State Land Office

The Caja del Rio is once again in the limelight after New Mexico State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard issued an executive order banning mineral leases and large transmission lines on the area’s state-owned land on Wednesday.

Land grant universities across the U.S. earn over $2.2B annually from oil and gas extraction on lands that were taken from Indigenous tribes. That includes New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. But, tribes almost never see a penny of it. That’s one of the recent findings of an investigation by environmental news outlet Grist.

In episode 37, we're talking about companies and federal officials squeezing through changes to environmental regulation, oil and gas leases, and laws…

The State Land Office has been working with a private company on a wind energy project in Torrance County for years. But more than half of the wind farm…