Computer chip maker to pay $32M for water pipeline – Associated Press
Computer chip maker Intel plans to pay one of New Mexico's largest water utilities $32 million to build a pipeline to supply its factory with the much needed resource.
Millions of gallons are needed at the plant in Rio Rancho each day to produce tiny semiconductors, and demands will likely increase as part of a $3.5 billion retrofit that will boost production capacity of Intel's chip-packaging technology, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
The 6-mile (9.6-kilometer) pipeline will connect two wells on the northwest edge of Albuquerque to the plant. The Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority says construction is expected to begin in April.
Linda Qian, spokeswoman for Intel New Mexico, said the company plans to filter non-potable groundwater onsite into "ultrapure water."
"We use that ultrapure water to clean the surface of the silicon wafer," Qian said. "If you think of the chip process as building layers on top of a wafer, in between each of those layers, you rinse with ultrapure water."
When the 200-acre site opened, Qian said, manufacturing demanded about 2 gallons (7.6 liters) of fresh water to produce 1 gallons (3.8 liters) of ultrapure water. Now, the ratio is about 1 to 1.
Intel estimates demand at the expanded plant could be 1 million to 3 million gallons of water a day.
Intel also uses water for cooling towers, industrial equipment and landscaping.
Qian said most of the water is used, recycled, used again, treated and then discharged.
Company data show that Intel in 2020 pumped more than 756 million gallons of groundwater for its New Mexico plant. The company treated and discharged about 705 million gallons back into the municipal system.
Intel has a goal of restoring more water than it uses by 2030.
Navajo Nation reports 270 new COVID-19 cases, one death – Associated Press
The Navajo Nation on Friday reported 270 new confirmed COVID-19 cases and one death related to the virus.
Tribal officials said the number of confirmed cases on the reservation now total 42,622 since the pandemic began. The death roll stands at 1,593.
The Navajo Nation Office of the President and Vice President held a special online town hall Friday to update residents on the pandemic as the omicron variant pushes case numbers higher in neighboring states and across the U.S. The reservation covers 27,000 square miles and extends into parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
Health care workers said during the town hall that they are seeing less severe symptoms in patients who have been vaccinated.
"Our frontline warriors are pleading for all of our people to get fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and to get a booster shot if you're eligible," Navajo President Jonathan Nez said. "The vaccines do not guarantee that you won't get COVID-19, but they are highly effective in preventing severe symptoms and they are saving lives every day across the country."
Like elsewhere, Nez said the health care system on the Navajo Nation is being challenged and he urged fellow Navajos to be extra cautious.
Proposed teacher raises would make New Mexico competitive – By Cedar Attanasio, Associated Press, Report for America
New Mexico wants to attract more teachers as part of a government-wide spending spree fueled by taxes from surging oil and gas revenues.
"They're going to be the highest paid individuals in any state near us," Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico teachers in a call with educators on Friday.
Lujan Grisham is proposing increases in the minimum pay for teachers across three tiers of experience levels. Minimum salaries for entry-level teachers would increase from $41,000 to $50,000. That would make starting teachers the highest paid in the region unless other states raise wages before the fall.
In Texas, for example, starting salaries average around $44,500.
"Let's also remind ourselves that all of our surrounding state legislatures are raising salaries as well," New Mexico Public Education Secretary Kurt Steinhaus told a legislative committee Thursday, calling the salary competition between the states a "shell game."
School districts in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas set their pay scales in different ways, so they can be hard to compare.
In New Mexico, pay is tied closely to tiers based on completing professional development benchmarks. In Texas, years of experience are more important. In rural Colorado, teachers can make way less than their neighbors in rural New Mexico, because minimums are lower.
Lujan Grisham's budget tracks closely with the ones proposed by the education department and the Legislature's most important spending committee. They call for around $250-300 million in raises including a 7% minimum raise for all categories of school workers, from janitors to principals. That would offset nationwide inflation of around 6.8%.
New salary minimums could boost teacher salaries by as much as 20%, including $60,000 for mid level teachers and $70,000 for those with the highest level of professional development.
The governor also proposes extending minimum salary guarantees to Indigenous language and culture teachers, who often don't meet the educational requirements to be paid as full-fledged teachers, despite doing similar work.
If Lujan Grisham's budget is approved, it will likely mean New Mexico has competitive salaries for entry level teachers, and on average, with its biggest rival, Texas.
That state, which borders New Mexico to the East and South, has large school districts that compete for talent with medium-sized districts in New Mexico.
Its average starting salary is $44,582, according to NEA data, comparable to the proposed salary increase by Lujan Grisham.
There are no planned changes to the minimum salary, Texas Education Agency said in a statement Friday, and the Texas legislature isn't meeting next year.
States often pay teachers more to work more. In Texas, a COVID-mitigation program will ensure teachers can earn over $100,000 per year if they work in some of the hardest-hit districts and work longer hours.
In New Mexico, there are fewer performance incentives, but teachers can earn 10-25 days of extra pay at their salary level if their district adds extra time to the school year. Last year, many districts declined to participate in the program, citing teacher and parent burnout during the pandemic.
Phoenix among those voluntarily losing Colorado River water – By Felicia Fonseca, Associated Press
The city of Phoenix this week outlined how it will voluntarily contribute water to a regional plan to shore up the country's largest reservoir that delivers Colorado River water to three states and Mexico.
The river cannot provide seven Western states the water they were promised a century ago because of less snow, warmer temperatures and water lost to evaporation. Water managers repeatedly have had to pivot to develop plans to sustain it for the long-term.
Phoenix, the nation's fifth-largest city, is among entities in the river's lower basin that are part of the "500+ Plan" meant to delay further mandatory shortages. All pieces of the plan haven't been finalized, but farmers and Native American tribes are expected to play a big role.
The Colorado River serves more than 40 million people in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, California, Wyoming, Utah and Mexico. Lake Mead and Lake Powell store the water and are used to gauge the river's health.
The 500 + Plan will be implemented as Arizona, Nevada and Mexico take the first-ever mandatory cuts from the Colorado River and while water users decide what to do after current rules for managing the river expire in 2026.
Here is a look at the plan:
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WHAT IS THE 500 + PLAN?
The plan announced in December provides funding for states in the lower Colorado River basin — Arizona, Nevada and California — plus the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to find ways to leave 500,000 acre feet in Lake Mead over the next two years.
The risk in not meeting the goal is the lake dropping further absent much precipitation, leading to more painful mandatory water cuts.
The plan is projected to boost the water level of Lake Mead, which has hit record lows, by about 16 feet (4.8 meters). The reservoir straddles the Nevada-Arizona border.
Water managers want to keep the lake from falling to 1,020 feet (311 meters) above sea level. That's the point at which they believe that the reservoir, with just one more dry year, could hit 950 feet (289 meters) and no longer have the capacity to deliver water to Arizona, California and Mexico.
Nevada has an extra layer of water security with a pipeline it built years ago to draw water below that level.
Water users crafted the 500+ Plan within months to create more certainty in the Colorado River supply.
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WHO IS CONTRIBUTING WATER?
The plan anticipates Arizona contributing 223,000 acre feet and California 215,000 acre feet. An acre-foot of water is enough to serve 2-3 households annually.
In Arizona, Phoenix and the neighboring cities of Glendale, Scottsdale and Tempe, irrigation districts, water agencies, state entities and others have said they'll chip in.
The Metropolitan Water District in California will work through existing partnerships with irrigation districts and seek new ways to conserve water, said Colorado River resources manager Bill Hasencamp.
The district recently signed an agreement with the Quechan Tribe along the Arizona-California to pay farmers and the tribe not to plant crops in the hotter months when water use is highest. That could leave 6,000 acre feet of water in Lake Mead a year for two years, Hasencamp said.
"Yeah, it's a small piece but an important piece of this plan that's needed to make the Colorado River sustainable," Hasencamp said.
Nevada will contribute money because it doesn't have water to give, said Southern Nevada Water Authority spokesman Bronson Mack. The Colorado River supplies southern Nevada with 90% of its water.
"We're already pretty tight as it is with 300,000 acre feet," Mack said.
The Bureau of Reclamation is expected to contribute about 62,000 acre feet.
Native American tribes will be the biggest players in the plan because they tend to have larger and more secure rights to water that isn't fully being used. The Gila River Indian Community and the Colorado River Indian Tribes have signed on to the 500+ Plan.
"We see this as a win-win for everybody because we have solutions, we can offer solutions, we can offer ways to save the river," said Colorado River Indian Tribes Chairwoman Amelia Flores. "I'm glad that others are looking at tribes in that way, that we can be an asset and not calling on us at the last minute."
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WHO IS FUNDING THE PLAN?
The states are required to put up $100 million, and the federal government will match that amount for a total of $200 million.
Phoenix will receive nearly $4.2 million for the 15,977 acre feet it is contributing, which works out to $260 an acre foot. The city will leave that water in Lake Mead rather than store it underground near Tucson as it had planned, said Cynthia Campbell, the city's water resource management adviser.
Phoenix will use the money for rebate programs for residents to switch to low-flow toilets, smart irrigation control systems and improving the efficiency of cooling towers, Campbell said.
The Metropolitan Water District will pay up to $1.6 million to farmers on the Fort Yuma reservation and the Quechan Tribe to leave fields dry.
The tribe's water counsel, Jay Weiner, said the tribe is gauging interest among farmers.
"It's really a piece of Quechan trying to be as entrepreneurial as possible, figuring out ways that it can continue to benefit from its water rights for the good of the tribe and its members," he said.
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WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will lose water this year in the first federally declared water shortage. In Arizona, that reduction largely falls on Pinal County farmers who plan to cut the acreage they farm and increasingly rely on groundwater.
The Colorado River basin states will start negotiating soon on a new set of guidelines to replace the current ones that expire in 2026.
Lake Mead and Lake Powell upstream on the Arizona-Utah border haven't been full in more than 20 years. As they fall, it impacts water deliveries, hydropower and recreation at the popular tourist spots.
Lake Mead was at 1,066 feet (324.9 meters) this week, or about 34% full. Lake Powell was at 3536 feet (1,077 meters), or 27% full.
Concerns persist about pace of cleanup at US nuclear lab – By Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press
Officials at one of the nation's top nuclear weapons laboratories are reiterating their promise to focus on cleaning up Cold War-era contamination left behind by decades of research and bomb-making.
But New Mexico environment officials and watchdog groups remain concerned about the pace and the likelihood that the federal government has significantly understated its environmental liability at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The U.S. Department of Energy has been estimating that it will be 2036 before cleanup at the lab — which played a key role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II — is complete. Federal officials acknowledged during a meeting Thursday night that the date hasn't changed but they are reviewing whether new risks will boost the need for more funding and more time.
Michael Mikolanis, head of the DOE's Office of Environmental Management at Los Alamos, addressed questions about a 2021 independent audit that found the agency's liability for environmental cleanup topped more than a half trillion dollars for the last fiscal year and is growing. That includes understated liability at Los Alamos by more than $880 million.
Mikolanis confirmed that a recent review turned up new information that increased the liabilities for cleanup beyond what officials previously understood.
"Certainly can't say yes or tell you no that the date is being changed but obviously with increased scope ... either we would need additional funding to do that or stretch out the dates," he said. "We are currently evaluating that. We have made no decision."
The DOE is facing a legal challenge by the state of New Mexico over setting and meeting the milestones of its current cleanup agreement with the state, which was signed in 2016. State officials found the federal government's plan for the previous fiscal year to be deficient.
Watchdog groups said it wasn't until the state sued in February 2021 that the DOE proposed boosting the cleanup budget at the lab by about one-third. Before that budgets were flat, with the groups arguing that DOE had no incentive to seek more funding.
"The conclusion I draw from it is the New Mexico Environment Department gets a lot more from the stick than it does from the carrot with respect to making the laboratory and DOE truly committed to comprehensive cleanup," said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico.
Chris Catechis, director of the Environment Department's resource protection division, said during the meeting that despite the pending litigation, the state wants to continue working with federal officials on moving the needle when it comes to addressing plumes of chromium contamination, the removal of tons of contaminated soil and other projects at the lab.
"We agree that we don't feel the cleanup is moving as quickly as we'd like to see it but with that said, we don't want to walk away from the process," Catechis said.
Some elected officials and other critics also have raised concerns about how the federal government's plan to boost production at Los Alamos of the plutonium cores used in the nation's nuclear arsenal will result in additional waste that will add to disposal liabilities.
Officials indicated during the meeting that the National Nuclear Security Administration has funding for a site-wide environmental review of operations. While they declined to provide more details, advocates have argued for years that the environmental consequences and cost-effectiveness of operations at the lab deserve more scrutiny.