La Jicarita

Editor’s Note: That’s my friend and favorite mechanic Adam Griego in the bottom photo reaching across from prisoner to prison guard. He’s been involved in all kinds of prison reform projects and prisoner reentry into society. He’s also helped set up a facility for homeless people living in cars to spend the night.  While doing all  this he owns and runs a garage and is an expert Subaru  mechanic. He invites everyone to come to the showing of  this documentary at the Museum of International Folk Art.

Spring 2026 Newsletter TAKE QUICK ACTION for a REAL IMPACT

 

Dear Friends, Thanks to ongoing community efforts, New Mexico officials are taking action to require DOE, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) to prioritize sending LANL’s “Legacy” nuclear waste to WIPP for disposal. “Legacy Waste” is Cold War nuclear waste, created during decades of nuclear weapons research, design and fabrication. DOE promised New Mexicans that if we allowed WIPP to be built in our state, Cold War and other radioactive waste, then stored at LANL, would have priority to be disposed in WIPP. DOE has continually broken this promise over the years. New Mexico is usually far behind other states in disposing LANL’s Legacy Waste in WIPP. This has led to, among other problems, about 2500 drums of plutonium-contaminated Legacy Waste languishing for decades in tents in “Area G” in a wildfire zone. The red area shows the combined burn area of 8 wildfires between 1977 and 2022 three of which burned over LANL property. For more information about these fires, including an interactive map, go to FireOnTheMountain.xyz   On April 23, our New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) issued an important permit modification to WIPP’s 2023 Renewal Permit, holding LANL and DOE accountable for not prioritizing this Legacy Waste disposal as required in the 2023 WIPP Permit Renewal.   Important Points in the Proposed Permit Modification •  All Legacy Waste currently stored above-ground at LANL’s Area G shall be disposed in WIPP by July 1, 2028. (This would include the plutonium-contaminated Legacy Waste stored in the tents. •  From January 1, 2027 through December 31, 2031, at least 55% of the total volume of all waste disposed in WIPP from all national sites must be LANL Legacy Waste. •  Beginning January 1, 2032, and until all LANL legacy waste has been disposed in WIPP, LANL legacy waste must be at least 75% of the total volume of waste disposed in WIPP from all national sites. •  If at any point any of those conditions are not met, all shipments, other than those from LANL, must cease until all deficiencies are cured.   NMED needs to hear that we are in support of this permit modification.   Our full support is especially necessary because DOE is strongly opposing the modification.       To view the full Permit Modification, Public Notice, and a detailed Fact Sheet, go to:
www.env.nm.gov/hazardous-waste/wipp/
And scroll down to WIPP News 2026 For more information and sample comments go to:
www.StopForeverWIPP.org ————————————————————– Members of the Stop Forever WIPP Coalition and Fire on the Mountain as well as other community groups support this action and urge people to submit written comments in support of NMED’s action by Monday, June 22 at 5 PM.   How to submit comments     •  NMED has asked that we submit comments directly through their portal here. •  But if you find that a little intimidating you can email your comments to:      HWB-WIPP-Comment@env.nm.gov •  Or even snail mail them to NMED at:            
    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   For more information visit    Stop Forever WIPP https://stopforeverwipp.org
https://www.facebook.com/StopfvrWIPP/ Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety (CCNS) http://nuclearactive.org Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC)
http://www.sric.org/ Nuclear Watch New Mexico

https://nukewatch.org

Fire on the Mountain www.fireonthemountain.xyz

By KAY MATTHEWS

Kit Carson Electric Cooperative CEO Luis Reyes just announced that the company has hired GZA GeoEnvironmental/Glorieta Geoscience (GZAGeoEnvironmental recently acquired Geoscience, which is based in Santa Fe) to conduct a water study of the proposed hydrogen facility in Questa. Kit Carson has only contracted for Phase 1 of that study, that states it will “assess the influence of pumping the Chevron production well (RG-14117-POD-18) on the groundwater flow conditions in the Questa, NM area.” However, the Phase I study will only develop a “three-dimensional visualization model,” which doesn’t involve well testing, drilling flow logs, measuring the rates of aquifer replenishment, and other critical water studies. If requested, Phase 2 would create “a groundwater flow model, calibrate the model, and prepare a report that summarizes the groundwater modeling work.” 

The Questa Watershed Coalition has received a detailed letter from a local hydrologist that lays down the details and requirements that a competent water study must include. The letter begins with this statement: “This will be a critically important study, and it is paramount that it be technically sound, comprehensive, and independently and impartially reviewed and validated.” The hydrologist emphasized that both Phases, 1 and 2, are necessary to “adequately predict hydrologic impacts. The visualization model should be accompanied by a conceptual model (which is basically a qualitative description of the flow system) and a quantitative water budget for all relevant hydrologic components (recharge, flux, discharge to rivers and wells, etc.) along with a clear statement of the objectives of the modeling exercise. He also stated that the 100 afy extraction rate is probably inadequate and 250 afy, the well’s adjudicated capacity, will be more likely needed. The Coalition will use the input in the letter to help assess the GeoScience study.

Questa Watershed Protectors have been asking Reyes for a comprehensive water study for months, as concerns over drought and the climate crisis are exacerbated by this year’s extreme situation. Snowpack measurements for the Sangre de Cristos are the lowest ever recorded, and both of the Questa acequias, Cabresto Lake Irrigation Community Ditch Association and Llano Community Ditch, have seen a significant loss of irrigation water. The well that will provide water for the hydrogen project is a Chevron exploratory well that they call the tailings facility water well. It’s 500 feet deep and will supposedly supply clean water for the project (the OSE will have to provide an assessment). A mile-wide study was done that said four other wells could be affected by the Chevron well, but Questa’s wells are not within that one-mile radius. A two-mile radius could affect 58 wells, including the many private wells in the community.

While GeoScience promotes its hydrogeology analyses and has worked all over the state, the president and senior hydrogeologist, Jay Lazarus, has an extensive history in the Taos area that may not bode well for an unbiased, comprehensive study of water quantity and quality in the Questa area that could be affected by the hydrogen facility. He’s been a longtime consultant for the Abeyta Water Rights Adjudication (Taos Pueblo) that resulted in a settlement in 2013. As such, he was a vocal opponent of the Public Welfare Statement that was drafted by a group of citizens as part of the Taos Regional Water Plan, back in 2006. The statement laid out the criteria for determining whether proposed water appropriations or transfers from the Taos Region to other regions and within the Taos Region from one sub-watershed to another are consistent with the public welfare.

Public welfare is one of the criteria the Office of the State Engineer is supposed to use to determine whether to approve a water transfer, but has rarely done so. That’s why the citizen committee urged that the Public Welfare Statement be incorporated into the Taos Regional Water Plan. But the parties to the Abeyta settlement raised objections to the proposed PWS, claiming it would prevent the implementation of the settlement and that it was contrary to state law. They, represented by Lazarus, wanted nothing to interfere with whatever transfers might be necessary for implementation of the controversial Abeyta Settlement.

In 2013, when Blackstone Ranch, which had acquired the historic McCarthy Ranch, “Taos’s last great grasslands” on Upper Ranchitos Road, applied to transfer just under 12-acre feet per year of surface water rights from the Alamitos Acequia to a groundwater well to irrigate landscaping around the “main-house,” a small orchard, gardens, greenhouse, and “fire-prevention pond”—which translates to 6 afy of groundwater. Their hydrogeologist, Jay Lazarus, was quite frank about the reason for the transfer: it would ensure the ranch irrigation water when there isn’t enough water in the acequia. This, of course, sets a bad precedent: As surface water continues to dry up more and more irrigators will want to pump groundwater instead. It’s already happening in southern New Mexico—and on a much larger scale than 12 afy of water—as farmers dependent on Elephant Butte Irrigation District for irrigation come up short and pump groundwater to save their crops. Texas sued, and a settlement agreement will require the retirement of thousands of acres of farmland to provide Texas with its allotted water rights under the Rio Grande Compact.

Finally, in 2025, at a public meeting about Sipapu Ski Area and Resort expansion plans, Lazarus was confronted in two claims he made as the ski area’s consultant on water quality monitoring. When asked about the ingredient surfactant, or Drift, used in snowmaking, Lazarus said that a New Mexico Environment Department study had found no impact on downstream users. The representative from the NMED corrected him that the agency was unable to test for snowmaking because surfactant is already present in the agency’s lab.

Lazarus was also challenged by Robert Templeton, a parciante from Dixon, when he made the often-touted claim that ski areas act as water reservoirs and help downstream users when the snow is released into the watershed in the spring. Templeton argued that stored water is only available during the spring runoff when the river flow is at or approaching flood conditions and is of no use to irrigators. The time that the “potentially stored” water is used for snowmaking is the exact moment when the water is needed in the river for recharge of wells and the sub-surface lands along the river’s course after the irrigation season.

.In a Taos News article Reyes was asked about allocating such a large amount of water during a time of extreme drought. His response was, “I’ve never seen it, living here [that] in a year we’ll get so much snow that it undoes, you know, 10 or 15 or 20 years of drought, but we’re not using [the water] for a while,” Reyes said. “I have faith that, like any cycle, we’ll start to get rains and moisture back, hopefully, like we did in the old days.”

The people of Questa would rather rely on a scientific assessment of what the water situation is right now before a water-guzzling project moves forward. Hopefully, that’s what they get.