La Jicarita

Opinion By Om Jaya

The best laid plans of mice and men is an expression to signify, despite careful planning, that projects can still fail and cause grief. Big promises often lead to big problems. Moss Landing in California, the Moly Corp/Chevron mine in Questa, Oak Flat in Arizona, the national list is growing. These massive developments are always at the risk of environmental impact and the health and safety of communities. Corporations use clever advertising to sway public opinion, and publish articles on why it’s good for you to support them. Their tone is of concern for public interest but when asked for environmental, health, and safety assessments, they often reply unrealistically.

Guilty companies back out of harmful projects after they’ve taken enough resources and their stock holders are satisfied. These capital groups make promises to restore and balance the land they’ve destroyed and always fall short of their commitments. While capital groups make millions, a few locals earn well, but the environmental destruction is done and serious health issues emerge. The shadow of dishonest corporations and soft handed representatives linger forever.

And now we are faced again with a potential Mice and Men story: the proposed installation of a hydrogen plant and hundreds of acres of solar panels in Questa, along with the proposed hydrogen plants in Taos and Picuris. These possible productions (pilot, in other words, experimental) have rightfully been upsetting local and national citizens who have taken the time to research and uncover the potential environmental impacts and the risks of health and safety to our community.

Kit Carson Electric Coop has been crafting one sided adds disguised as articles that cleverly sway public opinion, falsely stating that all is green, proper environmental assessments have been done, and that they have had no push back. Truth be told, as our community wakes up to this undeveloped proposal, push back is rapidly increasing and the community’s questions of concern are not being fully answered.

Luis Reyes of KCEC tells us everything’s in order, shows no legal proof, and the mayor of Questa, John Ortega, remains silent. Questa Village Councilor Daryl Ortega (no relation to the mayor) has asked Luis Reyes for a copy of the original USDA grant application and other documents related to the $231 million award that funds the project; months later, Luis continues to avoid the request. The latest statement from KCEC is the most alarming: they have done an impact study in case the hydrogen plant explodes. An explosion impact report looks good on paper, but how can we predict the unpredictable power of nature? Why is KCEC so desperate to begin this project?

We are the ones we have been waiting for, so let’s step up and protect our right to have influence on the land we live and love on. Worldwide, alternative clean methods of creating and storing energy are rapidly being developed while hydrogen continues to propose challenges. KCEC needs to imagine a back to the land picture of Taos and not support one of corporate industrial take over. Getting back to the land is not a fantasy, it’s a necessity. We don’t need an eye sore dinosaur (hydrogen plant) that will become obsolete while it is breaking down. A construction mistake like this will not weaken but will challenge the spirit of our people and discolor our already tarnished past.

And there is hope. A new wave of a conscious and vibrant attitude is rising in Taos County, one of regeneration and revival. A vision of returning to community, local culture, food, and arts, one of giving rights back to the land and taking responsibility for its uses. Let’s nourish the nature we are famous for, not stress it with thousands of solar panels and hydrogen plants.

What if our children and their children and the elk and eagle could speak. Will they have to fight for the health and safety of their lives and the protection of the environment, and will their cries fall on deaf ears?

No, we as concerned citizens won’t let that happen.

I’ll be reading from my book Antonio “Ike” DeVargas—Norteño Warrior: The Politics of Land, Power, and Justice in Northern New Mexico on Wednesday, May 20, 6 pm, at Collected Works Bookstore in Santa Fe. Ty Bannerman will also be reading from his book Nuclear Family: a memoir of the atomic west.

A blurb from Lucy Lippard, author of  Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West.

Unlike journalists from elsewhere “covering” the chaotic politics of northern New Mexico, the writer Kay Matthews has lived it. This book on her friend and fellow warrior, the grassroots leader Ike DeVargas, is a lively and detailed account of decades of struggle. The varied participants include several tiny rural communities, the US Forest Service, the Spotted Owl, State and County local officials, La Raza, environmentalists, and local Chicano land grant activists. The subtitle says it all: “The Politics of Land, Power, and Justice in Northern New Mexico.”

New Mexico has a notoriously complex history, often playing out invisibly in its many poor rural communities still dealing with the traumas of colonialism, land grants, and corrupt officials. Those of us from away, no matter how long we have lived here, cannot fully understand the issues in Rio Arriba County, the devotion to homeplace, longtime dominance of Emilio Naranjo, and the economic importance of grazing, firewood, and logging permits to the surrounding communities. The battles that began in the 1960s are ongoing. Though DeVargas and his cohort often lost, they are famously resilient and their occasional hard-won victories have changed the political landusescape. Matthews and her family have long been active and trusted allies in these struggles, and her paper, La Jicarita, is a vital information source for those still fighting the good fights and for those of us who are supportive but not in the thick of it.

Few of these stories are known to a broader audience and hopefully Matthews’s book will not only keep the memory of Ike DeVargas alive but inspire other contributions from the inside of those adobe houses with no running water, no electricity, like the one Ike lived in. So if you’re a lefty and ready to participate, but not quite sure what that means in northern New Mexico, read about the Ike DeVargas model… and step up.
—

By KAY MATTHEWS

Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, the second speaker at the public hearing on the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Plutonium Pit Production, pretty much summed up the opposition to the Draft in his three minutes: “Pit production is not necessary and downright wrong.”

• The proposed pits are for the production of new weapons that could lead to testing, which violates the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
• It’s been proved that existing pits have a ± 100-year life span.
• The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has failed for years to formulate a clean-up plan for all of LANL’s contaminated waste. Pit production will continue to block and exacerbate clean-up.
• The New Mexico Environment Department is forcing the Department of Energy to prioritize the shipment of legacy waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
• The missing alternative in this EIS is legacy waste clean-up instead of pit production.

The preferred alternative in this EIS is the Multi-Site Alternative, referring to both LANL and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. The proposal is for LANL to produce 10/30/80 pits per year and SRS to produce 50/80/125 pits per year. The promulgation of the EIS is a result of the lawsuit that Nuclear Watch New Mexico and other watch dog groups filed against the NNSA that temporarily halted plutonium pit production at Savannah River, leaving LANL as NNSA’s sole pit-production site. The settlement required the development of a new programmatic environmental impact statement involving public hearings around the country by July 2027.

However, as Dylan Spaulding, scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, pointed out in his comments, the Trump administration has issued a new directive to accelerate nuclear weapons production at LANL. On February 11, 2026 Dave Beck, Deputy National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator for Defense Programs, issued a “framework” memorandum mandating NNSA to urgently accelerate the modernization of the nuclear weapons stockpile and the revitalization of its associated facilities and infrastructure to enable production of 100 plutonium pits and achieve a production rate of at least 60 pits per year.

As I listened to the dozens (over 100) who spoke against this draft proposal, I couldn’t help but compare their diversity with the NNSA and LANL administrators, all white men with crew cuts, sitting in the front row.

John Wilkes of the Plutonium Trail Caravan, which follows the transportation and disposition of waste from LANL, castigated LANL for failure to clear up Area C or the buried containers in Area G.

Sean Arent, a member of the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, reminded everyone of the first nuclear arms race at the decommissioned and radioactive Hanford Plant where workers struggle to clean-up the toxic mess. “Proposing new nuclear sites like this to future generations is a curse.”

A member of the Party for Socialist Liberation told the group “This is a farce. If they [the nuclear industry] were actually listening to us they wouldn’t be making bombs.” Madison Figueroa spoke for the UNM Students for Nuclear Disarmament.

Several speakers decried the amount of water LANL will acquire to meet its objectives while the rest of the state is experiencing desertification. Others raised the seismic issue of the Rio Grande Rift that runs right through the Parajito plateau.

One of the biggest reactions from the crowd came when Pat Leahan, of the Las Vegas Peace and Justice Center, speaking remotely, pointed out the sentence on NNSA’s presentation screen that stated: “Peace through atomic strength.” She suggested a more accurate catch phrase would be “stress through nuclear development” as we descend into violence to deter violence.

Public comments are due by July 16 of 2026. All the comments made at the public hearings will be added to the official site along with those submitted by email and snail mail. The email address is PITPEIS@NNSA.GOV. Opposition to this EIS and all previous EISs, from 1999 to 2026, has been overwhelming, but the pits keep marching on. However, there’s hope. By the time the SRS facilities are anywhere near ready for production, and when LANL proves incapable of producing more than a few pits, there will be a new congressional mandate that halts the billions—trillions—of dollars that no longer exist in a failed economy.

Editor’s Note: Covering the on-going arguments regarding the reuse of oil and gas wastewater hasn’t been in La Jicarita’s purview, but the latest decision by the Water Quality Control Commission is so egregious that I’m posting the New Energy Economy’s press release. The WQCC, lobbied heavily by the Water Access, Treatment and Reuse Alliance — or WATR Alliance — a trade group with members from the oil and gas industry, voted for the second time to advance a petition to expand and regulate the reuse of oil and gas wastewater. The Lujan Grisham administration also lobbied WQCC to overturn a year-old decision prohibiting the reuse of the wastewater, making sure that her appointed WQCC commissioners were making the right decision. WQCC will hold a public hearing to advance the rule making, a hearing that will be protested by the many environmental and public advocacy groups that oppose this decision.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Mariel Nanasi, Executive Director, New Energy Economy
(505) 469-4060 | mnanasi@newenergyeconomy.org

May 12, 2026

Despite The Fact that Science is Missing to Prove Oil and Gas Industry Waste Water Is Safe for Reuse or Discharge WQCC Votes to Move Oil & Gas Industry Petition Forward

Santa Fe, NM — Environmental and public interest organizations lost today; oil and gas industry’s latest attempt to weaken New Mexico’s produced water protections was greenlighted today despite the fact that the science remains fundamentally incomplete, uncertain, and incapable of demonstrating safety for human health or the environment.

While the Petition cites scientific studies, the studies themselves do not establish the central claim the industry needs to prove: that produced water can actually be treated and reused safely in the real world. Critically, the industry repeatedly claims that produced water can be treated and reused “to a non-toxic level in a real-world setting,” yet that statement does not appear in the cited studies or in the scientific literature itself.

The scientific record instead demonstrates the opposite: the science surrounding produced water reuse remains in an early and highly uncertain stage. Major unresolved problems remain, including incomplete characterization of contaminants, the presence of unknown and unmeasured compounds, lack of comprehensive toxicological datasets, and the complete absence of established regulatory frameworks capable of ensuring safe discharge or reuse.

The Water Quality Control Commission’s Vice Chair said “the Petition is not ready for us to hear it.” The Chair of the Commission said the Petition has “serious legal flaws” and has pages, 20 page or more of blank empty spaces” and stated that he could “not support it in its current form.” He specifically pointed out that produced water contains complex mixtures that the industry has not “fessed up” to. Produced water is full of known and unknown contaminants, that treatment technologies remain experimental, and that the state lacks sufficient standards and data to regulate reuse safely.

“The oil and gas industry is asking regulators to leap far ahead of the science,” said Mariel Nanasi, Executive Director, New Energy Economy. “While there is new science – that science does not state what it must: that produced water can be treated and discharged and is safe. New Mexicans should not become guinea pigs for an experiment involving toxic radioactive wastewater that has not been proven safe.”

Under New Mexico law, the Commission’s role is to prevent and abate water pollution — not to create new industrial water supplies for oil and gas operators or speculative development projects. Many Commissioners raised questions about bias, concerned with who is paying for the NM Produced Water Consortium and the studies that result therefrom; they were also concerned with the accuracy of statements in the Petition.

At its core, the situation is simple: the science is not settled. It is evolving, incomplete, and deeply uncertain. That is exactly why the Commission previously prohibited discharge and reuse of produced water outside tightly controlled pilot projects in 2025. Until comprehensive science, toxicology, and enforceable regulatory safeguards exist, allowing widespread reuse or discharge would place New Mexico’s groundwater, rivers, communities, and future generations at unacceptable risk.

Opinion By JUAN MONTES

Since February Chevron has stopped environmental cleanup at the Questa mine that was judicially mandated in a Superfund consent decree. In a Cease and Desist Order, Chevron fired the Superfund contractor Granite with over 150 employees and forced it to remove all of its equipment from the mine site along the Red River. The RV parks in Questa are nearly vacant and the Chevron cheerleaders are left unemployed and in limbo, pushing an irrelevant produced water petition (toxic water which they won’t drink). In a hypocritical stance, produced brine water promoters want taxpayers to clean up oil and gas corporations’ environmental mess 400 miles away while turning a blind eye to the Chevron’s pollution in their own backyard.

Instead of demanding that Chevron clean up its environmental damage at the mine and tailings site, the mayor of Questa, in tandem with Kit Carson Electric Coop (who the mayor works for), want to break ground in May for a water-intensive, flammable, and combustible Green Hydrogen Plant next to our elementary school. This ill-conceived plan is at taxpayer’s expense (from a USDA grant), not the near-trillion-dollar Chevron corporation. Chevron made the decision to change the placement of this green hydrogen plant, originally planned for the Red River mine site, using treated mine water, to a populated section of Questa, ten miles away, using groundwater from a minimally used well, siphoning off precious, clean, groundwater.

Kit Carson Electric Coop’s engineering firm EnTrust calculates that the plant will use 31,000,000 gallons (95 acre feet) of water a year from a well formerly designated solely for dust suppression just north of the tailings pond. In the midst of a prolonged drought, this massive groundwater depletion will result in many domestic wells going dry as well as desertification of the entire area. The siphoning effect will also deplete acequias running north of Questa, and in Llano/Cerro, leaving farms and ranches dry. It should be noted that Chevron owns the land the plant will be on, as well as the water rights, neither of which have been transferred to Kit Carson. In a faulty decision, the Office of the State Engineer erroneously revived heretofore expired water rights Chevron claimed throughout the area.

The process is bankrupt and has been marred by a complete lack of transparency, blatant conflicts of interest, and an arrogant disregard for public involvement or safety. Hiding behind Trump’s effort to gut NEPA (National Environmental Protection Act), Kit Carson Electric hired EnTrust to conduct a superficial environmental assessment that totally excluded people and communities affected by the hydrogen project. Kit Carson Electric organized several informal community meetings in Questa, which resulted in 90 percent of attendees, at all meetings, opposed to this ill-planned project. Then the mayor, who works for Kit Carson Electric, started to convene secret meetings, by invitation only, to solicit support, but none has been forthcoming from any sector because of the water-intensive nature of the project in the middle of a serious drought.

The lack of water for a water-intensive project is enough for it to fall on its face, but there is more. The flammability and combustibility of green hydrogen are well documented, yet greed and illusions of power are blindly driving this project. Placing this hydrogen gas plant next to our elementary school is criminal, and elected officials promoting this ill-fated plan should be recalled immediately. The production and storage of hydrogen gas is highly dangerous and Kit Caron Electric and the Village of Questa have no experience in this process, yet greedy power brokers and pusillanimous petty politicians are willing to put people’s lives at risk.

Juan Montes is a  longtime environmental justice advocate and a Concerned Citizen de Questa

We’ll be talking about Ike DeVargas’s remarkable political life and reading passages in his own words of his many battles for justice: La Raza Unida Party’s conquest of a corrupt political machine; the struggles that ended corporate logging;  the removal of the Juan de Oñate statue; and challenging the prison industrial complex. Those who knew Ike can share their stories and others can learn about a complex history of northern New Mexico.

Opportunity for Public Support Comments to clean up Los Alamos Labs, until June 8th

 By email to: HWB-WIPP-Comment@env.nm.gov
By postal mail:
Megan McLean, WIPP Program Manager
Hazardous Waste Bureau – New Mexico Environment Department
2905 Rodeo Park Drive East, Building 1
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505-6303

On April 23, the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) issued a Draft Permit proposing to require a minimum percentage of legacy shipments from Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, (WIPP).

NMED’s action would help stop LANL plans to leave 1 million cubic meters of radioactive and hazardous waste buried above our regional aquifer in a seismic zone between a rift and a dormant super volcano. The action would also limit waste from new pit production.

Here are some of the provisions of the Draft Permit that we must support in our comments –

* From January 1, 2027 through December 31, 2031, at least 55% of the total volume of all waste emplaced at WIPP from all generator/storage sites must be LANL legacy waste.

* Beginning January 1, 2032, and until all LANL legacy waste has been emplaced at WIPP, LANL legacy waste must be at least 75% of the total volume of waste emplaced from all generator/storage sites.

* Legacy waste currently stored above-ground at LANL Material Disposal Area-G shall be shipped and emplaced at WIPP by July 1, 2028.

* If at any point any of those conditions are not met, all generator/storage site shipments (with the exception of LANL) must cease until all deficiencies are cured.

Written public comments can be submitted until 5:00 p.m. MT, on June 8, 2026. The NMED Draft

Permit, Public Notice, and Fact Sheet are on the WIPP News https://www.env.nm.gov/hazardous-waste/wipp/.

For more info: http://www.stopforeverwipp.org,

http://sric.org/ , http://nuclearactive.org/,  http://www.nukewatch.org

Opinion by KAY MATTHEWS

Kudos to Rio Arriba County for passing Resolution 2026-057 opposing any uranium mining in the Carson National Forest and requesting a full environmental impact assessment by the Forest Service. A Canadian corporation, Gamma Resources, has filed for a permit to do exploratory drilling in the Canjilon area of the Carson. The New Mexico congressional delegation is on board with the county’s opposition: Senator Ben Ray Lujan is drafting legislation to withdraw the Chama watershed from mineral development with Senator Heinrich and Representative Leger Fernandez’s support.

Several administrative concerns give pause, however. The US Forest Service, which would ordinarily be the agency overseeing the request for a permit is currently being dismantled  by the Trump administration, with the Washington headquarters moved to Salt Lake City, home of the movement to privatize public lands, all regional offices shut down, and fifty research facilities closed. The administration had already eviserated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by allowing actions on federal lands to proceed with expedited or curtailed environmental review. Individual agencies are making the decision whether to allow public comment via scoping or draft environmental assessments (EA). Kit Carson Electric Coop released an EA on the proposed “green energy” solar array and hydrogen facility in Questa with no public input.

The other worry is that the administration will supplant the NEPA process with the FAST-41 program that allows the fast-tracking of environmental reviews for infrastructure projects, as established by Title 41 of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act. Now Trump has directed that mineral production projects be accelerated under the FAST-41 program. We don’t know how this is going to proceed regarding the Canjilon mining permit request, but Luis Peña submitted a request to the county to inspect public records regarding anything related to Gamma Resources.

Mount Taylor is also under siege. After years in the works, Laramide Resources company submitted the La Jara Mesa Mining application to New Mexico Mining and Minerals Division for the proposed uranium mine north of Mount Taylor early this year. During the initial public comment period the state agency received over 200 letters opposing the mine; in light of this strong opposition it extended the comment period and committed to holding a public hearing, but not until it receives answers to questions that will be submitted to Laramide. Because the proposed plan is on the Cibola National Forest, that agency is also responsible for a NEPA analysis, as in the proposed Canjilon uranium exploration. Unfortunately, the La Jara Mesa mine has already been listed on the FAST-41 fast-track.  This is the rationale, as stated in the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council press release: “The Permitting Council is committed to working closely with the National Energy Dominance Council and other Federal partners to advance President Trump’s bold agenda to make America energy dominant again, and use all necessary resources to build critical infrastructure.”

Uranium mining in the Mount Taylor area in the 1970s led to legacy waste from the open-pit Jackpile Mine on Laguna Pueblo, a Superfund site, and the mining and milling operations at Ambrosia Lake, Kerrmac, and Homestake north of Grants. The Navajo Nation suffered extensive uranium ore extraction and in 1979 the Church Rock spill unleashed 94 million gallons of radioactive waste into the Rio Puerco. As mining booms always do, it kept miners employed during the boom, then out-of-work and contaminated after the bust. The Trump administration is doing everything in its power to enhance nuclear energy production with already compromised accountability from the mining industrial complex and the federal government.

The Navajo Nature currently has a moratorium on uranium mining. Diné activist Leona Morgan and others were out on the streets in Bernalillo a week ago protesting the Nuclear in New Mexico conference where industry and its proponents were advocating for not only uranium mining but SMRs (small modular nuclear reactors), reprocessing, enrichment facilities, and more. They’re pushing nuclear reactors as “renewable energy” and, as NM State Representative Meredith Dixon stated, “I would really like to see New Mexico as a leader in all things nuclear.” Virginia McLemore of the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources called New Mexico’s supposed one billion pounds of uranium “world class deposits . . . [that are]  going to keep going until we have exploited all of it.”

The idea of drilling rigs crisscrossing the forests of Canjilon is anathema to all of us. Carson National Forest, if it proves to be the decision maker via the NEPA process, has a huge responsibility, not only to the Chama Valley but to the state of New Mexico, to protect our forests and watersheds from an industry that enables nuclear bombs, desecration of the environment, and unhealthy people.