Targeted for Pollution: Southside Coalition Beefs Up With Technical Expert, Lawyers in Fight Against Asphalt Plant
By Katherine Lewin, Santa Fe Reporter
A coalition of Santa Fe residents have come together to oppose the permitting of yet another polluting industry on the Southside.
‘This Has Got to Stop’: Indigenous Activists Decry Lingering Contamination Decades after the Last Uranium Mines Closed
By Kendra Chamberlain, New Mexico Political Report
Thursday night, a group of Indigenous community leaders gave presentations about the legacy of uranium mining in the state that still threatens the health and environment of their communities, decades after the last mines ceased operations.
LANL Tritium Venting, Middle DP Road And Consent Order Dominate NMED Community Engagement Meeting
BY MAIRE O’NEILL maire@losalamosreporter.com More than 100 people tuned in to a virtual community engagement meeting hosted by the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) Thursday evening where the proposed venting of four flanged tritium waste containers at Los...
Release of Radioactive Tritium a Bad Idea
Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. It emits beta radiation, which can be very dangerous if inhaled. Like other forms of ionizing radiation, tritium can cause cancer, genetic mutations and birth defects, and assorted other adverse health effects. So it is...
Residents Voice Concerns about LANL Releasing Tritium Vapors
Area residents expressed concerns this week about the potential health hazards of releasing radioactive vapors into the atmosphere from four barrels of tritium-laced waste stored at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Most who spoke during a virtual forum Tuesday hosted...
Can’t Keep Up: EPA rolls back regulations during pandemic, shifts burden to states, tribes
As the country reels from the spread of the novel coronavirus, federal regulators say they can't keep up with the enforcement of environmental laws. They're also mounting a push-back campaign against press reports and lawmakers who questioned the new policy. Last...
Letter to the Editor: EPA enforcement memo creates confusion
By Charles de Saillan in the Santa Fe New Mexican “A ball of confusion,” the Temptations sang in 1970, “that’s what the world is today, hey, hey.” Fifty years later, amid COVID-19, those lyrics ring eerily true. On March 26, the Environmental Protection Agency added...
EPA Rolls Back Regulations During Pandemic, Shifts Burden To States, Tribes
As the country reels from the spread of the novel coronavirus, federal regulators say they can’t keep up with the enforcement of environmental laws. They’re also mounting a push-back campaign against press reports and lawmakers who questioned the new policy. Last...
LANL to Release Radioactive Gas into Atmosphere
“Los Alamos National Laboratory will release radioactive vapors into the atmosphere to ventilate several barrels of tritium-tainted waste generated during the Cold War ... Lab personnel will ventilate one container at a time and filter the released vapors through...
New WOTUS Rule May Affect Stormwater regulation in Los Alamos County
The Santa Fe New Mexican published an article on Saturday February 29 discussing how the new "waters of the United States" (WOTUS) rule could lead to less regulation of stormwater from Los Alamos National Laboratory and in Los Alamos County. Law Center Staff Attorney...
Radioactive Legacy Haunts Red Water Pond Road Community
RED WATER POND ROAD, N.M. — The village of Red Water Pond Road sits in the southeast corner of the Navajo Nation, a tiny speck in a dry valley surrounded by scrub-covered mesas. Many families have lived here for generations. The federal government wants to move them...
Church Rock, America’s Forgotten Nuclear Disaster
Early in the summer of 1979, Larry King, an underground surveyor at the United Nuclear Corporation's Church Rock Uranium mine in New Mexico, began noticing something unusual when looking at the south side of the tailings dam. That massive earthen wall was responsible...
In Albuquerque, a Pollution Problem All Too Familiar to Communities of Color
From Tina Deines, Bitterroot Magazine: "Across the West, communities of color — four in five San Jose residents are Hispanic — suffer disproportionately from the output of polluting industries, and are more likely to live near Superfund sites and other places...
Proposed East Mountains Development Loses Water Fight
The Albuquerque Journal covered our victory in the Aquifer Science case. The judge's determination that climate change impacts on future water supplies should have been considered is an important point. Douglas Meikljohn, Executive Director of the Law Center, raised...
Board Member Harry Browne OpEd on the Gila River
Harry Browne, Grant County Commissioner and Law Center Board member, and Alicia Edwards, also a Grant County Commissioner, wrote an OpEd to the Santa Fe New Mexican that was published on January 30, 2019. "We applaud Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s commitment to end the...