New Mexico Mercury

Farming and water in New Mexico

Living in New Mexico, it is obvious that we have a water issue. Our largest river turns to a stream during the winter and our lakes are at the lowest point in recorded history. A lot of the problem is the drought that the southwest has been experiencing for the past ten years. With these two together, New Mexico's already limited water supply has taken a turn for the worse. The situation is now threatening New Mexico's economic and environmental sustainability.

As threatening as the State’s situation may sound, New Mexico can still cut down on its wasteful water use. The largest culprit in water consumption, according to the New Mexico state government, is agriculture...

Farmers, Fish, and Flows All Suffer on the Middle Rio Grande

Environmental journalist Laura Paskus explores the impact of drought on the Middle Rio Grande for UNM's Utton Center.

New Mexico uranium and mini-reactors

Mention nuclear energy in New Mexico, and many of us get a cold shiver. Despite all the claims that nuclear energy is clean and safe, what it means to New Mexico is a long history of dirty – very dirty -- uranium mining and processing and the cancer that it brings.

So the thought of the federal government subsidizing the development of hundreds of mini-reactors to stimulate a new American nuclear industry that could generate thousands of portable nuclear power plants for export around the world, and use in our own backyard, has unnerving reverberations here...

Jose Domingo Sandoval: A film by Natalie Brigance

The spiritual essence of place and people through a resolana conversation with the filmmaker's father at his home in his native village of Truchas, NM.

Lessons from water - Never enough

I’m a student of water. I’ll never graduate because water teaches more than a lifetime can absorb. I’m trying to figure out New Mexico water — the projects and compacts and acequias and districts and adjudications and Pueblos and diversions and groundwater, and I’m marveling at how water disputes take forever and cost a fortune in legal fees. Words like dysfunctional and maladaptive come to mind.

One thing is clear. There isn’t enough water, and odds are there will be less of it as the years go by. Then what happens? ...

Disaster’s false dichotomy

We differentiate between human-made disasters and those caused by nature. I believe this is a false, and ultimately misleading, distinction.

If a building housing sweatshops collapses in Savar, Bangladesh, killing more than a thousand workers, we assess blame to the architect who approved the plans (undoubtedly for monetary gain), a government that cannot establish building codes or, if it has them, refuses to enforce them (plenty of kickbacks there as well). We can blame the clothing brands in the US and other Western countries, which reap exaggerated profit and have never been serious about improving the facilities where their clothing is made...

Reviving Water Planning in New Mexico

An extensive recap of the 19th annual Water Dialogue statewide meeting.

Texas Sues New Mexico Over Rio Grande Deliveries

The Utton Center at UNM has prepared a report on the Texas vs. New Mexico water dispute.

Border Environmental Controversies Considered

Border region air quality summit discusses proposed gas-fired power plant, environmental injustice and toxic release levels.

400 parts per million

As New Mexico becomes the sun’s anvil, and carbon dioxide rises past 400 parts per million (PPM) in the planet’s atmosphere trapping heat and drying out the American west, the haunting question is: Have we reached the tipping point?

Not five years ago, 350 PPM was said to be the outer limits of CO2 saturation before we’re reached the point of no return. All the warnings, of course, went unheeded. The use of fossil fuels grew enormously all over the planet. Renewable energy was drubbed in the marketplace by its government subsidized opposition...