When the US Bureau of Land Management's Farmington District Manager, Victoria Barr, came into the KUNM studio for the Call In Show, she brought a brand-new map with her. She sent along the PDF, for those who would like to take a look at the active leases and special designated areas near Chaco Canyon National Historical Park.
You can view and download the map by clicking here.
We’re also excited to show off a new map – a work in progress – that Larry Heard, with the New Mexico Community Data Collaborative, made for KUNM's Drilling Deep project.
Right now, the map shows ownership and jurisdiction along the eastern Navajo Nation. As we’ve reported, many of the new wells are being drilled on Navajo allotments, lands deeded to Navajo families by the federal government in the nineteenth century.
Heard also pulled data from FracFocus, the national registry for chemicals used in wells that are hydraulically fractured.
And he’s also added the locations of the new Mancos Shale oil wells that have been approved and drilled along US Highway 550 near Lybrook and Counselor. We received the longitude and latitude of those new wells from WildEarth Guardians, which pulled that information from New Mexico's Oil Conservation Division database last fall.
Over the next few months, we hope to continue adding data layers on to the map – information that will help residents, decision-makers, and readers think about how our choices about energy development also affect public health, the environment and communities.
Check out the map as it is right now by clicking here.
To listen to yesterday's Call In Show, which included Barr, as well as Diné CARE’s Lori Goodman and the Western Environmental Law Center’s Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, visit the KUNM webpage.
We'd love to hear from listeners and readers about what other layers they'd like to see on the map. Please comment below or email reporter Laura Paskus at laurapaskus@kunm.org.
And be sure to check out the many other projects the folks at the New Mexico Community Data Collaboration have going on over there.
