’s future operating costs, he said.
New Mexico also needs to offer a competitive salary for workers in the tech field, he said, which isn’t really happening right now.
He said most of the IT department’s job salaries max out around $110,000 per year, which could be what some people expect for entry-level positions across the country, especially in the cybersecurity field. He referenced that workers are expecting higher pay to start new jobs.
When asked about his own salary, Sambandam said he was making more when he worked in the field in 2012 than as a state official now in 2023.
“I don’t know what the right solution is, but I do know for the short-term I need to hire the extra pairs of arms and legs that I need to manage my business,” he said.
Sambandam said three or four years ago, the agency lost about 37 positions because they remained vacant for a while. After Sen. Michael Padilla (D-Albuquerque) pointed out that a few of those positions have come back for the broadband office, Sambandam said there are still gaps at the agency and an additional 16 people would help solve that.
Some of the challenges lie in the cybersecurity office within the department, he said, where a small team handles increasingly complex issues. Cybersecurity attacks have disrupted state agencies, public school systems and the largest jail in New Mexico.
The cybersecurity office only recently started up, established by lawmakers in 2023 with the Cybersecurity Act. Sambandam said the agency would like to send six of the 16 new proposed roles to that office.
Overall, the IT department wants lawmakers to approve a 6% increase in its total operating budget for fiscal year 2025, according to the agency’s presentation, adding up to about $90.4 million.
Padilla said he hopes Sambandam is requesting the funds the department truly needs because he doesn’t know “where things are going to go in the next three to five years with the state budget.” He said there’s money to do these things now.
Leger Fernández wants the Forest Service to monitor Rx burns with infrared drones - Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández is now calling on the U.S. Forest Service to start using infrared-equipped drones to monitor prescribed burns in the state of New Mexico.
As the Albuquerque Journal reports, Leger Fernández sent a letter suggesting the change to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service Chief Randy Moore earlier this month.
Infrared is a type of radiant energy that is invisible to the eyes and can only be felt in the form of heat, like the sun and notably, fire.
In that very same letter, Leger Fernández says the Forest Service committed to using infrared drones at every prescribed burn in New Mexico in the past. But, at a recent Santa Fe National Forest public meeting, Forest Service staff backtracked and said that there are not enough infrared drones on tap to meet demand.
In 2022, several escaped prescribed burns quickly became the Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon Fires –– later combining to become the largest and most destructive wildfire in the state’s history. In addition, the Cerro Pelado Fire was caused by Forest Service pile burns that weren’t fully extinguished.
The Journal reports the Forest Service did not have answers to her questions readily available Monday afternoon but is working on a response.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland hears from boarding school survivors in New Mexico – Santa Fe New Mexican
Survivors of the federal Indian boarding school system shared their stories of loss and trauma Sunday at a hearing held by the U.S. Interior Department.
The Santa Fe New Mexicanreports the event at Isleta Casino gave attendees the chance to tell their stories of the harms done at boarding schools. It also gave Native educators an opportunity to imagine what education for Indigenous youth can look like.
This was the latest stop on Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s “Road to Healing,” a series of hearings on boarding schools. The institutions were used to assimilate Native Americans by forcibly separating children from their parents and community and suppressing Indigenous languages and beliefs. Many children suffered abuse at the schools and even died.
Native educators at the hearing argued that part of addressing the legacy of Indian boarding schools must include fully funding educational institutions for Indigenous Youth.
Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo, told attendees federal Indian boarding school policies impacted every Indigenous person she knows. She acknowledged that the assimilation policies were carried out by the very same department she now leads.
Santa Fe reduces school bus routes - Santa Fe New Mexican, KUNM News
Amid a staffing shortage, Santa Fe Public Schools has reduced the number of bus routes available to students and their families.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports 10 schools from elementary through high school are impacted by the cuts.
Tesuque Elementary is a small school north of the city, which has now lost its bus. Parents there tell the New Mexican it feels inequitable, since mostly rural and Indigenous students, as well as those from families with low incomes, are affected.
The parents are putting together carpools in the meantime, but say that will become more complicated in the long term.
Many factors are driving the staffing shortage across the public sector. Cesario Flores, the transportation director for the school district, says low pay is a significant one.
Drivers make about $19 per hour for what usually amounts to a 30-hour week.
Third NM cannabis business loses its license - Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
The state has revoked the license of an Albuquerque cannabis business and fined it over $298,000.
The Albuquerque Journal reports the division found the company, Golden Roots, violated almost a dozen state laws, including selling illegally-grown cannabis through the state system and transporting it incorrectly.
Division Director Todd Stevens said the violations “show a blatant disregard for the Cannabis Regulation Act and the laws all licensees in New Mexico must follow.”
The company operates the Cannabis Revolution Dispensary, with two locations in Albuquerque.
It’s the third time the Cannabis Control Division has taken a license away from a company since July, according to the Journal. Previously, Paradise Exotics Distro and C.M.F. Productions LLC lost their approval to participate in the industry.
Albuquerque's annual hot air balloon fiesta continues to grow after its modest start 51 years ago - Associated Press
The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta began modestly in 1972 with 13 hot air balloons.
More than a half-century later, the nine-day event held every October is one of the most photographed events in the world and continues to draw pilots and spectators from across the globe to New Mexico's high desert.
Fiesta organizers on Monday said this year's event had 546 registered hot air balloons, 107 registered special shape balloons, 629 registered pilots, more than 968,000 guest visits and over 771,000 views on Balloon Fiesta Live.
Sixteen countries were represented this year including Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, France, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Spain and Ukraine.
The 52nd Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is scheduled for Oct. 5-13, 2024.
Española man receives 35-year sentence for 5-year-old stepdaughter's beating death - Associated Press
An Española man has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for the 2019 beating death of his 5-year-old stepdaughter, federal officials announced Monday.
U.S. Attorney Alexander M.M. Uballez and Special Agent Raul Bujanda of the FBI Albuquerque Field Office announced the sentencing of Malcolm Torres in a joint statement.
Torres for years had never taken responsibility for the crime, Uballez said.
"Today we received a first apology, a final justice, and an opportunity to more forward together," Uballez said in the statement.
Torres was given the sentence in exchange for pleading guilty in April to second-degree murder in the slaying of Renezmae Calzada.
He was facing a potential felony charge of first-degree murder, which could have brought life in prison.
After serving his sentence, Torres will be under supervised release for five years.
Torres, 30, was tasked with watching the girl and his 18-month-old son in Sept. 7, 2019. According to prosecutors, he was heavily intoxicated at the time.
When the girl's grandparents arrived at the home the next day, Torres said Renezmae had gone missing.
Her mother reported her missing. Police say Torres would not help them and even gave false and misleading information.
The girl's body was found three days later on the Santa Clara Pueblo in the Rio Grande, a mile from the Española yard where she was last seen. Her body showed signs of blunt-force trauma to her head, torso and extremities.
The investigation into her disappearance and death brought together federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement.
Navajo sheep herding at risk from climate change. Some young people push to maintain the tradition - By Melina Walling and John Locher Associated Press
Whenever Amy Begaye's extended family butchered a sheep, she was given what she considered easy tasks — holding the legs and catching the blood with a bowl. She was never given the knife.
That changed recently.
In the pale light of dawn at this year's Miss Navajo Nation pageant, 25-year-old Begaye and another contestant opened a week of competition with a timed sheep-butchering contest. Begaye says preparing to compete, which also required she practice spoken Navajo and learn more about her culture, brought out another side. It taught her to be confident: that she, as a gentle young woman, could be courageous and independent enough to fulfill such an important responsibility.
"We butcher the sheep because it is a way of our life," said Begaye, who won this year's pageant and is preparing to speak about the importance of sheep as a cultural ambassador over the next year. "That's how my ancestors were able to provide food for their families."
That way of life is in peril. Climate change, permitting issues and diminishing interest among younger generations are leading to a singular reality: Navajo raising fewer sheep. Keeping hundreds of sheep, of historically prized Churro and other breeds, used to be the norm for many families living on a vast reservation that straddles parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. But today some families have given up raising them all together. The ones who do report having far fewer sheep, sometimes just a handful. Still, many Navajo shepherds say they will keep their sheep as long as they can, and some younger people are speaking out and finding ways to pass on the tradition.
WATER IMPACTS
Navajo, who use every part of sheep, became stewards of the animals that arrived with Spanish colonists around the late 16th century. They raised them for meat and wool and helped turn the region into an economic powerhouse that supplied local trading posts with the expertly woven rugs that became an icon of the Southwest. But over the centuries, violence and outside influences have inflicted damage on shepherds.
Beginning in 1864, the U.S. Army forced several thousand Navajo into exile during what came to be known as the Long Walk; they returned to destroyed homes and livestock. Some hid with their sheep and survived, only for the government to again kill thousands of sheep during forced herd reductions in the early 1930s.
Most afternoons these days, shaggy herding dogs encourage a flock of sheep to follow Jay Begay Sr. out to graze. The brassy tinkling of livestock bells rings out over a vast plain of dry grasses near the community of Rocky Ridge, Arizona, close to the border between Navajo and Hopi lands. Begay Sr. uses a walking stick to wind past pockets of yellow flowers, heavily trafficked anthills and the occasional prickly pear. Eventually the afternoon sun casts long shadows, and with a breathy whistle or two, Begay Sr. leads them back on the half-mile trek to their corral, the dogs loping not far behind.
For Begay Sr., his wife Helen and his son, Jay Begay Jr., this way of life is precious. But Begay Jr. has noticed his parents slowing down, and they have reduced their numbers, from 200 down to 50.
It's a story familiar to many others in Navajo Nation.
"A friend of mine says, 'You can't blame people for not wanting to work this hard,'" Begay Jr. said. It's harder now, he added, "because of the way the climate is changing."
A mega drought across the Western U.S. has sucked moisture from the land, leaving cracks and barrenness in its wake. The next count of sheep isn't planned until 2024, but Navajo Department of Agriculture officials say the number is lower than the 200,000 counted in 2017. Adding to the problem is the long-standing issue of water scarcity on Navajo Nation, where roughly a third of people lack reliable access to clean water. The Supreme Court recently decided that the federal government was not obligated to identify or secure water rights for the reservation.
The previous Miss Navajo, Valentina Clitso, says she has seen the impacts of water shortages firsthand, including on livestock. During her travels as an ambassador for Navajo culture, she says people have voiced concerns about springs running dry, about hauling water across long distances. Less forage for the sheep also means families have to spend more on expensive feed in the winter.
COMPOUNDING PROBLEMS
Lester Craig, who lives near Gallup, remembers when his family had over 600 sheep. His mother would buy their school clothes by selling the wool, and she would weave, too.
Now Craig has just a few sheep and goats, some horses and a few dogs, including one herding dog named Dibé, the Navajo word for "sheep."
Like Begay Jr., Craig worries about climate change. He pays more for feed in the winter and must haul water from a filling station in Gallup, about an hour roundtrip.
But Craig doesn't just haul water because of drought. The land where his family lives was contaminated in 1979 by a tailing spill from a uranium mine — he points over the ridge in the direction of the site of the biggest radioactive spill in U.S. history.
The windmill wells near his house functioned but had polluted water. For a long time they used them anyway, not knowing anything was wrong. It was clear, clean water, or so they thought. Now they know, and no longer use those wells.
To prevent erosion, a problem worsened by wild horses that have been allowed to run rampant on the reservation, the allowed number of sheep and other livestock is controlled by grazing permits. Craig has seen the erosion, and tears up thinking about how the contours of the land he once roamed as a child have changed.
Leo Watchman, director of the Navajo Nation Department of Agriculture, says grazing management is the worst it's ever been on the reservation. Among other things, he cites bureaucratic inconsistencies between the federal government and Navajo jurisdictions and holdups on environmental studies that determine how many animals can be kept on any given area of land.
He says thousands of people have been waiting for years for grazing permits. Meanwhile, others have permits they don't use or trespass on land they don't have the right to graze on. Sometimes all of this happens amongst family members who live near each other — a recipe for land disputes.
HOPEFUL FUTURE
Meranda Laughter, who works at the Tractor Supply Co. in Gallup, says over the last five years her family has gone from 300 to just 10 sheep. Despite the sharp drop, Laughter thinks they will eventually increase their flock's size, and that continued education and better management can alleviate some of the problems that have been stacked on top of the drought.
"We need to give time for the land to breathe," she said.
For Craig, a big concern is that that some of the younger generation, including his own family, aren't interested in carrying on the tradition of keeping sheep.
That's something Begaye echoes as she describes what it's like to be a young Navajo. Like some other young people, she wanted to leave the reservation and experience city life. And for a while, she did. She went to Utah Tech University in St. George. But then she started to realize that someday she would want to pass on her culture to her children.
The experience of returning home and helping care for her grandmother, who has dementia, helped shape her choice to reengage with her culture. That led her to compete to be Miss Navajo, and thus help her community band together to overcome challenges and strengthen traditions like sheep herding.
"It just hit me," she said. "This is who I am. This is where I come from. These are my roots, and I don't really want to change that."
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