Groups want tighter rules for businesses seeking South Valley air permits

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – On a good day, Marla Painter says you can smell the fresh air in the South Valley. On others, she says all you smell are chemicals coming from the many industrial developments in the area.

“We have just seen one air permit after another rubber-stamped without any consideration for the health and wellbeing of the community,” Painter says. She feels the South Valley, her home for the last 25 years, has become a haven for industrial developments.

For her health’s sake, she says enough is enough. “We deserve to live in a beautiful, pollution-free community as they do in the Heights. It’s not fair that a certain class of people, a certain group of people, are expected to take all the dirty stuff.”…