Post-census redistricting has begun. There is a somewhat hierarchical list of requirements for good redistricting: population balance (one person, one vote), protection and representation of under-represented and oppressed groups, district contiguity and compactness, party and incumbent neutrality, and representation for communities of interest. A former, long-time state representative once said that politics is about the division or distribution of resources. Basically, who gets what and how much. It is important for the breadth of diversity of a state, county, or city to be represented in the decision makers. With these concepts in mind, a coalition of groups led by Fair Districts New Mexico support the adoption of redistricting maps from the sets of maps adopted by the Citizen Redistricting Committee. We strongly encourage you to write letters to the editor of your local newspapers, print and electronic, and to contact your legislators directly to encourage adoption of one of the CRC maps for Congress, State Senate, State House, and Public Education Commission. The Special Session for redistricting begins December 6, 2021.
GP News
Redistricting–GPNM is part of the coalition gathered by Fair Districts New Mexico to promote citizen involvement in the redistricting process at the state level. The Citizen Redistricting Committee (CRC) forwarded three maps each for redrawing districts for U. S. House of Representatives, the New Mexico House and Senate, and the Public Education Committee. At this point it is up to the state legislature to adopt maps from the CRC or create its own. We ask that you contact your legislators or write letters to the editor of your local news publications about this. Points to emphasize include adopting a CRC map that is strongly population balanced; avoids partisan and incumbent gerrymandering; protects historically oppressed and underrepresented communities; and respects tribal, county, and municipal boundaries to the extent possible. Please point out that the redistricting process should comply with the Open Meetings Act with proceedings open and accessible to the public–no backroom deals! The Special Session is expected to state on December 6th.
Gateway Greens Webinar–This has been a great series. Currently the focus is on agriculture. The next webinar is titled, “Healing a Broken Agricultural System” will be Wednesday, December 1, 2021, 6:00 p. m. MST on Zoom. Topics include moving from corporate-controlled, pesticide-based monoculture to regenerative and sustainable food systems and a discussion of decolonizing agriculture with urban farming. Register in advance at https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYlf-6sqT8vHd1pV91NEjiKQEVztp1rHUwx or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/603408037475032/?ref=newsfeed or https://www.facebook.com/groups/1392269120939428/permalink/2100597693439897/
Petitioning–We continue collecting signatures for a ballot line in 2022. Please reply if you can collect signatures for an hour or two in the parking lot of the Railyards Holiday Market, December 11-12, 10am to 4pm, at the Railyards in Albuquerque. We will not have a booth but will remain outside the event. Please let us know how your local efforts are going. Thanks. In other important ballot access news, one of the onerous requirements for new parties in Montana was declared unconstitutional by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Read more at gp.org/ninth_circuit_strikes_down.
Candidates–We call for candidates for the 2022 General Election with the caveat that the Green Party is still working to obtain a Green Party ballot line. Please contact us for the implications of that with regard to candidates’ signature requirements. Regular local elections across the state occurred early this month. Local elections are non-partisan in New Mexico and are an opportunity for Greens to get elected to public office. The next state-wide regular local elections will be in 2023. Please start thinking now about how you may serve your community on a school board, conservation board, improvement district, governing council, or as mayor. In 2021, approximately 40 Greens were elected to public office in the USA.
Holtec Update–Holtec was late responding to a Request for Additional Information (RAI) from the NRC. The schedule for the publication of the safety evaluation review (SER) will be delayed from the previously planned January 2022. The new schedule regarding the application for a nuclear waste storage facility in Lea County has yet to be determined.
Webinar: “Nonviolence in a Violent World: Making a Difference Through Direct Action and Civil Disobedience”
Thursday, November 18, 2021 at 6 pm MST
The Green Party Peace Action Committee (GPAX) presents speakers directly involved in these struggles followed by Q & A.
Confirmed Speakers
- Ajamu Baraka, Black Alliance for Peace
- Allen McGonagill, Extinction Rebellion
- Christopher Velazquez, Veterans for Peace
- Henry Stoever, PeaceWorks Kansas City
- Jill Stein, Green Party Presidential Candidate 2012 & 2016
- Kelly Maracle, Water Protector & Land Defender – Line 3 Arrestee
Co-Sponsors
- Cleveland Peace Action
- IRTF (InterReligious Task Force on Central America)
- PeaceWorks Kansas City
- Missouri Green Party
- Extinction Rebellion Boston
Register here: https://www.gp.org/nonviolence_in_a_violent_world
Stand Up for the Green New Deal
I was very sorry to see Bernie Sanders terminate his presidential campaign. It is true that the opposition was already pouring fortunes into combating him and his ideas, and the arrival of COVID-19 was preventing a continuation of the very well attended campaign rallies he inspired. Nonetheless, Senator Sanders was better able to bring attention to his policies and proposals while he was in the national spotlight as a candidate for President. Because the focus has passed to other candidates and to the crises that demand more of our attention, I am writing this letter in hope of restoring public awareness to the Green New Deal. Several of Senator Sanders’s most important campaign issues remain of vital importance to our country and need to be rescued both from the continuing chaos of the pandemic response and from electoral politics. We must supported these policies, which address our deepest needs and those of our ecosystems and our planetary home!
The Green New Deal originated in the Green Party, where it differs from Senator Sanders’s version in that it is more detailed. But at this point, either New Deal offers immense opportunities for improvements of incomparable importance to our lives. An emergency Green New Deal will turn the tide on climate change by investing in renewable energy sources, will thereby make wars for oil obsolete, will invest in public transportation, sustainable renewable agriculture and restoration of our ecosystems. Twenty million jobs will be created in the renewable and the infrastructure areas by this national transition. A Green New Deal will retrain workers, pay and benefits will be generous, and there will be a guarantee that no worker is unable to shift to employment in the transitional and renewed infrastructure and ecosystem. Fracking, tar sands, natural gas and uranium mining will give way to a democratic, worker-owned national electric grid powered by renewable sources. The money devoted to research into finding oil and gas reserves will be invested in restoration of our ecosystems. The important of recycling our waste sustainably will return to our society’s attention and unconditioned by funding discussions; its importance will be greater than many of the objectives of the failing economy we are replacing.
Medicare for All or Single Payer Health Insurance – we will join the family of developed nations where universal publicly funded health care is the standard in place. No person because of age, income, gender, race, or religion will be left out. Such systems cost far less than what Americans are asked to pay for health insurance for profit administered care, and if unable to pay, are often allowed to die. We have to ask ourselves how we allowed such a monstrous system to take control of our precious health, which is and must be seen as a civil right.
In order to have an educated populace and young people prepared to be productive citizens with the knowledge and skills to fill the new planet-saving work force, we must make education free to them. The vast amount of money being funneled into more and more military infrastructure, drone and other warfare, and international military base support will serve us better if it is used to restore and improve our agricultural productivity, our transportation and communication infrastructure, and contributions to building a livable world. We can have a sensible national defense policy for a fraction of the excessive wealth funneled into the Pentagon, some of which must be channeled into keeping the public scared of any other nation cast in the role of enemy.
This is a time of great danger but even more a time of great opportunity! We are a polarized society today! If we can overcome the deleterious effects of more than a century of advertising and public relations harnessed to the goals of corporate capitalists and political opportunists, we will find our way back to rejoining each other to work for common goals that transcend party politics, caste and class divisions, race and income and the sort of mutual mistrust that such divisions foster. This is our time if we reach out for it and make a new society out of the ashes of what is falling down around us. Neo-liberalism has shown its hollowness after forty years and more, and only neo-liberals would reject the principles on which we can erect our new society. To accomplish these goals will take the sort of effort that the country invested in preparing for World War II, but they are within our power. They are objectives we can work for and achieve, and a Green New Deal is a tremendous starting point.
Susann McCarthy
Co-chair, Green Party of Taos County, New Mexico
Earth Day 2020
What’s up Taos! It’s been weeks of complete isolation for many families in our community. It is crucial to do our part by staying home. Even though our movements have been limited, there’s always room to alter our daily habits.
Some of the Greens have decided to do things like pick up trash in our own yard, making masks out of recycled material, reduce carbon and water footprint (responsible water use).
Remember that Earth Day doesn’t come just one day a year. Let’s remember our neighbors, friends and family. We are sending positive vibes and appreciate you. If you have any stories, feedback or ideas and would like to share, please contact us anytime. We’d like to hear how you will be celebrating Earth Day.
Here’s one idea:
Future Water Budget for Taos County
A water plan has been developed by the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer entitled Taos Regional Water Plan. This plan indicates that water use in the county is already exceeding capacity. A graphic from this water plan, shown below, illustrates the notion that demand has exceeded supply (at least in a drought year) and that our current trajectory with increased demand is unsustainable.
Water management is a complex matter requiring on-going research that Green Party of Taos County (GPTC) members have been studying for the past year and a half. GPTC members are committed to continue their investigation and propose a future water budget that is within our means.
Please read the plan and let us know your thoughts on this issue that is crucial to current and future Taos County residents in the comments section below.
Green Party Presidential 2020 Candidates
Check out the current Green Party Presidential 2020 candidates—they offer positions based on the Green Party Ten Key Values and an alternative to the corporate duopoly candidates.
Letter to the Bureau of Reclamation regarding “Mutual Benefits Projects”
Rick Brown sent this letter to the Bureau of Reclamation on November 20, 2019:
PUBLIC SCOPING COMMENT CARD
November 19 2019
Rick Brown, Secretary Green Party of Taos
info@greenpartytaos.org
P.O. Box 329
Taos, New Mexico 87571
I live in Taos County in an area where, like many other parts of the county, everyone is on a private well and does not presently have access to municipal water. I am also on an acequia, and I am a parciante and active user.
I am very concerned about the “Mutual Benefits Projects” (very misnamed in my opinion because they benefit very few people) for several reasons. As I mentioned I am on a private well which I depend on like everyone around me and in other parts of Taos County as well. The “Mutual Benefits Projects” call for drilling several new water supply wells into the deep aquifer which will have very large pumps to draw out a large amount of water. This has the potential to draw down the water table so that we would lose our wells.
We have learned that people like us who drilled their wells in recent years have no legal recourse if we were to lose our well. In the short term this would leave us with no access to running water for drinking, washing, and for our radiant heating system.
If the town were to extend water lines to us, I have reason to believe that our water would be much more expensive. The deep aquifer water is known to be highly mineralized which would require expensive treatment, the cost of which of course would be passed on to us. This would not be just an economic impact but a cultural impact to the area as well because many of the people whose families have been here for generations are struggling to make ends meets as it is, and having to pay higher water bills could be the last straw forcing people to leave. They would most likely be replaced by people moving in who are more affluent and used to a higher cost of living, or property being used as short term rental to tourists which we are already seeing.
And the fact is that we do not need new water supply wells with such a large capacity. The Town of Taos is consistently meeting its current water needs with its existing wells which have much smaller capacity, with the few disruptions we have had due to mechanical problems, not lack of water. If some wells need to be moved due to impacts to the Taos Pueblo land it should be possible to replace them with wells of similar capacity, sited to have a minimum impact to domestic wells.
My other concern is the impact of these wells to the acequias that many of us use to water crops and gardens and which also serve a vital function to recharge the shallow aquifer in the Taos Valley.
The model which is the basis for the Abeyta Settlement predicts that when the “Mutual Benefits Projects” are fully implemented the water table will be lowered to the extent that there will no longer be springs to feed the rivers that come down from the mountains and water our valley and feed our acequias. The Abeyta Settlement has proposed an answer to this which is Mitigation Wells. These are another series of wells into the deep aquifer which would be used to pump water uphill to put into the streams or acequias near the base of the mountains.
There are many problems with this idea. One is that, as noted previously, the deep aquifer water has high concentrations of minerals which would make it unfit to put into streams as-is because the water could be toxic to fish and wildlife that depend on the streams, and would also be detrimental to agricultural use because the minerals could build up in soil over time and damage the fertility of the soil. Treatment would be necessary and likely required for putting this water into streams. The cost of such treatment is not covered under the Abeyta Settlement and would have to be borne by mutual domestic water suppliers or acequia organizations that would be responsible for the wells. Operation and maintenance of the pumps and treatment systems would again be very expensive and this would change the whole character of the acequia system if it could continue to exist at all. This would be a huge cultural impact.
We are mostly small growers, few big operations or people with a lot of money are using the acequias. It is a very simple low-tech system maintained mostly with mattocks and shovels that uses natural gravity flow to bring water from the mountain streams to our fields following historic channels. We don’t have to pay much for water from the acequias, on ours we can earn most of our annual dues by participating in the yearly ditch cleaning. If we had to pay for expensive treated water and maintenance of the pumps and treatment system very few of us could afford to continue using the acequia. Continued agriculture in the Taos Valley would be limited to a few big operations that could afford to pay for the water, if that would be economical. The result would be that more and more former agricultural land would be sold off for residential to newcomers, more descendants of the original families would have to leave, and the community that presently exists around the acequias would be lost. And if there is much less agriculture using irrigation water we would lose the aquifer recharge that we are getting from it. And even our deep aquifer, which is finite, would eventually be drained.
To summarize, I request that the Programmatic Environmental Assessment be comprehensive, to cover the long term cumulative effects of all planned wells, not just the relatively small impacts of each one individually, and include all environmental, economic, and cultural impacts. My recommendation is that the “no action” alternative be chosen, that no federal dollars be appropriated for any part of the “mutual benefit projects” as currently conceived, and that new studies be done to develop ways to meet actual needs under a limited growth scenario that employs conservation first before developing additional water supplies.
Endorsed by the Green Party of Taos County
WATER SUSTAINABILITY FOR TAOS
by Susann McCarthy
I arrived in Taos after a lifetime of the poisoned air of Los Angeles and lived in Taos, rejoicing in its clear skies and clear air, for quite some time before I fully realized that water shortage is our Achilles’ heel. Taos was not highly urbanized when I arrived; but now in 2019 it is. One hundred years ago Los Angeles was in its own water crisis. In 1974 Phil Lovato was expressing serious concerns about a possible water crisis developing in Taos Valley. In the context that elected Phil Lovato as Mayor of Taos in 1980 because he was an expert on water law, discussions had begun on what is now commonly known as the “Abeyta Settlement.” Taos Pueblo, the oldest community in the Taos Valley, has the ancient claim from “time immemorial” to all of Taos Valley’s water. The Abeyta Settlement recognizes that it is to the mutual benefit of all signatories of the Agreement to share some of the water in the Taos Valley with non-Pueblo users. In future, other competing claims to Taos Valley water will certainly arise under pressure of increased populations and impending climate disturbance. It is also evident that water users outside of Taos Valley have wanted in the past, and will continue to want in future, to capture any available water rights to meet their own anticipated, increasing water needs.
In 1969 the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer completed a hydrologic survey of water use and rights in the Taos Valley (Rio Hondo, Rio Pueblo and Rio Fernando, Rio Chiquito, Rio Grande del Ranchos watersheds). The hydrologic survey is the basis of adjudication of water ownership in the Taos Valley, resulting in the Abeyta Settlement, which in essence established a water budget for Taos Valley water users.
After half a century, there are changes in water use that the Abeyta Settlement did not anticipate. Perhaps the major area of difficulty for a current water budget arises from the fact that the Settlement was formulated prior to general awareness of the climate crises we now know we face. Consequently, it lacks provision for meeting the challenges that disruption is certainly causing to current and future water availability. Fortunately, though, the Settlement contains within its terms the responsibility of any one or more of its signatories to request adjustment of the hydrologic model if aspects of the model are not consistent with new information. The terms of the Settlement also provides for the drilling of deep wells to draw up aquifer waters to augment an otherwise restrictive water supply; it remains to be seen whether this option is a wise designation, because, for one thing, the quality of water from such depth is unknown. This summer a much-anticipated conference of the parties to the Settlement, intended to be open to the public, was to be conducted in Taos by UNM’s Utton Center. Whether the Bureau of Reclamation may also participate in this conference is currently not known. We hope this important gathering will take place soon.
Our community is at a critical juncture in the matter of water. How effectively town, county and tribal governments adopt and implement policies to control the use, storage, conservation and sustainability of our shared water will determine our future in Taos Valley. Will the Town and County governments continue to follow the growth and development-friendly policies with associated high water usage, delaying a vital community-wide commencement of a sustainability model? To further delay turning our attention to water use management risks the danger that, like some ancient civilizations, perhaps distant in time but geographically near to us, we might be forced to abandon our community in search of water.
As we contemplate this precarious moment in planetary and community life, and work toward a comprehensive water budget for our future, it is already possible to discern ways we can improve on our own, individual, self-restraining water use. For example, shorter showers, washing dishes in less water, planting less thirsty plants, not hosing down concrete and automobiles to clean them. Addressing this water shortage, like addressing climate disruption itself, ultimately demands systemic strategies to correct some of the most destructive policies impacting local water availability over time. Restoring the acequias and revitalizing local agriculture are such systemic tactics, and will greatly advance our continuation as a stronger, self-sustaining local region of New Mexico which does not exceed its carrying capacity. Many more ways will emerge through discussion and consensus by which we will come together as neighbors and Taos residents to see water with new eyes and work to preserve it from waste with new habits and practices.
Susann McCarthy
Co-Chair of the Water Committee of the Green Party of Taos County (GPTC)
The Steering Committee of the GPTC endorses this statement.
Susann McCarthy is co-chair of the Water Committee of the Green Party of Taos County. The Steering Committee of the GPTC endorses this statement.
This article also appeared in the Taos News, November 7, 2019 edition. https://www.taosnews.com/stories/climate-change-will-impact-abeyta-water-settlement-taos-water-supplies,60558
Primaries
Kudos to you greens out there who tried to vote today.
Remember: it’s not because the party isn’t relevant. It is only because we didn’t have any candidates competing to represent the greens in the General Election.
However, if a candidate does decide to run in the general NOW! They still can.
It’s never to late to #GoGreen
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