Socorro and Valencia County Local Highlights
By George-Luis Dewey
Special Districts AREN'T So Special After All
Sometimes when you struggle against the snare of the fowler you merely get more entrapped. Such was the ironic result for Special District 1 after they celebrated their short lived victory against Peoples Power during the Chicago Corporation's attempt to locate in Sabinal. Shortly thereafter, Peoples Power secured a zoning victory leveraged by their lawyers and the streamlined process Congress erected for them to facilitate the whole thing. The "Most High" members of our representative government failed to reflect the will of the people.
Key to understanding the real skein of facilitations that served as a backdrop to this whole affair was the sad fact that our paid Congress saw fit to deny a percentage of allocation in the Federal Budget for any alternative energy sources. No where in the Energy Bill is there any provision for public or private works to sponsor clean solar and wind technology, thus the local public officials could not be accused of favoring the oil and gas sector in their planning for energy utilities.
Even when 500 people signed the petition against the presence of a natural gas power plant and although there had been a great deal of sentiment at public meetings for alternative energy implementation in our zoning and planning for such projects, still the Commission adhered to the rude assertion that it was merely a matter of zoning permitting criteria that was to be heard and not outright objection to the plant. Concerned citizens objections to the power plant were thus silenced and marginalized at the Valencia County Commission Meeting of Sept. 17th, 2002. It was a shocker to some folks who saw no due process in this routine shakedown at all. The community can settle down to being good little rate payers for the next sixty years, when they could be generating the same power in their backyards free to use and profitable too.
Landowner Larry Alba From California Sues!
It seems, unless Larry Alba’s suit is successful, that we will have a noxious cancer causing Power Plant with a two-stage facility right in Rio Communities by Solo Cup, Avonite and the desiccant plant. Alba is appealing the wrongful zoning instigated by the Zoning Department itself. Apparently the Zoning Approval Officer made an arbitrary zone change without due process, which Mr. Alba in his diligence discovered. Our money is with Larry Alba - the "Little Man from California" - as Herman Tabet so imperiously referred to him at the meeting. Watch out Valencia - this little man carries a big stick in the form of a qualified attorney. County politicians that use bully tactics are bound to shuck out a lot of tax payer dollars in litigation for trying to stretch the public mandate into some ones political favor. And Larry Alba has a lot of people rooting for him to win - a whole community.
Los Lunas is being sued in the Jarrett case for heavy handedness by zoning officials so that sort of bully politics seems fairly standard for Valencia County if we can take the Tomato Plant, the Sludge Dumping and the Garbage disposal business as a standard of what Valencia considers 'good for the community’.
The legacy of Horizon Corporation and the two counties that stood by watching the crooks and scooping up all the revenue they could get in the meantime. Now they are beneficiaries of the unenforceable convenes in the area in that they tax us yet do not represent us. That is a Constitutional issue at its core. All tax monies of Socorro tax payers who live north of Hwy 60 still go illegally to another county under the guile and guise of the Resolution of 1967 that governs the ideology that those monies should pay for the school system for Northern Socorro County, since it is closest to the larger urban area of Belen. Resolutions are non-binding and unconstitutional and can be struck down by a correct and legal court system that is free of the creative financing Zen of these centrist times. Ours is currently hungry to enforce the personal rights of corporations over individuals and rife with revenue enhancement encumbrances it must continue to feed as the blue ranks of entropy and governmental dependency demand it! Don't think the lawyers aren't sucking up all the cash these dynamics entail, they truly enjoy the reams of litigation in the credit and insurance rackets that our state and federal governments have been crafting special laws for and the subsequent profits that are starting to squirt forth as the citizens continue to be squeezed for more. All that Clintonesque lawyer enhancing legislation of the last two years of his presidency created the robust legal sections you see in today's newspaper. The current aspect of government and the quality of content in their legislative process is rude and crude.
Sad Irony For Those who Struggled to be Polution Free…
And now, the overwhelming irony for Sabinal and Bernardo is that the northeast wind in the wintertime will carry the formaldehyde four to twelve miles as the crow flies to Bernardo and Sabinal. There it will land on the Casa Colorado Bird Reserve and the winter-over Conservancy Refuge. Noxious sulphur laden natural gas contains other petroleum raw residues and these will lead to reduced egg hatchability. The refuge waters are already highly polluted with caustic, corrosive and toxic pesticide and liquid nitrogen fertilizer inerts which percolate out of the ground yearly with other natural alkali deposits.
A Tale of Two Counties
We get the effects of Valencia County’s industrial irresponsibility and lack of open space and reasonable planning. Our county of Socorro, in particular, is in the top 3% of the Nations Air Quality according to EPA statistics. Whereas, Valencia County is in the top 47% of the Nations Dirtiest Counties. There should be strict Air Quality Standards in the remaining areas of the country where the air is still clean. It represents a real asset to its citizens when you judge its beneficial effects against communities that are rife with high mortality rates due to pollution.
The establishment of Special District 2 did little but cause the same effects as Bernardo and Sabinal for Veguita and Las Nutrias and it facilitated dreaded inroads to zoning, which many people fear, because it really represents the expectations for standards to be set by banks and not citizens. Zoning facilitates development, as it regiments construction standards and dictates the cost of a structure, which by country standards is more elaborate than necessary. So people are forced to build more house than they can afford and that comes with the heating bill that is upscale too.
Then there is District 3 still trying to figure itself out. We have a lot of unity on certain subjects up there, but some folks don't trust the paperwork and the authorities much. They are still smarting from over zealous local law enforcement that shoots their canines and runs cows down on their frail unfenced homesteads. Their convenes say no cattle grazing, but they are powerless to enforce that in the face of such local custom. You must know that in New Mexico's Constitution Law and Custom are on a par in this state. Special District 3 may get formed, but in a different manner or perhaps not at all, but it faces special challenges next year.
Folks Are Still Smarting…
The Valencia County Commission signing off on the zoning commissions review of the Power Plant for site suitability was a rigged deal from the start. The constituents who attended the meeting got two minutes each to present months of research and study at their expense, but Al Padilla took a good thirty minutes to give his older brother an atta-boy for a job well done in senior Olympics!
Gratuitous favoritism was the order of the day. Of course, we can thank Congress again for mainlining this whole process by exempting local budgets from allocating funds for alternative energy sources. It gave the oil and gas lobby a green light to bring in 30 power plants into the state with the cleanest air quality in the nation, but the least educated constituency where air quality and its implications in the future are concerned.
Nobody Cares About Water!
As if that wasn't insulting enough they left out any data pertinent to water usage and subsequent emissions related to water used for cooling. Half the logical data required was left out of the modeling study they preformed and they used data for the Albuquerque Airport to describe prevailing wind patterns that are fundamentally flawed. Further they managed to circumvent scrutiny in an otherwise fragile wilderness bird preserve with their emission targets of maximum exposure within the drop radius of the stacks. They ignored summer winds from the South which will take the pollution north to Bosque Farms, Isleta and Albuquerque's own brown cloud. That in itself may form the basis of a suit against Valencia County on behalf of Albuquerque's Air Quality Board. It's going to get very costly to do things in the rude and crude tradition too much longer. Sooner or later Valencia and Socorro County is going to have to concern itself with the qualifications of some of its "plebe" leadership. Good old boy politics doesn't just come from back east or down in Texas.
A Real Deal!
The county facilitated a bogus zoning change to allow for the plant to go through and streamlined the permit process to allow for further expansion under the existing permit regardless of consequences. The County, at the very least, acted to mindlessly to effect air quality and animal protected habitat in Socorro County as well as already burdened Albuquerque.
Local quality of life will be greatly effected as currently we only have an index of 3/10,000 cancers that are air quality related, but after the power plant goes in that could soar within a few short years adding a public health cost back into our economy. Bear in mind, thanks to Richard Romero, New Mexico doesn't charge gross receipts tax to polluters like power plants, just citizens like you get to pay gross receipts on such critical home and family needs like food and medicine. Again, the consumer inmate is the smallest cog in the wheel.
When the index of asthma and pulmonary afflictions rise for the health care system who gets to pay - why you of course - twice: once with bad health and the bill too. Legislooting in action!
Pipelining Can Be Fun, Just Don't Light a Match…
Meanwhile a restless crowd was assured by the wife of a pipeline worker that pipe lining was a fun lifestyle and that the 50 plus year old pipeline is as safe as can be! It’s extreme life span was 50 years at the time of its construction and it’s over that standard now.
El Paso Gas was allowed to gloss over the last two explosions of natural gas in New Mexico, one in Carlsbad fatal to an entire family who happened to try doing a barbecue near the leaky pipeline and the other right in Jarales, just before the river crossover, where the very typical phenomena of heaving caused the pipe to crack. The Carslbad event lasted a whole hour at 85% of its initial force of detonation because the automatic shutoff valves malfunctioned. Finally the Company turned it off manually.
Smart Pigs Know More Than You So It's OK…
According to a device called a “Smart Pig”, which is a sensor shaped like a bullet that travels the length of the pipe to determine corrosion tolerances on the pipe, everything is fine with over 330 miles of natural gas pipeline in New Mexico. If an explosion like Jarales had happened in the Winter the result could have been very different as the propane would have hovered close to the ground until it caught up to a neighbor’s fireplace or an open pilot light. If Carlsbad’s explosion would have occurred in a more densely populated area of Rio Communities and continued unabated for an hour as it did, the casualty count may have been shocking indeed. I heard the continuous roar of the Carlsbad explosion all the way in Veguita up on the Llano - all the way from Carlsbad. There were seismographic sensors intended for earthquake detection that captured the explosive force quite descriptively and revealed accurately the level of consequent devastation as a model of what could happen. Yet Valencia County has no real disaster plan in place and certainly not an effective Trauma Evacuation Strategy for a large disaster event or even the facility in Albuquerque to address one of any scale. Large capacity burn wards are a fiction, not a fact on the health care landscape.
West Nile - A Disaster Waiting to Happen
A large number of tires have accumulated in the area around Veguita and the LLano above and north of the Sevilleta Reserve. Next year the West Nile Virus is likely to make a dramatic reappearance now that we know it is here. Tires offer the ideal incubation environment for breeding mosquitoes, as they often have standing stagnant shaded water in their carcasses. These can be treated with a drop or two of motor oil, which will kill the larvae or sprayed routinely. They must be dealt with as they represent a genuine public health hazard. A proactive public plan needs to be implemented to head off the disaster.
Horses and livestock need to be sprayed and standing pools of shaded water cleaned up or drained. Open range cattle need to be treated since they harbor mosquitoes and flies. It should also be recognized that if a tick bites an infected horse it can transmit West Nile Virus as a blood-borne disease. I know of no conclusive proof to the contrary and in the interest of Public Health the doubt should be eliminated. I understand the Feds have a Hunta Virus experiment going in the Sevilleta Wilderness Area and that a football sized lot of infected mice escaped some time ago and tests were being conducted in wetland areas near Bernardo to see if there had been any noticeable effect of transmission to the marsh inhabitants. The property owner who was asked for access to his property was too indignant to allow the University team access to his marshlands after he was told the real story of what they were looking for. Mice carry fleas, ticks and get bitten by mosquitoes too.
Feds Are Fat On The Hog
Numerous dangers loom on the horizon, but in my humble opinion few loom as large as the Feds. Our two counties enjoy a large number of Federal Jobs and indeed it is the core of any real employment in Socorro county. Moreover Federal contracts loom large in the community as that is where their bread is buttered.
The entire Second Congressional District, all 17 counties, represent the largest land mass of any electoral district and represents special challenges. There are a few widely spaced communities over a large area with nothing but empty miles in between. The major areas of population in the 2nd CD are sector driven in their outlook, ie Artesia/Oil; Silver City/Mining; Hatch/Ag; Santa Fe/Tourism; Reserve/Logging and on…but suffice to say that it’s the miles between that separates them in their outlook.
Still, throughout the Federal Government is the largest employer in the Second Congressional District of any solvency: i.e, regular pay, on time, and at a higher standard of reimbursement and benefits. New Mexico needs to reallocate Federal expenditure in favor of creating a higher more inclusive standard of reimbursement for all New Mexicans. There is a crazy quilt economy in New Mexico and it leaves a lot of folks out and without. Yet there are a lot of expectations levied at the poor, whom they seem to merely whip harder always raising the bar on enough, or sufficiency, or survival.
Revenue Enhancement - Whip Them Harder!
Witness the latest revenue enhancement tool of the DMV. Now they can cancel your registration if you don’t pay for insurance. Then they can fine you again to re-up your paperwork. New Mexico is not very brainy when it comes to how it treats its citizens, they are little more than cows anyway. Cash cows.
Another Notch in the Insurance Shakedown
Statutory law is a replete tithe generator by virtue of what it can facilitate for a price. Public officials love writing laws around the Constitution and, since some citizens are going to profit, they choose to ignore the implications of their actions. Mandating that someone should buy a certain product or service is a violation of that which is Private Vs. Public interest. Government can tax, but not mandate a purchase of a service from any private interest over another. It is separation of powers for the protection of the citizens in order to guarantee due process, not corporate enhancement, at the expense of the people. Forcing people to buy insurance is not lawful under our Constitution of 1791.
A Congress Amuck or the Best Congress Money Can Buy
Our Congress has made a mockery out of the People’s Interest and Constitutional Premise. They write economic treaties and negotiate rights of passage for pipeline projects and conduct total war against the meek and the mighty. They never obey their laws and fail to declare War as a Rightful Act of Congressional Will , all this without due process and at the behest of a corporate elite. Americans enjoy the best Congress money can buy, not the best Congress a Free and Enlightened Electorate can vote for apart from monetary affiliation. We are supposed to vote on values and quality, not the moneychangers who represent our interests. If America has changed its because a great many of its people have opted out and left the politics to the wolves who move in as two opposing packs. One wants economic supremacy and the other wants to own you too. The Bipartisan Centrists Rule the Roost and Corporate America is looking real corpulent.
Don't You Feel Safer Now That I Have Your Rights? Are You With Me Here…?
Americans just want to settle down to the happy role of being the worlds consumptive engine, recreating micro economies in the wake of their supertanker expectations. And they'll bomb anyone to get it. Teddy Roosevelt would have felt bully good to be alive today and to get to spend this kind of money on the Spanish American War, a mere gnat on the wall in comparison by budget to the War on Terrorism, which will in the words of our fearless leader (who doesn't know how to take the lens covers off binoculars and who reads BOOKS upside down to little black girls on his knee while the towers burn), will “go on forever”.
Dang that’s a long time, I thought only the devil would be sassy enough to lay claim to an empire that vast and then in defiance of God. As I recall history is a mere 5,000 years old according to our recollection of it. Forever is a hell of a lot longer than that. Wow - I'm impressed now! Thank you G.W. for your insightful wisdom and your " either with us or cooked goose thrown to the buzzards" attitude. Just makes a citizen feel all round and fluffy - don't it!?
Take The Loyalty Test Or Follow Me…
Post Waco psycho drool red meat real agenda politics and anyone can be the focus of the witch hunt. After all everything is illegal in this free country and every body is hiding something from the government. They can go house to house and demand that you take the loyalty test and take your shot in the arm and let them search your digs to see where you are hiding a terrorist under your bed. All this of course mean that you are a good citizen, haven't been found out yet for something or other, or are cooked goose and hauled away kicking and screaming, no doubt, “where are my rights”. Every one will have a whale of a time! I am sure a psychologist would call this behavior paranoid. You see, it's sort of like the father that spanked his kids routinely every Saturday. When asked why he would do this he explained that he knew they weren't angels, so he probably missed something they did whey he wasn't watching. That is what I call "preemptive parenting".
Don't Trust The Citizens - Make Sure They Behave…
Yes, the Feds give me pause. They are too big and all pervasive. All lot of their new world order architecture of fear will be produced right here in New Mexico just like a B Western. And a whole new ream of janitors will suck up to the Federal Sponge and line up some more paid partisans. It will do very little to help the commoners economy New Mexico drastically needs. 76% of all New Mexico’s large employers (over 1000) are government related. There is no “free enterprise” in New Mexico.
There is a well endowed elite that live large on Federal perspectives while the rest of us continue to de-evolve into a new lower class of untrustworthy swarthy types that need to be monitored and watched like a herd of sheep.
Oh No, Here Come The Black Helicopters Again And This Stuff's Better Than Agent Orange!
Those of you that still see black helicopters should note that they'll be dumping Imazapyr or Arsenal herbicide up and down the Rio Grande water courses ostensibly to wipe out the salt cedar. Some of us think that it might have something to do with stimulating the stagnant world pesticide and herbicide business for American Cyanamid.
Inmate Consumers Are Good Recyclers and Handy Bio-Digesters for Profitable Industrial Waste!
Large International Pest Management (IPM) treaties and programs are written into the law and large areas of concern offer themselves up as dumping grounds for otherwise toxic waste formulated into herbicides and pesticides. Malathion was a bi-product of Nerve Gas production and through some dandy science made into a bug spray to get rid of tons of the stuff. So too with Sodium fluoride, a byproduct of Aluminum production, in everybody’s toothpaste. It is a rat poison, but through some nifty science and artful governmental intervention it got drafted right into the front lines of the "War on Tooth Decay".
That was probably an early version of the War on Terrorism, back when the government was just in your mouth looking for terroristic crud, but now they are in your TV, you wallet, a cookie in your computer and maybe even that little fly on your wall. Soon they are going to have to write a whole new definition for the word "paranoid"!
The ex-president of an Aluminum business who had gone to work for Health Education and Welfare thought it was a worthy choice for your forced consumption, so he elected to put fluoride into your teeth, toothpaste and your water supply.
The otherwise inorganic toxin, reintegrated through an organic system, was thus excreted back out into the environment in a less toxic form, thanks to you the consumer! (And the bio digestor unit for industrial waste!)
You see, if you disposed of sodium fluoride any other way it would cost you as much to do that as to extract the aluminum it was bound up with in the form of bauxite. And since it is an inorganic compound and a halogen it is a deadly toxin in concentrated form. Fluoride is absorbed by the Thyroid gland in order its atomic weight, therefore it displaces iodine and chlorine two other halogens in our food supply and water.
It's Just Business
That type of waste to product recycling is especially true in the mining industry as they produce huge stores of sludge and tailings of a corrosive and caustic nature. Not to mention low level radioactive wastes and other concentrated salts, heavy metals and pollutants. All these come in real handy for making pesticides which can then help sell off the toxic waste for huge profits per square inch from an otherwise liability loaded toxic waste dump.
The principle of dispersion was learned during radioactive testing years and was coined as a smart sounding concept for such an obscure subject as quantifying effects of radioactivity. The core concept was that radioactivity spread far and wide is actually safer than radioactivity that was heavily concentrated at lethal doses.
Duration of exposure became a secondary consideration in peoples thinking. Long term effects were unknown. Chemical and mining companies reason that its better to use this liability “creatively” and dump this stuff on us, the unsuspecting consumer. In fact there are absolutely no warranties held or offered by the manufacturer and all liability is assumed by the user - the useful consumer, who uses these pesticides, herbicides and other products at their own risk. Getting rich off your trash or making something out of nothing is pretty close to the stuff Americana is made of, unsuspecting consumers are too.
Rub Salt In The Wound - It Will Make It Feel Better!
In the case of Arsenal or Salt of Imazapyr I fail to see the logic of attacking a salt tolerant plant like Salt Cedar with a salt formulation in an area that decries its saline soils, overwrought with petrochemical fertilizer use and naturally alkali soils. Those who say salt cedar produces salt really stretch the truth. They merely grow in an salt afflicted area more readily and they can become immune to Salt of Imazapyr as some testing has clearly shown.
Government Publications Even Warn Against Its Use…
The Department of Agriculture’s own bulletin specifies Arsenal (Imazapyr) should not be used near food crops, or anywhere where water might wash it into food crop areas and is not to be used near water courses or wetlands and should not be allowed to run downstream.
The Cheapest Way To Dump The Most On You!
Application by air is touted as an efficient way to apply this substance, whereas studies prove this is not true. In fact a helicopter is only an improvement on an inefficient way to apply the herbicide - from the air from fixed wing aircraft.
The best method of application is to paint the substance onto the tree, however Imazapyr requires two years to continue to kill the tree as it needs to systemically be taken up to the furthest reaches of the root system. One must bear in mind that means straight into the water table in a shallow river-bottom area.
More Unanswered Questions…
The program managers argue that the two year period is needed and that serves two functions for them. It explains the current lack of funds to remove the dead trees and postpones cleanup until the next election time. If there are not forthcoming federal funds to clean up the dead trees then acres of salt cedar trees will still have to be cut and cleared down to the roots to remove them or they will stubbornly grow back. There are no studies of what synergistic reactions caused by burning salt cedar laden with herbicide residue will do or what breathing the subsequent smoke may do.
Over Spray Kills Your Veggies and All Your Trees…That's YOUR Problem!
47% of the applied herbicide will drift off site by up to two miles and will effect many other broadleaf plants and agricultural gardens in communities like La Joya. The assertion that it is the landowners choice to spray adjacent to a landowner that does not want it is moot, the over spray would be enough to accomplish spraying even if an owner didn't want it on his land.
CAUTION - CORROSIVE
Arsenal or Imazapyr is very corrosive and the manufacturer recommends using it in lined tanks only as it will eat through steel or aluminum and other metal implements and farm equipment.
If You Thought ‘HALF LIFE’ Means Radioactive - Think Again…
Imazapyr, because it is a salt, transmits very rapidly in water and lasts a long time. Decontamination by ozonation does not work with Imazapyr, leaving a residue in water for years. There are no studies on how long the residues last in soil, but there are assertions that its half life in soil is 49.5 months. That means that the study was 49.5 months and Imazapyr was still present in significant quantities when the time of the study ended. Imazapyr is especially apt to bound up longer in clay soils like the Rio Grande. In fact, clay is recommended as a disposal method for its ability to bind up salt laden sludge.
Inerts Don't Mean Safe!
There are secret ingredients in the inert ingredients of the manufacturer that they are free not to divulge even under the Freedom of Information Act, yet they want the right to dump it Statewide into our environment. Often inert ingredients will be as toxic or worse than the primary ingredient. There are four classes of inerts and only the first two are minimally documented by the EPA.
Out of the members of List One of Inerts over three hundred are toxic and hazardous. All the manufacturer has to do is list them on the bag, but he is not bound to remove them from the formulation. Many in List Two of Inerts are toxic potentially, but manufacturers have no requirement to mention them, even though no real research has been done to determine their safety. None of those in List Three and Four are required to be listed or no longer used and no research exists to determine use parameters or substance safety.
Bird Areas Will Be Effected
Some form of Exxon kerosene formulation is often used as a dispersal agent and it effects hatching and egg laying in birds. In fact there are very few animal studies (mice, pigs and dogs) with only the active ingredient tested, not the inert ingredients. There have been no studies on other mammals. There was a limited study on bird habitat that led to the conclusion that it cuts down on a replete habitat after use for years to come and will likely effect eggs and their viability.
Imazapyr Is At War In Colombia and Building A Human Rights Violation Legacy Every Day It Is Used
Extensive human rights violation allegations and appeals to the United Nations from the besieged country of Colombia exist decrying formulations used in the Agricultural Air War agents containing Imazapyr in other brand name formulations along with other ingredients.
Here are some photos of the devastation - http://www.witnessforpeace.org/colombia/photos.html
Link to: http://www.mamacoca.com for more on the Colombian disaster of our American War on Drugs. Other Drug War sites include:
http://www.drugpolicy.org
http://www.normlpac.com
http://www.drcnet.org
There’s more on the way… libertysteward.com We'll keep you informed on the inside track, all about what the politicians don't want you to know or understand the real truth about. The Second Congressional District is our beat, but we will cover New Mexico Politics for the real story. Stay tuned…
If you live in the 2nd CD, drop me an e-mail and let me know where to dig! editor@libertysteward.com
Sincerely,
George Luis Dewey - Founder and Editor for libertysteward.com
