Court Stops ABQ City Council from Purging Previous Air Board
Dan Lewis Bills Remain Unenforceable Until Court Determines Their Legality
Santa Fe—First Judicial District Judge Francis Mathew on Thursday, January 25, granted the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Air Quality Control Board’s request for a preliminary injunction blocking the City of Albuquerque from implementing two bills that the Albuquerque City Council passed in December 2023 illegally removing City appointed members of the Air board and putting a moratorium on acting by the Board through February.
City Council Intimidation Results in Rushed Air Board Regulation Hearing
New HEEI Rule Unlikely to Protect Overburdened Communities
ALBUQUERQUE, NM —The new Health, Environment, and Equity Impacts (HEEI) regulation passed by the Air Quality Control Board last month on December 11th has finally been published on the Joint Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Air Quality Control Board docket. (See Docket No. 242, pp. 22-23).
The Mountain View Coalition, represented by the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, continues to have questions about what the new rule means, how it will work, and most importantly, whether it will, in fact, protect predominantly low-income and People of Color communities like Mountain View that have been targeted with toxic and polluting industry for decades in Bernalillo County.
Top 10 Environmental Issues to Watch in New Mexico in 2024
January/February 2024 By NMELC Staff Green Fire Times The New Mexico Environmental Law Center is honored once again to be invited by Green Fire Times to share our list of what we consider to be the Top 10 Environmental Justice Issues for the coming year. This annual...Albuquerque Air War: Big Business, Bipartisan Politicos Attack Environmental Justice Rule
December 15, 2023
By Kent Paterson, CounterPunch
Promoting a tourism mystique, the marketers of Albuquerque, New Mexico, peddle images of clean skies, diverse culture and delicious cuisine. The icons encompass soaring hot air balloons, majestic Sandia Mountain vistas and the ubiquitous chile pepper, red or green. But if current political trends hold, the postcard visitors send grandma might depict more spewing emissions, sickly skies and gagging residents.
At least that’s the implication of recent actions by the Albuquerque City Council that sacked the current members of the joint Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Air Quality Control Board (JAQCB) and blocked a proposed Health, Environment and Equity Impacts rule (HEEI) aimed at protecting low-income communities of color in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County from further, disproportionate air pollution impacts, including the cumulative effects of pollution. …