Hi Friends, I wanted to update those of you who are willing to support a few bills that will protect pollinators, along with their habitat—our soil, air and water. A good rule of thumb…what’s good for the bees is good for the humans!
SB 103 Restricting Use of Neonicotinoid Pesticides with Senator Mimi Stewart
This is coming to the Senate Conservation Committee, Tuesday, February 2, 2021. Time TBA.
We are particularly concerned about the votes of Sen. Schmedes, Sen. Soules and Sen. Cervantes on the Senate Conservation Committee.
Here’s some info:
- Roster for Senate Conservation. These are the Senators to whom we need to be reaching out.
Call and ask them to vote YES, whether or not you are a constituent.
Talking Points:
***Relating to the environment; restricting the use of neonicotinoid class pesticides; providing exceptions; requiring an education and training program; amending and enacting sections of the pesticide control act.”
****Neonicotinoids are highly toxic to bees, and even low levels can have subtle yet severe impacts such as making them more susceptible to disease, delaying development, impairing their ability to collect food and limiting reproduction. Bee kills in the European Union have led them to ban this class of pesticides.
****Neonicotinoids put bees in direct risk of exposure as they contaminate the pollen and nectar of bee attractive plants.
Make sure the Senators know how deeply you care about this issue for pollinators, a healthy and non-toxic food system and our own health!!!!
ALSO NOTE TODAY, JANUARY 28, 2021 on the SENATE CONSERVATION COMMITTEE. CALL MEMBERS TO SUPPORT! Ensuring a healthy environment, ensures healthy pollinators!
SJR3 Environmental Rights, CA (Green Amendment)–Sens. Sedillo Lopez, Soules, Stewart and Ferrary
This Resolution will ask voters to create a NM State constitutional amendment giving all New Mexicans a constitutional right to clean air, water, and land. These rights would become inherent, inalienable, and indefeasible, and among those rights reserved to all the people and on par with other protected inalienable rights. Currently the legislative body is to protect these elements.
If you care about the devastating contamination of our fresh water in a drought ridden state, due to fracking, please note this bill as well. This affects all creatures habitat and certainly native or honeybees, foraging anywhere near the fracking fields.
SB86 Protect Our Water (Produced fracking wastewater): Senators Sedillo Lopez, Stefanics
This bill would protect water in oil and gas industry. Would require more use of fracked water, prohibit millions of gallons of freshwater for fracking.
*For every barrel of oil produced, the oil and gas industry consumes an average of 3 barrels of freshwater, and produces 4-7 times as much toxic fracking waste known as “produced water.”
*Currently, produced water is poisoning our land, water, and air with little regulation or oversight. Despite being hazardous, toxic, and radioactive, produced water is not managed as the hazardous waste it is, and the 2019 Produced Water Act fails to provide New Mexicans necessary protections from this wastestream.
*Negligent spills occur daily and continue to increase. Thousands of massive ponds and corroded steel tanks store the toxic fracking waste. Corrosion, human error, overflow, and equipment failure are the most common reasons for spills. The Produced Water Act must be amended to fulfill the legislature’s intent of protecting public health, the environment, and freshwater.
Amend the Produced Water Act to Protect New Mexicans
Proposed amendments to the 2019 Produced Water Act ensure the safe handling and disposal of this toxic waste, to protect public health, and to preserve scarce freshwater by:
****Require the Oil Conservation Division to regulate the safe management and disposal of oil and gas waste.
****Require oil and gas operators to use produced water instead of freshwater for fracking.
****Provide penalties for spills, using fines to develop shared public information and data.
****Require the New Mexico Environment Department to regulate pollution from produced water
FINALLY, Recently Think Like A Bee was featured in a podcast with Sophia Rose, a Meals VISTA volunteer through AmeriCorps. She works with the New Mexico Out-of-School Time Network and does amazing podcasts about food, hunger, pollinators and our earth habitat.
It includes themes of:
**Bees as essential workers
**Honeybee’s sophisticated social system and what they can teach us as humans
**Bees throughout history in our cosmologies and theologies
**Bees as critical in our food system and how we re-think our farms and rural place.
In other words, how to think like a bee!
Here’s the Link and Deep Gratitude for your support of pollinators!
https://rethinking-hunger.simplecast.com/episodes
thinklikeabee 