Fracking has come to many of our backyards here in central New Mexico. Rio Rancho and Sandoval County commissioners are getting ready to pass a fracking project without citizen consent. Follow the money. Apparently it speaks louder than the people.
Time to stand up for our water. Water is irreplaceably precious.
Here in New Mexico, everyone lives downstream from someone else. Our lives are tied together by a ribbon of life—the Rio Chama watershed— and a series of rivers and aqueducts refueled by snow pack. All are threatened by drought, development, agricultural and industrial run-off and overuse in the land of enchantment. The Rio Grande River runs out of water somewhere in the desert of Southern New Mexico. It never makes it to Cuidad de Juarez, Mexico. It is an ongoing feud.
Curiously, those who make the big bucks in the fossil fuel industry and those in office who benefit continue to ignore the lesson that includes them—when the clean water is gone we cannot drink oil.
Without ordinances that keep these projects out and strictly prohibited, we will be living with the sickness of air, land and water pollution in all of our backyards. Water is heavily used to “clean” and process oil and fracking gas. In a drought ridden state there is precious little water to spare for processing the heavy metals and chemically laced natural gas pumped out of our water tables to the tune of millions of gallons of water.
Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry, which has been in New Mexico for over half a century or more, continues to swindle the public and pump money into protecting their interests. In the land of endless sunshine, there is a battle brewing for dominance of the energy future. And the citizens want clean energy. Don’t be fooled. Natural gas is NOT clean energy. Solar, wind, geo-thermal, bio-mass and many other forms are the future.
If we learned nothing else from Standing Rock, it was that water is life itself and it is worth standing up and fighting for. I am thankful to all Indigenous brothers and sisters who came together with the Sioux nation to teach us.
Click here and I will share a recent letter I sent to multiple local papers of which a portion of this was picked up by the Albuquerque Journal. Here’s some of the places to send your letters:
I invite you to flood the media and offices of these commissioners and pass this along to friends and family, neighbors, workplace and organizations. As down -river dwellers our health will be irreversibly impacted by fracking. Ask the Navajo nation in the Four Corners. They live wrapped in a Delaware size cloud of methane from off-gassing by the fracking industry.
Commissioners are located in Rio Rancho at the county seat at 1500 Idalia Road, Building D, Bernalillo, NM 87004 and here is the mailing address: P.O. Box 40 Bernalillo NM 87004 and phone #505-867-7500 Fax# 505-867-7600
This is our moment to stand up for New Mexico water. Your water. Our water.
Water is life. For all living beings.
Mni Wiconi.
thinklikeabee 