Guest Contributor Norm Gaume is a water resources engineer, former director of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission and president of New Mexico Water Advocates. He has worked on New Mexico water policy and management for decades.
Continuing to think about the 500 acres of stacked tailings and what can keep the tailings from sliding downhill, I turn to the mine’s submitted technical studies on this subject. These studies do not give assurance that the miners know the answer to that question either. This is dangerous.
We calculate whether NMCC has enough water to mine Copper Flat in the manner proposed in its application to mine. It does not. Why, then, has NMCC applied for a mining permit?
We in Sierra County are living in, and at long last, beginning to understand that we live day to day in a water crisis. What is the justification for allowing someone to withdraw and evaporate a million gallons of groundwater a day during that social and economic crisis?
This article is the second analysis of the Copper Flat Mine project. Mining and Minerals Division will hold a hearing on the application’s proposal to filter tailings to save water. It is doubtful if this change will save water and if it will save enough water to operate the mine.
State regulators announce the scheduling of a hearing on Copper Flat mine, and the Citizen begins a series of articles on the mine’s plan of operations and reclamation.
Basic New Mexico water law will help you understand how the Settlement Agreement which ended the Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado lawsuit will affect your water use and your taxes.
The settlement of Texas’ suit against New Mexico ended the legal proceedings that have so vaguely and abstractly hovered unnoticed over our lives, but the consequences of that settlement will be dominating our lives specifically, concretely (meaning economically), and most noticeably in the coming years.
We are depleting the Rio Grande Basin faster and faster every year, the groundwater 15 times faster than the river waters, reports the first comprehensive study of consumption in the whole Rio Grande/Bravo Basin system.
Asset management plans are boring. Camelot dreams are not. We are still basing our choice of capital projects on "wouldn't it be nice" instead of "what is the state of our assets."
I link to an article by two very long-term observers of water in New Mexico. They are factual, detailed, informed, careful, persistent, intelligent, public-minded people not motivated by private interests, money, power, or any ideology except public service. You need to hear what they say about your water.
Truth or Consequences City Manager Gary Whitehead has been doing a stellar job. If city commissioners gave him a "satisfactory" on his yearly evaluation, it shows how little they know about government.
Arts & Culture (175) Business (114) Conservation (87) Development (95) Economy (240) Education (173) Elephant Butte (69) Environment (336) Govern (62) Government (666) Health (181) History/Natural History (209) Law (101) Medi (3) Media (22) Mining (39) Nature (87) Politics (302) Recreation (55) Social Issues (346) State (6) Statewide News & Information (132) Technology (35) Truth or Consequences (261) Visuals (110) Water (160)