Deadline for FEMA aid extended for Salt Fork and South fires, amid floods and local concerns - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has extended the application deadline for those who suffered losses in the South Fork and Salt fires to Oct. 19, an extension that comes as floods continue to threaten homes of those living in and around the burn scar.
The deadline was going to be Monday until FEMA announced the extension late Friday. A spokesperson said the extension came thanks to a request from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. Some local residents, including Ruidoso Mayor Lynn Crawford, said the deadline was passing so quickly that many survivors of the ongoing disaster could be left without vital help.
Crawford said that he is beginning to see movement and money flowing for the recovery, but he doesn’t think people in his town are feeling the help yet. He’s regularly asked for Ruidoso residents to call in on a local radio show to let him know if they received any federal aid and how the process went, and he said no one has responded so far.
“We want to see actual money in people’s hands,” he told Source New Mexico on Friday, before the deadline extension was announced. “I just need verification to ease my own troubled mind on these things.”
As of Aug. 17, FEMA has provided a little more than $5.5 million in assistance to 509 households, according to the latest totals on a FEMA website. That includes about $3.25 million in housing assistance, plus about $2.25 million to cover things like transportation, medical expenses and replacing lost household items.
After President Joe Biden declared a federal disaster on June 2, the Federal Emergency Management Agency began offering assistance to individuals and households affected by the disaster as long as they applied by Aug. 19.
The assistance is meant to provide immediate, temporary aid to those without adequate insurance, and total assistance is limited under federal law to about $43,000, even for those whose primary residences were completely destroyed.
People who apply by the deadline can be eligible for other possible aid, including low-interest disaster loans from the Small Business Administration, as well as housing assistance in the form of rent assistance or temporary trailers and mobile homes. The FEMA temporary housing has yet to arrive.
Crawford said a Monday deadline would make even less sense amid continued floods falling on the burn scar that cause additional damage and leave even more people in need.
“Some people don’t even realize they have damage,” Crawford said. “And the incident period is not going to be over by the 19th. It needs to at least extend past the expected monsoon time.”
The typical North American monsoon season lasts through September. A recent National Weather Service monsoon forecast for New Mexico predicted average to above-average precipitation in August and September in New Mexico.
After the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire in spring 2022, survivors could apply for individual assistance until Oct. 7 of that year, more than six months after the fire began. The deadline was extended at least once.
An Aug. 19 deadline means survivors of the South Fork and Salt fires would have meant people had about three months to apply for aid, including temporary housing
Crawford’s office shared correspondence with FEMA officials showing that, as of Aug. 1, 126 households were deemed eligible for FEMA trailers or mobile homes. Those eligible are generally people whose uninsured primary residence was destroyed or sustained severe damage.
Of those households, 51 told FEMA they need housing immediately. Sixty-four others told FEMA they’d found another housing resource. In an email to Crawford’s office, FEMA acknowledged that more people would likely need temporary housing from the federal agency.
Crawford said he’d received assurances from FEMA that the trailers and mobile homes for the survivors hit hardest by the disaster are “on their way.”
Authorities investigate death of airman based in New Mexico — Associated Press
Authorities have started investigating the death of a 28-year-old airman who was based at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico.
Staff Sgt. Tristen Wright died Friday in a non-combat related incident at an undisclosed location, the U.S. Department of Defense said. Additional details were not immediately released Sunday.
Wright, from Palm Bay, Florida, was assigned to the 27th Special Operations Wing at Cannon. He enlisted in August 2016 and had been assigned there as a materiel management specialist since 2019.
Prior to that, Wright was assigned in 2017 to the 18th Logistics Readiness Squadron at Kadena Air Force Base in Japan.
Bus route returns to bring students from Northwest ABQ to university area — City Desk ABQ Staff Report
The city is once again running a bus from Northwest Albuquerque to the University of New Mexico — and it has even added a stop at the Central New Mexico Community College.
Madeline Skrak, a spokesperson for the Transit Department, said the popular Route 790 which starts near Cottonwood Mall and stops in Old Town and Downtown will benefit students and staff who commute to campus.
The route had been put on pause since March 2023 due to understaffing, Skrak said. She said the transit department had been covering the area with “baseline service” but now that they have more staff it is able to accommodate more routes.
Route 790 is expected to run through the fall and spring semesters and then be added to a new route map.
The city is working to implement the ABQ RIDE Forward Plan’s Recovery Network to revamp the bus system by reexamining routes, and when buses run. It plans to begin implementing the new map next summer.
“We heard the community and are reintegrating the Route 790 as soon as staffing levels have permitted,” said Transit Director Leslie Keener. “While many routes serve the UNM area, this route improvement will serve CNM’s main campus for the academic year before we transition into even better connectivity in our Recovery Network.”
Chief Administrative Officer Samantha Sengel said in a new release that the city had been working with CNM to make it easier for students to use public transportation.
“Many students commute from the West Side, and the return of this route connects them to training and education that leads to employment opportunities,” Sengel said.
Herrell affirms support for RECA expansion, as NM Dems criticize GOP House leaders for inaction - By Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
Amid increasing Democratic criticism, Republican Congressional candidate Yvette Herrell said Wednesday that she is broadly supportive of extending and expanding the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, including the $50 billion bill that sits unheard on GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson’s desk.
Herrell is seeking to reclaim her House seat from incumbent Democrat Gabe Vasquez in one of the nation’s most hotly contested elections. She told Source New Mexico on Wednesday that she believes RECA should be expanded.
“I will support any and all of the efforts,” Herrell said. “I think there’s a responsibility from the government, the federal government, to the downwinders and the uranium workers.”
She said the program should be expanded to downwinders in New Mexico and multiple states who haven’t been compensated, and uranium mine workers exposed after 1971.
Among those deserving, she said, are downwinders in Guam, who were exposed to nuclear weapons testing between the 1940s and 1960s.
A group of House Democrats, including Vasquez, gathered Tuesday evening in Albuquerque for a campaign rally, calling on Johnson to give the RECA bill a vote before the general election. Johnson in late May announced he would not bring to a vote a bill extending RECA, citing the price tag.
Several of the roughly 30 attendees at the rally wore oxygen masks, which they said they needed due to lung damage sustained from exposure to uranium mines or mushroom clouds decades ago. Advocates say thousands in New Mexico were sickened, along with their descendants for generations.
“Think about the trauma that we’ve suffered,” said Paul Pino, who grew up in Carrizozo about 40 miles from the Trinity Site and said he lost a mother and brother to cancer. “And think about how people like Mike Johnson just are unmovable, just like they have no heart.”
Vasquez and other House Democrats also criticized Herrell. He alleged she didn’t support the RECA expansion for New Mexico downwinders, which Herrell denies. Democrats also said she was unwilling to hold Johnson’s feet to the fire about the issue.
“What action do you think Yvette Herrell will take when she’s in Congress, supported and endorsed by the very person who is blocking this legislation?” Vasquez told the crowd at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. “The refusal to support the reauthorization and expansion of this critical act is not a failure of government, but a deliberate disregard for the suffering of New Mexicans for generations.”
Johnson will campaign for Herrell in New Mexico next week, including a visit to Las Cruces on Wednesday, Herrell said.
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act expired about two months ago, despite bipartisan calls to extend and expand the program for different categories of workers and residents sickened by radiation exposure. The bill that Johnson refuses to bring to the floor, sponsored by U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), passed the Senate 69-30. Twenty Republicans voted for the measure.
Time is running out for the expired RECA program to be reauthorized and expanded this year. Congress meets in Washington D.C. for only a few weeks in September before the general election, and Democrats said it was unlikely Johnson would change his position.
Vasquez, citing a recent Albuquerque Journal article, told reporters after the meeting that he believed Herrell was opposed to expanding the program for downwinders in the Tularosa Basin area, which falls into Congressional District 2.
Tina Cordova, a longtime advocate on behalf of downwinders impacted by the Trinity blast in 1946, also told Source New Mexico on Wednesday that Herrell has been quoted or paraphrased in news articles having different positions on RECA, including advocating for less than a full expansion or saying she wanted a separate program for downwinders.
Hoping to set the record straight, Herrell said she endorses an expansion. She said she believes she and her opponent want the same groups of people to be covered by RECA, even with the high price tag. She pointed to her record as a cosponsor to the RECA Amendment Act when she served in Congress before Vasquez took her seat.
Out of office, she said she’s met with uranium workers in Grants and brought the issue up with Johnson in private. Herrell stopped short of saying she disagreed with Johnson about his decision, saying it was “his discretion” to bring bills for a vote, but she’ll urge him to take action on the bill when they meet next week in Las Cruces.
“I’ll be meeting with him privately. Obviously, this is the top of my list for something that I’d like to see them take action on,” she said.
Cordova called on Herrell to go a step further and arrange a meeting between downwinders and Johnson during his visit.
“Everybody across this country who’s a downwinder and a uranium worker has been begging to meet with him,” she said.
While Herrell supports a full expansion, she said she understands why some of her former colleagues in the House are worried about costs, citing the mounting national debt and other spending.
“That kind of money gives a little bit of pause to some of the members,” she said.
Herrell said she was more optimistic than her Democratic opponents about chances for a RECA expansion this year. She pointed to a separate bill that she hoped would spur the House leaders into action, should it pass the House Judiciary Committee and head to the Speaker’s desk.
Sponsored by U.S. Rep. Harriet Hagemen (R-Wyoming), the bill provides compensation to uranium miners in 11 states, including New Mexico, and extends but does not expand RECA. It also uses unspent COVID-19 pandemic funds to pay for it, she said, which might make it more appealing to fiscal conservatives.
“Certainly having both bills at the speaker’s table would be a great catalyst and opportunity for the speaker to broker a deal with a compromise bill,” she said.
Source New Mexico reporter Danielle Prokop contributed to this report.
The Wilderness Land Trust acquires 40 acres to add to the Gila - By Hannah Grover, New Mexico Political Report
For about a century, parts of Spring Canyon—about 40 acres of private land—remained tucked away surrounded by the Gila Wilderness. Now, as Hannah Grover reports for New Mexico Political Report, it’s on the path to becoming part of the wilderness area.
The Wilderness Land Trust purchased the property and plans to donate it to the U.S. Forest Service. Upon donation, Spring Canyon will become part of the Gila Wilderness.
The canyon represents what is known as an in-holding, which groups like the Wilderness Land Trust say lack protections, so could lead to development within the wilderness areas.
Hundreds of thousands of acres of private land are isolated as in-holdings and Spring Canyon was one of a handful located in the nation’s oldest wilderness.
Margosia Jadkowski with the Wilderness Land Trust said there are only a few in-holdings left in the Gila Wilderness and Spring Canyon is one of the larger ones. It also represents some important ecological habitats.
She said that while the property is surrounded by wilderness, its proximity to trails and water makes it more likely to have been developed had it not been acquired by her agency.
New sponsorship has ExxonMobil lending its name to Balloon Fiesta - Connor Currier, City Desk ABQ
ExxonMobil will get top billing at next year’s Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, thanks to a five-year sponsorship deal with the oil and gas giant.
City Desk ABQ’s Connor Currier reports the new deal — which includes changing the name of the event to the ExxonMobil Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta — will start next year and last through 2029.
This new partnership will be the first title sponsorship since Kodak had that distinction from 1992 to 2001, according to Balloon Fiesta spokesperson Tom Garrity.
Garrity says the deal was made because of ExxonMobil’s QUOTE- “commitment to ballooning and specifically to the Balloon Fiesta.”
Garrity said ExxonMobil started as “presenting sponsor” in 2022.
Authorities investigate death of airman based in New Mexico - Associated Press
Authorities have started investigating the death of a 28-year-old airman who was based at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico.
Staff Sgt. Tristen Wright died Friday in a non-combat related incident at an undisclosed location, the U.S. Department of Defense said. Additional details were not immediately released Sunday.
Wright, from Palm Bay, Florida, was assigned to the 27th Special Operations Wing at Cannon. He enlisted in August 2016 and had been assigned there as a materiel management specialist since 2019.
Prior to that, Wright was assigned in 2017 to the 18th Logistics Readiness Squadron at Kadena Air Force Base in Japan.
City places $744K bet on eyesore at troubled intersection — Damon Scott, City Desk ABQ
One of the city’s highest profile eyesores is poised to be energized with $744,332 in tax incentives designed to motivate private developers to invest in areas that are underdeveloped.
Park Central — a boarded-up 10-story office building on the northeast corner of Central Avenue and San Mateo Boulevard — is one of four housing projects that are collectively set to get $2.4 million to develop 300 units.
The Park Central office-to-residential conversion would create 101 apartments with green features and all-electric amenities, city officials said in a news release. The Albuquerque Development Commission (ADC) approved the Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency tax abatement incentive for Silverstone Equity Partners and Equiterra Regenerative Design.
Park Central is in the International District — a crime-ridden area with many people living on the streets who often use illicit drugs openly. The deteriorating environment is one of the reasons the former 206,000-square-foot Walmart Supercenter, located on the southwest corner of the intersection, closed its doors 16-months ago. It left many International District residents without a convenient location to buy groceries and fill prescriptions.
All four projects — which officials said would feature a mix of affordable and market-rate units — have been approved by the ADC for seven-year property tax abatements. Before the money starts to flow, the City Council must vote to approve the projects, which it will likely take up at its Aug. 19 meeting.
City officials say the new housing is sorely needed.
“We’re short up to 30,000 housing units in our city — there’s no question about it — we need to build more houses so everyone can find a place to live that they can actually afford,” Mayor Tim Keller said at a news conference at Park Central earlier this week.
The other three projects are:
HIGHLANDS CENTRAL MARKET AND RESIDNECE INN
Developer: Titan Development
Incentive amount: $998,128
This development features a 14,900-square-foot food hall and a 126-unit Residence Inn. The location is just east of I-25 along Central Avenue adjacent to Presbyterian Hospital.
SOMOS
Developer: Sol Housing
Incentive amount: $514,376
This development, located at Central Avenue and Alcazar Street, would transform city-owned land into a 70-unit affordable housing complex with 1,000-square-feet of commercial space. Officials said 84% of the housing units will be income-restricted, meaning monthly rent is based on a percentage of income.
GARFIELD TOWNHOMES
Developer: Sunlight Properties
Incentive amount: $151,209
This 16-unit townhome project would consist of two separate buildings containing two-story, one-bedroom loft-style units. Officials said the development would be LEED platinum-certified and 100% electric.
US Eagle agrees to purchase Southwest Capital Bank — Daniel Montaño
U.S. Eagle Federal Credit Union will purchase Southwest Capital Bank as the companies have entered into an agreement announced Friday.
Marsha Majors, U.S. Eagle's President and CEO, said the transaction will expand U.S. Eagle’s business and commercial services, especially in the cannabis industry.
She said that will allow them to, quote, “strengthen (their) commitment to serving those who are traditionally underserved.”
SW Capital Customers will become members of U.S. Eagle, which currently has 95,000 customers, more than 300 employees and 10 branches. SW capital currently has about 90 employees and six branches.
The transaction is expected to be finished by the second quarter of 2025 if it gets approved by regulators and shareholders and gets passed other closing conditions.
Until the transaction is finalized, each bank will continue to conduct business as usual.
Border arrests drop 33% to a 46-month low in July after asylum restrictions take hold - Associated Press
Arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico plummeted 33% in July to the lowest level since September 2020, a result of asylum being temporarily suspended, authorities said Friday.
The Border Patrol made 56,408 arrests last month, down from 83,536 arrests in June, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, its parent agency.
Asylum was halted at the border June 5 because arrests for illegal crossings topped a threshold of 2,500 a day, though a lack of deportation flights prevents authorities from turning away everyone. U.S. authorities say arrests dropped 55% after the measure, which followed a steep decline earlier this year that was widely attributed to Mexican authorities increasing enforcement within their borders.
"In July, our border security measures enhanced our ability to deliver consequences for illegal entry," said Troy Miller, acting CBP commissioner.
The numbers, which were roughly in line with preliminary estimates, may give Democrats some breathing room on an issue that has dogged them throughout Joe Biden's presidency.
"The Biden-Harris Administration has taken effective action, and the Republicans continue to do nothing," said White House spokesman Angelo Fernández Hernández.
More than 38,000 people were admitted at land crossings through an online appointment system called CBP One, bringing the total to more than 765,000 since it was introduced in January 2023.
More than 520,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela were admitted through July under a separate policy allowing people from those four countries to apply online with a financial sponsor and arrive at an airport. Permits were recently halted amid concerns about fraud by sponsors.
"(The Department of Homeland Security) is working to restart applications processing as quickly as possible, with appropriate safeguards," CBP said in a statement.
CBP said Friday that it will expand areas where non-Mexican migrants can apply online for appointments to seek U.S. asylum on Aug. 23 to a large swath of southern Mexico.
Migrants will be able to schedule appointments on the CBP One app from the states of Chiapas and Tabasco, extending the zone from northern and central Mexico. Mexicans can apply anywhere in the country.
The move requested by Mexico could ease the strain on the Mexican government by allowing migrants to wait for their appointments in the south farther from the U.S. border and lessen dangers for people trying to reach the U.S. border to claim asylum.
U.S. Rep. Mark Green, Republican chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, criticized the Biden administration's new and expanded legal pathways at the border.
"This administration is orchestrating a massive shell game, encouraging otherwise-inadmissible aliens to cross at ports of entry instead of between them, thereby creating a façade of improved optics for the administration, but in reality imposing a growing burden on our communities," he said.