Court declines to hear Navajo water dispute

From KRQE-TV.com - By Kim Vallez - ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – New Mexico high court says it will not intervene on a dispute over allocation of San Juan River water rights to the Navajo Nation.
     Open court documents show the court denied a petition from three legislators including a San Juan County farmer who had claimed the Navajo water settlement should be invalidated because it had never gone before the legislature for approval.
     The agreement approved back in August gives enough water to the Navajo farming operation to irrigate about 40,000 acres of farmland. That’s six times the amount Albuquerque gets for a population a third of the size.
      An agreement in 1948 gave a large amount of San Juan River water to New Mexico based on the argument that the water was needed to meet the needs of the Navajo Nation living here in the state.
     State officials pointed out that the ruling in August stated that legislative approval was not required. More

Court declines to hear Navajo water dispute

Marita Noon: Welcome to the “no pee” section of the swimming pool

Commentary by Marita Noon - America is poised to become the “no pee” section of the global swimming pool and the useless actions will cost us a bundle—raising energy costs, adding new taxes, and crippling the economy. Even some environmentalists agree. Yet, for President Obama, it’s all about legacy.
      On June 2, 2014, the EPA released its new rules for CO2 emissions from existing fossil fuel-fired electricity generating plants—which the New York Times (NYT)states: “could eventually shut down hundreds of coal-fueled power plants across the country.” (Regulations for new plants: the New Source Performance Standard rule, requiring carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) that buries emissions in the ground to meet the emissions limits, were released September 20, 2013. 

     The 2013 regulations virtually ensure that no new coal-fueled power plants will be built. Bloomberg Businessweek reports: “Considering the one carbon-capture plant being built in the U.S. is massively over budget and widely considered not ready for commercial use, it seems likely that the new rules will significantly erode coal’s share of power generation down the road.” Politifactsays CCS is: “new and expensive.”)
     These new rules, reportedly 3000 pages long (300 pages longer than the healthcare bill), are so important, it is believed that the President will make the announcement himself. Supporters seem gleeful. USA Today cites the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress’ Daniel J. Weiss as saying: “No president has ever proposed a climate pollution clean up this big.” 

     In the Washington Post (WP), advocacy group Clean Air Watch’s director, Frank O’Donnell is quoted as saying: “This is a magic moment for the president—a chance to write his name in the record books.” The NYT claims the plans, “the strongest action ever taken by an American president to tackle climate change,” could: “become one of the defining elements of Mr. Obama’s legacy.”  Read full column

Marita Noon: Welcome to the “no pee” section of the swimming pool

Motel guests question movie production

From KOB-TV.com - By: Jen Samp, KOB Eyewitness News 4 - Peter Lauton says as a retired economist with a PHD, he's all for a movie production in Albuquerque. “I'm sure its great for the economy and we all get excited when a big star and a film crew moving around,” he said.
     But as a guest at The Desert Sands Motel, he has his doubts. “I need my sleep and I know that's not going to happen for the rest of the week,” he said.
     Earlier this week the production "Blood Father" starring Mel Gibson posted a film notice on Lauton's door. Hotel visitors will have to move their vehicles and keep them away until next Friday. Long-term residents who have disabilities say they don't know what to do.
     A location manager with Blood Father productions says the landlord requested to handle the tenants himself, but when they got the feeling nothing was communicated, they sent out the notices. The location manager says The production paid the motel for filming there, but not to move the tenants to a new location and when they expressed concern for the tenants they were told by the motel owner “I’ll take care of it.”
     The Academy award winning movie No Country For Old Men used the motel for one of the final scenes. More

Motel guests question movie production

Swickard: Burning up with road-rage

© 2014 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. Road-rage has been all the rage to talk about these last few weeks. Someone did a survey of what causes road-rage. The top cause was people who drive too slowly. For cranky people susceptible to road-rage driving too slowly are all those people going slower than them.
     The best way to understand these cranky people is to see them change a light bulb. They hold the bulb steady and let the world revolve around them. 

      In the 1950s humorist Brother Dave Gardner told about a guy behind a truck he could not pass. There was a sign on the back of the truck: I may be slow but I am ahead of you. The guy flips out and wrecks. It is a funny story, to a point.

     Two hundred years ago humans could only go as fast as a horse could run. Those early 19th century humans could only go the speed of Romans two thousand years earlier. Perhaps there was road-rage then for slow horses. Then technology increased speed. We now can go hundreds of miles in a day in air-conditioned comfort listening to music coming from space.

     But some people act like being slowed for a few moments makes the whole journey like riding in a German cattle-car in the early 1940s. Impatient people feel everything on the road purposely tries to make them mad. Ultimately, they pay the price for their maladaptive coping mechanism, though innocent people also pay.

     Out in the country where I am from we generally smile and wave. We drive friendly even with strangers. There is a reason for our civility. In small towns everyone knows everyone else so bad behavior is remembered more than sin and is often punished by the offender being shunned by town folks.

      Contrast that with big cities where people are mostly anonymous. Many unnecessarily aggressive drivers count on being able to disappear into a cloud of strangers after their intentionally bad moments. But there is a change brought to us by technology: car video systems.Read full column

Swickard: Burning up with road-rage

Union Pacific unveils $400M Santa Teresa rail facility

From the El Paso Times - By Vic Kolenc  - New Mexico politicians showered Union Pacific officials with accolades Wednesday during the official christening of the railroad's new, $400 million, 2,200-acre rail facility in Santa Teresa, which officials expect to bolster economic development in this region for years to come.

     New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez even had the more than 700 people, who were assembled underneath a huge white tent on a hot, sunny morning at Union Pacific's new facility, give railroad officials a standing ovation.
     The facility includes one of Union Pacific's largest fueling facilities and the railroads's largest intermodal freight terminal along the U.S.-Mexico border. The 300-acre, high-tech intermodal terminal opened April 1 and is expected to process more than 170,000 freight containers this year, and many more in the future, from West Coast ship ports and inland terminals in Chicago and other metro areas.
     Union Pacific Chief Executive Officer Jack Koraleski said the new facility is making Santa Teresa "a strategic focal point for goods movement in the Southwest United States." The new intermodal facility will allow the railroad to grow its freight business in this region because its old El Paso facilities could not be expanded, Koraleski said.
      A steady stream of trucks haul the containers in and out of the facility via the new, six-mile state-built Strauss Road. The trucks can get through the mostly automated intermodal terminal in an average one to two minutes, he said. The national average for intermodal truck processing is five to six minutes, he said.
     The old El Paso intermodal facility in East Central El Paso and its Downtown El Paso freight yards are not going away as some people have thought, Koraleski said. The El Paso facilities will be used to expand Union Pacific's traditional box car freight business in this area, he said. More

Union Pacific unveils $400M Santa Teresa rail facility

Fire at southern NM biofuel facility contained

From KOAT-TV.com - By Devon Armijo - ANTHONY, N.M. —Emergency crews have contained a fire that sparked Tuesday morning at Rio Valley Biofuels near Anthony, N.M. The fire sparked around 9 a.m. Evacuations were ordered for about 1,200 people, but those evacuations have been lifted.
     Authorities said there were a series of small explosions at the facility. The cause of the fire is unknown. The facility has large quantities of methanol, glycerin and sodium methylate, as well as vegetable oil, hydrochloric acid and bio-diesel fuel.
     It is now a Hazmat situation, and crews are working to assess and contain the damage. More

Fire at southern NM biofuel facility contained

Marita Noon: Obama admin hides use of bad science

Commentary by Marita Noon - Six years later, we know that President Obama’s pledge to run the most transparent administration in history was merely acampaign promise, a White House talking point, and not a statement of management style. We’ve seen a series of highly publicscandals—Fast and Furious, Benghazi, IRS, NSA, and now, the VA—where Oversight Committees have fought to pry information out of the Obama White House only to receive stacks of redacted documents.
      Most recently, we’ve seen court-ordered information provided to nonprofit government watchdog groups in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that have made it very clear why the Administration wanted to keep specific contents hidden. Emails that revealed direct White House involvement in the Benghazi scandal are behind the creation of the new Select Committee. IRS documents show the Tea Party targeting wasn’t a couple of rogue agents in Cincinnati, as the Obama administrationclaimed—instead, now we know it was orchestrated out of DC. Briefing materials point out that the Obama administration has known about problems with VA hospital wait times since 2009.
      FOIA requests must be the bane of the “most transparent administration in history.” Upon his signing of the FOIA legislation in 1966, former President Johnson stated: “This legislation springs from one of our most essential principles: A democracy works best when the people have all the information that the security of the Nation permits. No one should be able to pull curtains of secrecy around decisions which can be revealed without injury to the public interest.”
     As shameful as each of these scandals are, they directly impact only a comparative handful of people. We grieve the loss of life, but unless you are a family member or friend of the four brave men killed in Benghazi or of the dozens of veterans who risked their lives for our country only to die unnecessarily due to bad policy at the VA hospitals, your life goes on without consequence. Read full column

Marita Noon: Obama admin hides use of bad science

News New Mexico is live and in studio today with veterans

Flooding closes State park entrance

From KOB-TV.com - By: Mike Anderson, KOB Eyewitness News 4 - The main entrance to Bottomless Lakes State Park on Highway 409 is closed due to flooding, and will remain closed for the foreseeable future. Officials say the only way to enter the park is through Dexter, NM.
     “Although we are thankful for the rain, we regret this inconvenience,” said State Park Division Director Tommy Mutz.
Directions to get into the park from Roswell:
     Take Highway 285 south to Junction of State Road 2. Take State Road 2 to Dexter, and at the Allsups in Dexter turn left on Shawnee Road and follow it to where it ends at Wichita Rd. Turn left on Wichita Rd until it ends at Highway 409, which is the loop road around Bottomless Lakes State Park. Turn left to get to the Lea Lake Campground. The Visitors Center is 1.5 miles past Lea Lake.
Directions to get into the park from Artesia:
      Travel north and turn right on to State Rd 2 and follow until Dexter. In the center of Dexter turn Right on Shawnee Rd and follow to where it ends at Wichita Rd. Turn left on Wichita Rd and take until it ends at Highway 409, which is the loop road around Bottomless Lakes State Park. At Whichita Rd and Highway 409 turn left to get to the Lea Lake Campground and the Visitor Center is 1.5 miles past Lea Lake. More

Flooding closes State park entrance

Swickard: Accessing truth is the problem

© 2014 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. The first victim of the Information Age is truth. Specifically, it is having access to the truth because there is so much false clutter that no one can be sure the media or Internet is really true.
     Often truth has been hijacked for political or anarchist reasons. There are hundreds of false reports each day that make it into the media. These false reports are either called out or assimilated into the culture of our society. Often they live as slogans, “Bush lied and people died.” Or, “America did not land on the Moon.”
     It is now possible to “prove” or “disprove” any fact or theory. There is probably a blog chronicling that Elvis is alive and playing golf with Michael Jackson who is also alive. If not, wait a minute, it will be up shortly.
     My first connection to a wider world was in 1988 when I was a tester for Prodigy while living in California. At first it was opinions and advisories and in the 1990s it changed to data repositories.
     In 1992 I was using email at NMSU such that I was on a project with a women in Jamaica and a man in New Zealand. We never met face to face but worked a year together. The data we sent back and forth stayed true on the worksheets and it was great.
     Certainly I was aware in 1998 of the Y2K scare which came from the Internet to the media and back. Now it seems mildly humorous that so many people believed that life on this planet was going to end due to a programming problem when the clock strikes the year 2000.
     Well, not everyone was freaked out and worried including myself, but the media played the concern to the hilt. People started stocking up on food, water and generators. However, I did not stock up or hoard above my normal two weeks or so of stuff.
      In 1999 I wrote a column asking: how were these hoarders going to deal with their neighbors when they have the only warm house in the neighborhood? It was going to get ugly, especially when the lights came back on. Neighbors will have long memories of you shoving a gun in the faces and telling them to scram. Read full column

Swickard: Accessing truth is the problem