Recent Columns

Columns appear here a week after they're published in print.

© 2022 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES 6/6/22  

Adversaries join to solve a complex, dangerous problem  

By Sherry Robinson 

All She Wrote

       For years, a yellow sign in Carlsbad warned tourists and locals: “US 285 SOUTH SUBJECT TO SINKHOLE 1000 FEET AHEAD.”

   The sign’s absence is a tale of Democrats and Republicans, local and state governments, new and old technologies coming together to solve a problem. Imagine that.

  In 2008 subsidence at two brine wells in Eddy County created giant sinkholes. They led the state to a third well in Carlsbad and a disaster in the making.

   The oil industry pumps fresh water through subsurface layers of salt to create brine, which it uses in drilling. In Carlsbad the process, over 30 years, had created a cavity at the intersection of U.S. 285 and U.S. 62/180. Its imminent collapse would affect the highways, a rail line, an irrigation canal, a mobile home park, a church, and a feed store. Damages could total $1 billion.

  Faced with demands to remediate and three lawsuits, the well operator filed for bankruptcy. The state took over the site and contracted with an engineering firm for monitoring and a remediation plan. After 2009 the firm’s increasingly sophisticated systems could warn of changes in the cavity or nearby buildings. The remediation plan was unveiled in September 2018.

  The cavity was 720 feet long, 450 feet wide and 200 feet deep. It’s about 425 feet below the surface. The plan was to inject grout (a mixture of cement, processed clay and water) while extracting brine water. The tricky part was maintaining pressure to keep the cavity’s roof from collapsing.

  However challenging it was to fill this hole, it was nothing compared to finding the money to pay for it.

       Initially, the Great Recession saw budget cuts throughout state government.

  In 2016 Democrats questioned Gov. Susana Martinez’s support of well-fix bills. The Santa Fe New Mexican reported that the well’s owners were big contributors to her 2010 and 2014 campaigns, and Dems accused her of trying to relieve them of responsibility for damage. Martinez’s spokesman dismissed the accusation as “a ridiculous notion.” But Deb Haaland, then state Democratic Party chairwoman, countered, “Companies should be responsible.”

   In 2017 and 2018 area legislators again carried bills. I took Democratic legislators to task for ignoring the urgency of the bills and jawboning about who’s at fault, who’s responsible, and who should pay.

  The late, grandfatherly Sen. Carroll Leavell, R-Jal, said, “This is a ticking time bomb. Delay is not an option.”

  John Heaton, chairman of the Carlsbad Brine Well Remediation Advisory Authority, pleaded, “We’re racing against time and gravity.”

       Others pointed out that industry for years had paid into various remediation accounts.

   Two cabinet secretaries in Gov. Susana Martinez’s administration said they couldn’t help because the remediation project would wipe out their budgets. Republican State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn argued that the Oil and Gas Reclamation Fund wasn’t meant for such projects and should be used to plug some 600 abandoned wells.

  Lawmakers finally coughed up $43 million for the project, and Carlsbad and Eddy County chipped in.

       Work began in 2019 and soon the southern portion of the site was stabilized, but the larger northern portion would be more difficult. Work halted in July 2020 when money began to run out. In October 2021, with more money, operations resumed.

     On June 1, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced the project was completed at a total cost of $80 million – $67.4 million from the state and $12.6 million from Eddy County and Carlsbad.

       “This is what good, collaborative government in action looks like,” she said in a news release.

      We can’t claim an absence of politics. Lujan Grisham is running for office. Some of the same people praising her help will return to bashing her mask mandates.

     But a new orange sign has replaced the old yellow one. It announces that the Carlsbad brine well remediation project was completed June 2022.         

© 2022 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES 6/6/22  

Don’t look away from gun violence  

By Diane Denish 

Corner to Corner

     Last week as I was preparing for a trip to Tulsa to see my daughter and family, a scroll came across the TV screen announcing a mass shooting in that city. In a medical facility. Having spoken to my daughter earlier, I knew she was taking her son to an appointment in the complex that day. Horrible thoughts ran through my head. What if?

     My family had left the facility before the shooter showed up, a shooter who had purchased an AR-15 just two hours before the killings – no background check, nothing. This was the 243rd mass shooting in the United States this year.

     Four families had their lives destroyed. Tulsa lost two beloved doctors, a patient, and a friendly receptionist. Survivors were in shock. The Tulsa World headline screamed “ATTACKERS KILLS 4” on Thursday.

     My granddaughters picked me up. I hugged them with tears in my eyes. Grateful for their safety and their warm hugs, I was also weeping for the state of the country we live in together. A country where guns are not the American dream but the American nightmare. A country where lawmakers look away and distract us with excuses of mental illness, security doors, poor police response. A country where we fail to face the fact that the problem is too many guns and access to them. A county whose Second Amendment, with the help of the NRA and spineless leaders, has gone from “well-regulated militia” to an unregulated citizenry. A country where those same leaders are willing to sacrifice the right to grow up for the right to bear arms.

     A country in which these are facts about gun violence: 

     Across the country, 311,000 kids have been exposed to gun violence since 1999. That includes kids in New Mexico: Roswell, Aztec, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Clovis.

     In 2020 guns became the leading cause of death among kids and adolescents 19 and younger according to the CDC, surpassing auto accidents and disease. Gunfire killed 4,368 kids, and 60% of those were homicides. The remaining deaths were suicides and accidents.

     Gun laws matter. In Florida and Texas where there are few if any gun restrictions, gun deaths are up 28% and 37% respectively. In states where gun laws are stricter, numbers have decreased by 10% or more. In California you are 60% less likely to die by gun violence than in Texas thanks to a combination of laws that work.

     Ten years of the assault weapon ban made a difference. It didn’t stop every death, but it saved some lives. Gun massacres were reduced by 37%, and gun deaths fell 43%. Since 2004 when the ban expired, mass shootings rose nationwide by 183% and deaths by 239%.

     In every high-profile mass shooting in the last 20 years – Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Orlando, Las Vegas, and now Uvalde – lawmakers have failed to act. Congress has blocked debate. They have chosen to delay and look away.

     And yet, there are glimmers of hope.

     Recent surveys show the American people get it. Across the country and party lines 88% support universal background checks, 67% support banning assault weapons, 67% support raising the age for purchase of firearms to 21, and 63% support banning the sale of high-capacity magazines (over 10 rounds).

    Students and young people get it and have Marched for their Lives and passed legislation in Florida since Parkland in 2018.

     Moms get it. (Along with Dads, grandparents, businesspeople, and others) Moms Demand Action was started after Sandy Hook and now has a chapter in every state working to prevent gun violence.

     The glimmer of hope? Regular Americans are not willing to look away. Lawmakers shouldn’t either.