Drilling Article Too Bland

I was disappointed by your article entitled "Drilling for Oil and Gas: A Look at the Complexities, Dollars and Dependency That Are Making Change Difficult" by Gershon Siegel and Linda Braun (January 2008). Earlier articles published in your magazine had much more specific information about specific processes related to "drilling" for oil and the threat that this activity represents to groundwater. Those earlier articles actually used the appropriate term hydraulic fracturing to describe what is being contemplated for Santa Fe County.

If the article was supposed to be about the politics of the situation, why do you not mention Dick Cheney’s 2005 energy bill and the exemption of hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act? Without fracturing, it would not be economically viable to extract oil and gas from the Galisteo Basin. Did you contact Senator Bingaman or Representative Udall? They should be made to answer for this bizarre exemption -- especially Bingaman, given his position (chairman) on the Senate energy committee. Why limit the scope of your article to the state and county when it is the failure of the federal government to enforce the law that is providing the leverage to force the accept ance of this unwanted activity?

You fail to use the expression hydraulic fracturing even once in your article. You fail to associate the activity of hydraulic fracturing with Dick Cheney, which would be completely appropriate and, in a political context, imperative. If the nature of fracturing, its political provenance (Dick Cheney), and the existing record of the consequences of fracturing were widely known, we would have a much better chance of avoiding this impending disaster.

You quote elected and appointed officials ad nauseum who do nothing more than exhibit the ambiguity, hypocrisy and disingenuousness for which they are already notorious, and you offer no rebuttals in your article. How difficult would it be to run a sidebar with the Web address of the Oil and Gas Accountability Project, Drilling Santa Fe or Santa Fe Not Oil?

Your vague generalities about the need for positive change in the face of this attack by a vicious and poisonous industrial profiteer are like saying to a rape victim, "Well, you were wearing provocative clothing, so you deserved it." There are quite a number of people in Santa Fe county who do use the sun for heat, who do not drive hulking gas guzzlers, who are reducing their environmental footprint, but whether that describes a given individual or not, no one deserves to be poisoned for profit.

It is extremely important to take every opportunity to educate Santa Fe County residents about the risks they are being compelled to assume, what the real costs of oil and gas development are, and what options exist for self-defense. Passive, "objective" observation is not a viable posture for survival.

-- David Coulson, Eldorado

Drilling Article a "Good Start"

I have some comments on your "Drilling for Oil and Gas" article in your January 2008 issue:

1. Oil at $95 a barrel for 10 million barrels is not $95 million. Do the math and try to keep them honest; some of our functionaries are not too good at math (or very good, depending on whose money they’re talking about).

2. As to a "takings" lawsuit, as a citizen I would hope any judge would award any potential damages at "actual net profit loss, discounted over time, times the percentage of likelihood that there was even any recoverable oil and gas there," still a significant number but far less than the potential gross sales approach mentioned.

3. As to Senator Jennings’s comments about windmills: Where are they? How many are there? How tall are they (hundreds of feet -- really)? And is there any evidence they have ever killed an eagle?

4. As to loss of severance tax funds, how much is it potentially? And would any of it ever go to help education? The minute increase for taxes for education would be welcome considering the alternative.

5. I like Buckminster Fuller’s "new model" approach: how about eminent domain purchase and retirement of the mineral rights to protect the public good (our future water supply).

6. A good start; keep after it.

Wayne Gibson, Lamy

What’s Good for SF County is good for all N.M.

I’ve been a land surveyor for over 30 years and a geologist before that. While working in Utah in 1977, I was driving to a survey job in the Aneth oil fields on the White Mesa reservation when we came to a roadblock set up by tribal members protesting the impact of the well fields on their health and quality of life. Listening to the stories and seeing the faces of the folks from this destitute southern Utah tribe describing the conditions they faced has stayed with me ever since.

But this was the voice of a poor and powerless group that did not resonate beyond the reservation, and as far as I know, Texaco continued its program unabated (without my help, after that). Santa Fe County has a voice with much more resonance due to its wealth and fame.

Governor Richardson has said that in his judgment "there shouldn’t be drilling in the Galisteo Basin . . . [a] very fragile ecosystem that has archaeological and groundwater issues." He is without a doubt right about this, and more study is warranted. Whatever safeguards can be provided for Santa Fe County residents should be understood and put in place.

But what about the rest of New Mexico? Aztec Ruins National Monument in San Juan County has 35 active drilling sites within five miles, and the venerable World Heritage Site of Chaco Canyon has five active but nonproducing lease sites within five miles (source: EWG.org). Last March, state Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons stopped Cimarex Energy from drilling gas wells on state trust land within one mile of Chaco Canyon National Monument. And these sites are just the obvious ones. There are thousands of archaeological sites all over the state that lie within lease boundaries.

Moreover, aren’t all the people in San Juan County who have been living with this industry for over 80 years just as worthy of the protection of their environment and groundwater as we are in Santa Fe County? Actually, shouldn’t any safeguards put in place in Santa Fe County be applied to all lease lands in New Mexico?

This would mean that environmental and economic protections must be considered in conjunction with the fact that by 2003, as a New Mexico Resources "Extractive Energy Resources" report states, New Mexico was "ranking fifth in crude oil production and fourth in proven oil reserves. It remains second as a domestic producer of natural gas" in the United States. In 1998, according to another similar "Extractive Energy Resources" report, "90 percent of state lands revenue and 25 percent of the total New Mexico general fund is generated by oil and gas." These are powerful numbers. However, they shouldn’t supersede protecting the quality of life in New Mexico.

Also, the antiquated 1872 Mining Law, the main reason citizens are mostly powerless in leasing situations, is finally being addressed by H.R. 2262 in the U.S. House of Representatives (Tom Udall for, Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce against). More information regarding H.R. 2262 can be found at Earthworksaction.org.

-- J. Michael Pearce, Eldorado

Reducing Fossil Fuel Dependance Now

There have been so many recent articles in Sun Monthly about the U.S. dependency on fossil fuels and how we need some policy changes and new direction on this issue. One thing that keeps coming up for me, however, is how we all just need to get on the stick now and quit waiting for this national change to occur! I mean today start making some changes ourselves just in our little Eldorado community. Here are several very achievable ideas we can start right now to curtail fossil fuels and their global warming impacts:

1. Ride the bus. Quit making excuses about its schedule -- just do it . . . get on it and ride it into downtown. You can always bring a bike if you need to pedal a few miles to get to where you are going. It’s cheap, and it is going to make its daily journey whether you are on it or not, so get on it!

2. Recycle your aluminum, glass, paper goods and appropriate plastics. The county collectors won’t take our glass, so either get a pass to take it four miles down the road to the transfer station or let’s see if the Eldorado Community Improvement Association (ECIA) can put a roll-off bin at the community center for collections.

3. Give your plastic newspaper wrappers back to your news carrier. I understand they need to buy these little wrappers out of their own pocket, and what are you going to do with them other than reuse them for hauling your lunch to work or disposing of your doggy waste?

4. Speaking of bags, bring fabric or paper bags every time you go to the grocery store. The Eldorado Supermarket actually gives you a few cents credit each time you bring your own bag. Don’t forget to bring back your veggie and fruit plastic baggies either to be reused for the haul home.

5. Turn off those porch lights. Not only is the ECIA telling you they are inappropriate, but the coyotes and other night critters can see perfectly fine at night without your help.

6. Turn off your surge protector with TVs, stereos, computers and the like every single day when not in use, not just during monsoon/lightning season. I have noticed a significant drop in our bills since we have done this and turned off lights when we aren’t needing them.

7. Lastly, I’d love to see us get a U.S. post box on the main road(s) exiting Eldorado. This would allow a car or two to pull inside a protected berm on their way out of Eldorado (when they aren’t taking the bus) and drop their outgoing mail into a secured box. Having to drive to the Agora and park just wastes extra fuel.

-- Lori Colt, Eldorado

Aftermath of VietNam War

I read Judith Fein’s article about Vietnam in your most recent issue of Sun Monthly with great interest ("How Do the Vietnamese Feel About Americans, 35 Years After the War?"). I had an "all-expenses-paid vacation" there in 1969–70.

The beginning of her piece really jolted me when she said that "more of them died from suicide after the war than perished during the conflict." I found this hard to believe, so I did some Googling to learn more. The exact number of American KIA was listed in one spot as 58,209. In another entry, a statistical database estimated that just 0.7 percent of the casualties were the result of suicides, but this is probably only during the war and not after it. Then another article I found provides an estimate of somewhere over 150,000 suicides that can be traced to Vietnam War vets. (I should emphasize that the article heavily caveats the word estimate.)

So perhaps Fein should not have asserted this as a fact when it’s clearly so difficult an issue to pin down. This is a small quibble, but if her numbers are anywhere in the ballpark, it’s a national disgrace. Much like the number of military personnel returning from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder and the government’s woefully inadequate measures to give them (and their families) medical and psychological help.

Thanks for publishing the article.

-- Dick Reynolds, Lt. Col. USMC (Ret.), Eldorado

Applause For A Cause

I applaud the Nurses Union of California, who recently stood up against Governor Schwarzenegger’s Nixonian effort to bring universal care to their state’s citizens. They are correct in their point of view that supporting the private insurance industry will not cure but only aggravate the problem by giving over to those whose only interest is the bottom line. Even if we can mitigate the increasing costs of individual plans by spreading out the burden, those costs will continue to rise, as was proved when the Medicare drug bill was signed into law with the increase of drug prices.

Look at the arguments of the day with President Bush’s efforts to keep the Medicaid benefits out of reach of those he thinks can afford today’s health care. We find ourselves being told by our leaders, "You can have health care and you can’t." Yes, there is the question of affordability, but what I’ve witnessed in health care’s problems goes much farther, and money does become the root of all evil. Reports have recently pointed out simple truths such as doctors failing to report mistakes in fear for their jobs. This is one tiny example of the larger systemic problem that those who deny seeing the truth fail to admit there’s a problem. The foundation of our present health care system is wrong, and we need to change it from greed to fulfilling need.

I’m pointing to a single-payer system and the fact that all of us need to recognize that we all need to rally together for the benefit of all of us. There’s plenty of room for inventive ideas to support an individual’s initiatives within a single-payer system. Look at what that socialist institution our military does as a model for building an individual’s sense of worth. Or look toward Finland’s competition based social health system.

Arguments supporting the status quo are crazy and completely out of touch with what’s happening on the ground. Personally, I scream for change and for the backbone it will take to make change happen. So hooray for those nurses who stood up, along with the Republicans for completely opposite reasons, in shutting down a "Mitt Romney" effort to make his financial supporters happy, a very bad law.

-- John Cole, Eldorado

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