by NMELC | Dec 14, 2022 | NMELC in the News
December 12, 2022
by Alexis Skonieski, KRQE Reporter
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….
by NMELC | Dec 9, 2022 | News, Press Releases
December 8, 2022
ALBUQUERQUE, NM—Diné and other Indigenous communities affected by uranium development took an important step on December 8, 2022, when they, with Law Center assistance, filed a request for a thematic hearing with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to present testimony about the ongoing human rights violations associated with uranium development….
by NMELC | Nov 22, 2022 | NMELC in the News
By Susan Montoya Bryan
Associated Press
US News
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — On the southern edge of New Mexico’s largest city is a Hispanic neighborhood that used to be made up of a patchwork of family farms and quiet streets, but industrial development has closed in over the decades, bringing with it pollution.
Neighbors point to regular plumes of smoke and the smell of chemicals wafting through the neighborhood at night, saying contamination has disproportionately affected the area when compared with more affluent neighborhoods in the Albuquerque area. …
by NMELC | Nov 21, 2022 | News, Press Releases
November 21, 2022
ALBUQUERQUE, NM—Mountain View Coalition members—Mountain View Neighborhood Association, Mountain View Community Action & Friends of Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge—and the New Mexico Environmental Law Center will file their historic Health, Environment & Equity Impacts draft regulation to the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Air Quality Control Board on Monday, November 21st.
At 2pm on Monday, Nov. 21st, Mountain View Coalition, NMELC and community allies will gather at the Mountain View Community Center, 201 Prosperity Avenue SE, Albuquerque NM, to celebrate this historic moment in the long struggle for environmental justice in frontline impacted communities.
NMELC Senior Staff attorney Eric Jantz and Mountain View Coalition members will be on hand to speak about the draft regulation and to answer questions from the media. Copies of the draft regulation will be available at the event. The draft will not be made public until after the filing to the Air Quality Control Board on Monday, Nov. 21st. Community members and allies have been invited to come in support with signs. …
by NMELC | Sep 13, 2022 | NMELC in the News
By Gov. Vernon B. Abeita, Pueblo of Isleta, with co-authors Lauro Silva / board member, Mountain View Neighborhood Association; Marla Painter / president, Mountain View Community Action; Katie Dix / executive director, Friends of Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge; and Virginia Necochea / executive director, N.M. Environmental Law Center.
Albuquerque Journal
September 11, 2022
On Tuesday, Sept. 13, the Bernalillo County Commissioners will make a decision with outsized consequences for the South Valley and the Pueblo of Isleta, directly across the railroad tracks from a new housing development. The county zoning ordinance does not allow this type of land use, and the locals do not want it. The county zoning administrator, the county Board of Adjustment, and Albuquerque’s Environmental Health Department have thus far denied all requests relating to the new asphalt plant. Commissioners are now considering Star Paving’s appeal of a zoning administrator decision that it cannot build an asphalt plant on this site. Commissioners should deny the appeal. …
