The House Judiciary Committee advanced a bill overhauling New Mexico's primary oil and gas law. Indigenous activists have been tracking the legislation and KUNM spoke with Wendy Atcitty (Navajo) from New Mexico Native Vote about why she came to the Roundhouse.
ATCITTY: I live in a Huerfano area, and my mom's land is an allotment land there. And growing up, we've always had wells within eye’s distance. And I used to always count, within two miles, at least about over 10 wells. And it's just very difficult, because you've always had them there. You didn't ever understood what they brought you, is those health impacts is what I'm seeing from living nearby them. And so now with more education, I'm able to understand those relationships that it is yes, when being in San Juan County with the methane hotspot, when being in San Juan County where we have a high amount of ozone, and just every other factor that comes from greenhouse gasses with with the coal plants that are nearby too.
KUNM: Why is this oil and gas bill important?
ATCITTY: Looking at the health impacts, and I know the bill is not toward tribal lands, but we all share one air shed. And that air shed has an impact of what we all feel in our community that we breathe in together. Any ways that we can minimize the emissions that come from these extractive industries, or at least get better changes that can happen from this Oil and Gas Act, we can make things a little bit better.
KUNM: How damaging are the effects of oil and gas wells so close to your community?
ATCITTY: We would always have to figure out when we go outside where the wind is directing from because we didn't want to smell the emissions that come from the venting. And it was awful during the early 2000s when flaring was continuously happening 24 hours a day. And those brought a lot of strong headaches and nausea. And again, we were very limited on what we could do.
KUNM: What would you say to lawmakers who were on the fence about issues regarding cleaning up oil and gas wells? Especially with the oil and gas industry bringing an economic boost to the state?
ATCITTY: It's hard to not see the economic benefits that come from this industry. However, when you look at the terms of the amount of health impacts it creates, like how can we put a dollar amount to that, when I don't have to carry an inhaler around? I don't have to wear a mask on certain days? Or I don't have to understand like why is the water tasting different when the technology of extracting oil changes? And I think it's when it's within your backyard, you see more of those changes. And I think being that we live there for a long time, we're able to gradually see it as time went on. So I really hope that any little measurement like this bill can add 95% emissions and you know, in ways of hopefully having future amendments of setbacks, would create something of a good pathway forward in the future.
And especially right now with this bill, we can address a lot of the abandoned wells that are here and I know we have some abandoned wells that did get cleaned up, but you can't even tell. Meaning that it's just, you see the see the lining of the well with a cap on. And we never had any outreach within our own community of like, you know that we remediated that or we capped it up. There's just no communication that happened. And so I fear because we got livestock around and, you know, we got kids playing around, but we just would have known nothing.
KUNM: What do you want New Mexicans to know, specifically about oil and gas that you don't think they're aware of right now?
ATCITTY: There's a lot of other opportunities that we can bring with the state. And those are economic avenues that deal with renewable energy, with wind, with solar. I mean, we have a state where an abundant amount of sun is shining. And we have cultures that you know, that just really want to be more sustainable, back to what we learned growing up, you know, having that balance And oil and gas has not given it to us at this point. Because they're still trying to fix things that happened over 100 years ago. And just trying to see what's the next 100 years gonna give us?
The Oil and Gas Act bill passed with a 7 to 4 vote and will now go to the House floor.
Support for this coverage comes from the Thornburg Foundation.
