Flood-weary US Southwest eyes forecast for more rain
– By Savannah Peters and Mead Gruver, Associated Press
Yet more flooding made parts of the normally arid Four Corners region look more like an ocean than a desert Monday as locals kept a wary eye on a forecast for still more rain ahead.
Damage in New Mexico alone after more than four days of flooding — only the latest in a deadly autumn of soaking rains in the U.S. Southwest — could total $300 million, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said.
The latest town to evacuate was tiny Bluff in southeastern Utah after San Juan River flooding swamped parts of cities and towns upstream in Colorado and New Mexico.
With parts of his town of 250 underwater, Mayor Josh Ewing was worried by a forecast for yet more heavy rain this weekend. After a few days of sunny, dry weather, more rounds of rain are predicted Friday night and again on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.
"It's the second flood that really gets you, you know, because everything is completely saturated. And so we're trying to recover fast enough to be on alert for what might happen," Ewing said.
New Mexico assesses damage, awaits aid
Upstream from Bluff, in Farmington, New Mexico, Pagosa Springs, Colorado, and elsewhere along the San Juan and Animas rivers, hundreds of homes remained evacuated or cut off by flooded roads. Many homes were still without power as officials assessed when it would be safe for residents to return and have their utilities turned back on.
President Donald Trump on Monday announced federal disaster assistance would be available to New Mexico with 25% to be matched by agencies in the state. Earlier in the day, Lujan Grisham expressed concern about the matching requirement but said she would "frontload" state resources for flood recovery.
She estimated that the costs of debris removal, road and bridge repair and other "longhaul" recovery could amount to as much as $300 million.
"I don't care if it's a billion dollars. The goal here is to identify every state, every federal, every local resource and get it where it belongs," Lujan Grisham said.
At least two deaths were reported in New Mexico. Isabelle Beulaygue, 39, was swept away while attempting to cross a flooded arroyo in a vehicle Saturday in Santa Fe, authorities said.
About 50 miles (80 kilometers) south in Socorro County, 64-year-old Grace Clark was swept away as floodwaters rose and trapped residents in their homes. Valencia County Fire Chief Matthew Propp said nine other people were rescued as teams worked overnight to find residents.
Between 200 and 300 people in San Juan County, New Mexico, were rescued in the last few days, according to county spokesperson Devin Neeley.
Damage spread onto the vast Navajo Nation spanning parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
Lupita Villa, her husband and three young children evacuated their rental home along the San Juan River in Farmington on Thursday. When they returned on Saturday, they needed muck boots and waders to reach the front door. Once inside, they found their laminate floors warped under several inches of muddy floodwater and much of their furniture destroyed.
The family is staying with relatives on higher ground while they plan next steps. Villa said her children are struggling to understand that their former home is now unlivable.
"They just keep asking, 'When can we go back?'" Villa said.
Colorado residents still cut off by washed-out roads
The crisis continued in southern Colorado's Archuleta County. After more rain brought another surge in San Juan River flooding through the hot springs resort town of Pagosa Springs last weekend, the river was back below flood stage Monday for the first time in more than three days.
No further rescues were reported after air operations that included the rescue of two people, three dogs and two cats from a recreational vehicle washed downstream in floodwaters Friday.
But all evacuated areas remained closed. Responders were landing in helicopters to check on people still unable to leave their homes due to the floodwaters and road damage.
"We do have a number of people cut off still but we're accessing those with the National Guard and our search and rescue crews," Archuleta County Sheriff Mike Le Roux said.
Utah town surveys desert that now looks like a sea
Officials throughout the region cautioned people to avoid entering floodwaters after wastewater treatment plants got flooded. If you are exposed, they said, take a shower or bath as soon as possible.
In Montezuma Creek, 14 miles (22 kilometers) downstream from Bluff, the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority reported its wastewater treatment lagoons were "completely breached," potentially contaminating the San Juan River with bacteria and pathogens.
The river crested Monday lower than expected in Bluff. The water stopped mostly short of a highway that runs through town, said Ewing, the mayor and a local firefighter who took part in flood rescues.
It was cold comfort, though, after floodwaters hit seven more homes and four businesses overnight to bring the local flood toll to 17 homes and five businesses since a surge on Friday.
Unlike flooding that followed a levee break Friday, Ewing said, the latest surge happened after a day of warnings that higher water was on the way.
"It's kind a weird thing when you've lived in red rock country to feel like you live by the sea now. Our flood plain is just filled," Ewing said.
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Gruver reported from Fort Collins, Colorado. Associated Press writer Jessica Hill contributed to this report from Las Vegas.
New Mexico off track for 2030 greenhouse gas goal, environment official says
– Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
At its current rate, New Mexico won’t meet its 2030 goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a New Mexico Environment Department official told state lawmakers Monday.
A 2019 executive order from Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham charged New Mexico environment officials with reducing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by 45% in 2030, relative to 2005 levels. The New Mexico Environment Department late last year published a “Climate Action Plan” that outlined more than three dozen steps for New Mexico to not only meet that goal but to also achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
Claudia Borchert, chief of NMED’s Climate Change Bureau, on Monday told lawmakers on the interim Water and Natural Resources Committee that the state’s greenhouse gas emissions declined by 21% between 2005 and 2023.
While that’s a substantial cut, she and several lawmakers noted that it’s far short of the 45% goal.
“Current policies don’t have us getting to our desired outcome,” she said.
Her department’s plan outlines 45 steps the state can take to meet those goals, including decarbonizing electric grids; promoting energy-efficient building codes; and enhancing forest health and expanding post-fire recovery programs.
While state leaders in the Environment Department and the New Mexico State Land Office have spent recent years prioritizing efforts to curb oil and gas spills, plug abandoned wells and embrace renewable energy sources, some proposed developments could impact the state’s ability to hit its climate goals. Earlier this year, energy experts spoke before the Water and Natural Resources Committee and said that hyperscale data center proposals in New Mexico threaten to undo more than 20 years of progress on air quality, largely because of proposed “microgrid” energy sources that would power the data centers with fuel cell systems, natural gas pipelines and more.
The state’s shortcomings at meeting its reduction goal prompted concern from state Rep. Tara Lujan (D-Santa Fe).
“We really need to buckle down,” she said, citing New Mexico’s recent major weather events — including catastrophic flooding in San Juan County anda tornado in Santa Fe — as evidence that climate change is an urgent threat to the state. “It’s beyond critical. It’s a crisis.”
Lujan Grisham’s administration has prioritized regulations that tamp down on pollution in a number of industries. Last year, for example, she credited the state’s strict methane rules for bringing New Mexico’s emission levels down to half of those in neighboring Texas.
The state’s largest industrial sources of emissions still include the oil and gas industry, Borchert said Monday. They also include transportation and agriculture. About 83% of transportation emissions come from on-road vehicles, she said, noting that large trucks make up the biggest share of vehicles contributing to that total. In fact, passenger vehicles account for just 12% of the industry’s emissions, according to Borchert’s presentation.
New Mexico leaders have also heavily invested in renewable energy projects in recent years, including the SunZia wind project, which is the largest wind farm in the nation.
However, Rep. Randall Pettigrew (R-Lovington) questioned whether it’s prudent for renewable energy projects in New Mexico, such as the SunZia wind farm, to sell their power to other states. He also questioned whether keeping energy from that project would help New Mexico offset the emissions of other energy sources, he said.
“Let’s go back and do some course correction,” Pettigrew said.
Maryland man indicted in alleged New Mexico voter fraud
– Nakayla McClelland, Albuquerque Journal
A federal grand jury indicted a Maryland man accused of fraudulently submitting a voter registration application in New Mexico.
Robert Johnson, 63, of Annapolis, Maryland, is charged with procurement and submission of materially false, fictitious and fraudulent voter registration. His attorney did not respond to calls for comment.
Johnson was arrested in Milwaukee on Monday and made his initial appearance before a U.S. magistrate judge in the Eastern District of Wisconsin. He was released on bond pending further proceedings in New Mexico.
Johnson allegedly submitted a voter registration application to the Bernalillo County Clerk’s Office Bureau of Elections on Sept. 18, 2022, according to the indictment.
For more information on this story, visit the Albuquerque Journal website.
A cybersecurity issue forces a UNM hospital to divert patients and close clinics
– Christopher L. Keller and Wufei Yu, Associated Press
A major hospital network in New Mexico raced to fix a cybersecurity issue on Monday that forced it to send ambulances to other hospitals and left the state without an emergency department capable of treating the most serious injuries.
The University of New Mexico Health System told people not to show up at its main hospital in Albuquerque and canceled appointments at its more than 30 clinics. It said it was working to resolve the issue, the extent and nature of which was not immediately clear.
The hospital network conducts about 900,000 outpatient visits and receives 100,000 emergency room visits each year, according to its website. It operates the state's only Level 1 trauma center.
Presbyterian Healthcare Services and Lovelace Health System, two other major healthcare providers in New Mexico, said they were coordinating with the UNM Health System, including taking additional patients.
The UNM Health System said in a statement that its hospitals and clinics began resuming operations in phases later in the day.
Multiple UNM Health System employees said they heard messages across their computers while working late Monday morning that claimed to have stolen student and employee data and patient information.
A spokesperson for the health system wouldn't comment, saying that the incident remains an active law enforcement investigation. FBI spokesperson Margot Cravens in Albuquerque said the agency was "assisting our partner" but declined further comment.
The Associated Press left emails and phone messages seeking comment from the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office and the Albuquerque Police Department.
The incident comes amid growing concern about the security of digital systems that underpin essential services, from banking to medical care.
Incidents affecting hospitals, including demands for ransom, have been going on for a decade, said Josephine Wolff, a professor of cybersecurity policy at Tufts University.
Breaching a system to play a message on computers is pretty unusual, Wolff said. Monday's incident, she said, shows "how much work we still have to do to get better at defending ourselves."
On Monday afternoon, at the main entrance to its Albuquerque hospital, employees in turquoise staff shirts sat on chairs that blocked the waiting room and told patients their appointments might be canceled.
At a medical center in the Albuquerque suburb of Rio Rancho, two security guards at the entrance told patients arriving for appointments to reschedule.
UNM's Health Sciences Center, the state's largest academic medical center, canceled classes Monday and Tuesday. Employees in its hospital and medical group were expected back at work Tuesday.
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Yu reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writer Susan Montoya Bryan contributed from Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
Columbus, N.M., port re-opens amid screwworm scrutiny
– Associated Press
With the all-clear from U.S. agriculture inspectors, Mexican cattle began moving on Monday through a border crossing in New Mexico that had been closed for nearly two years as both nations work to stop the flesh-eating New World screwworm from spreading.
The screwworm — actually a fly larva that burrows into the flesh of livestock, pets and even humans — has threatened the $113 billion U.S. cattle industry. Containment efforts have cost jobs and trade in border communities, cutting off a source of cattle as the U.S. struggles to rebuild drought-depleted herds. Reopening crossings could help ease that squeeze, although experts caution that shoppers shouldn't expect quick relief on beef prices.
The port at Columbus, New Mexico, is the third to resume Mexican cattle imports under new safeguards, which include tests, shots and inspections that happen before an animal even gets close to the border.
Officials and ranchers in the two countries say layers of treatment and inspection give them confidence that imported livestock won't carry screwworm through the ports. But flies can buzz across the border on their own, meaning ranchers, hunters and pet owners should remain vigilant.
The parasite was an annual livestock scourge before being largely eradicated in the U.S. in the 1960s. It reappeared in Mexico in 2024, and the first confirmed U.S. case was in Texas in June.
More than 60 cases have been confirmed in Texas and New Mexico, with infestations of cattle, sheep, goats, horses and dogs. Last week, the first case in U.S. wildlife was confirmed after a hunter found a screwworm in an elk.
Before the current outbreak, the U.S. was importing about 1 million head of cattle per year. It will take time to get back to that number while keeping a sharp eye on the risks to animal health, said Dudley Hoskins, undersecretary for the Department of Agriculture.
“As long as we can manage and mitigate that risk at an acceptable level, we will continue to process the safe and legal movement of cattle through these ports,” he said, watching as cattle lined up in the chutes at Columbus.
