New Mexico Mercury

A decade of 100% defense against anti-conservation bills at the NM Legislature

For the 10th year in a row, Conservation Voters New Mexico (CVNM) and our allies successfully defeated every anti-conservation measure introduced in the state legislature during the 2014 New Mexico Legislative session which ended yesterday at noon.

I am so proud to be a part of this conservation legacy that CVNM is continuing for the people of New Mexico. For a decade CVNM has been on the frontlines, fighting the good fight, protecting our air, land, and water for a healthy Land of Enchantment...

Insight New Mexico - Ray Powell

V.B. Price talks with State Land Commissioner Ray Powell about what his office does, ongoing renewable energy projects including Tres Amigas SuperStation, and how state lands serve the public. 

Provincial Matters, 2-10-2014

V.B. Price's weekly collection of appreciations and observations.

New Mexico Water Wars and Their Implications

My friends and I spent the last months after our high school graduation making memories together before our college paths diverged. We refused to think of the challenges of adulthood that lay threateningly on the horizon but rather spent our time water skiing on Brantley Lake, on the outskirts of Carlsbad, New Mexico, reveling in the few remaining days of our boyhood. The winters of 2009 and 2010 had been excellent snow seasons and along with an unusually wet monsoon season, Brantley Reservoir was swollen almost to full capacity.

Over the course of the next three years, New Mexico suffered through a period of intense drought. The reservoir shrunk little by little, depleted by the water needs of the farmers and citizens of the local community...

Provincial Matters, 2-3-2014

V.B. Price's weekly collection of appreciations and observations.

Farming in the New Age of Drought

“Record rainfall in September brought most us nearly up to ‘normal’ annual precipitation levels, greened up the rangeland, but the rain came so hard and fast that much of it ran off,” reads part of the introduction to the upcoming New Mexico Organic Farming Conference.

“Acequias were damaged and fields were buried in sediment.  And we’re still desperately short of water in the rivers and dams.  Without good snowpack this winter, we face exceptional irrigation shortages in 2014.”

The above words set the tone for the 2014 conference, which is scheduled for the weekend of February 14-15 at the Marriott Pyramid North hotel in Albuquerque...

Provincial Matters, 1-27-2014

V.B. Price's weekly collection of appreciations and observations.

Insight New Mexico - Richard Barish

V.B. Price talks with Richard Barish, the Bosque Issues chair for the Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter, about how Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry's Rio Grande Vision plan will effect the Bosque. 

Rhetoric is a Greenhouse Gas

Reconstituting public opinion around the exigence of global warming.

Provincial Matters, 1-20-2014

V.B. Price's weekly collection of appreciations and observations.