Nearly 50,000 Pounds of Toxic Chemicals Dumped into New Mexico’s Waterways
Industrial facilities dumped 49,786 pounds of toxic chemicals into NM’s lakes, rivers and streams in 2010, according to a recent report from Environment New Mexico: Wasting Our Waterways: Industrial Toxic Pollution and the Unfulfilled Promise of the Clean Water Act.
“New Mexico’s waterways are a polluter’s paradise right now,” said Maxine Paul, preservation associate with Environment New Mexico. “We must turn the tide of toxic pollution by restoring Clean Water Act protections.”
Joe Moody, who runs Squash Blossom Farm at the end of the Santa Fe River, said of the farming business, “Weak regulations and enforcement have already done harm. Farming in an arid region is difficult enough without the worry of toxins in our water supply.” Francois-Marie Patorni of the Santa Fe Watershed Association said, “To speak the obvious, not one drop of water can be taken for granted. Ever. The Watershed Association supports a living Santa Fe River and a green watershed through various programs. A lot has been accomplished here, including the passing of an ordinance guaranteeing water in the river each year. But the Santa Fe River is just one river. All stewards of the environment should work together in securing clean water for all rivers in NM.”
Environment New Mexico’s report documents and analyzes the levels of pollutants discharged by compiling toxic chemical releases reported to the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory for 2010, the most recent data available. The report’s major findings include:
• The biggest polluter in the state was the Department of Defense, releasing over 46,000 lbs. of toxics at the Holloman Air Force base near Alamogordo within one year.
• Over 1,000 lbs. of toxics were discharged into the Chamas Creek in the Apache National Forest and Morgan Lake, near Farmington
• Industrial facilities discharged approximately 181 lbs. of chemicals linked to cancer, and 140 lbs. of chemicals linked to developmental and reproductive harm into NM waterways.
The report summarizes discharges of chemicals that persist in the environment, and those with the potential to cause reproductive problems ranging from birth defects to reduced fertility. Toxic chemicals discharged by facilities include arsenic, mercury and benzene. Exposure to these chemicals has been linked to cancer, developmental and reproductive disorders.
Paul says that there are commonsense steps that can be taken to turn the tide against this pollution, which is threatening 88 percent of the state’s waterways. Environment New Mexico recommends the following:
1. Pollution Prevention: Industrial facilities should reduce their toxic discharges by switching from hazardous chemicals to safer alternatives.
2. Protect All Waters: The Obama administration should finalize guidelines and conduct a rulemaking to clarify that the Clean Water Act applies to all waterways—the 95,611 miles of streams in NM, as well as the state’s drinking water, for which jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act has been called into question as a result of two Supreme Court decisions in the last decade.
3. Tough Permitting and Enforcement: The EPA and state agencies should issue permits with tough, numeric limits for each type of toxic pollution discharged, ratchet down those limits over time, and enforce those limits with credible penalties, not just warning letters.
Maxine Paul’s conclusion: “We need clean water now, and are counting on the federal government to act to protect our health and our environment.”
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about 10 months ago
This “report” is ridiculous. Obviously, Environment New Mexico didn’t check the data, especially Table A-11, listing Holloman AFB as the major “polluter” in NM. After all, it’s not really a product of Environment New Mexico. It’s just got the “Environment New Mexico” logo on the front cover and an attribution on page 2, just like an identical report from Environment New Jersey. It’s really a product of Environment America, but Environment New Mexico (and its other state siblings) needs to look like it produced something in order to justify and encourage donations and memberships.
Back to the assertion that Holloman AFB is the state’s largest industrial polluter. This is a classic example of what happens when a history major (Rob Kerth of Frontier Group) is in charge of data-mining an EPA database. What toxic chemical is Holloman AFB “dumping” into “Lagoon G”? Is it mercury, dioxin, heavy metals? No, it’s nitrates; effluent from their high-performing waste water treatment system. Effluent so clean that it’s used to irrigate the base golf course, along the way also eliminating the requirement to use additional fertilizer and cutting potable water irrigation usage by over 20%. http://wrri.nmsu.edu/conf/conf11/pdf/abstract2_griffin.pdf
Why doesn’t Albuquerque’s Southside Water Reclamation Plant have a listing in the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory? After all, it’s output is much larger than Holloman AFB’s waste water treatment facility, and it discharges into the Rio Grande, not a land-locked lake. Probably because they followed the reporting requirements more closely than HAFB did, and didn’t report nitrates because they are less than 1% of the total discharge. My contact at HAFB noted that HAFB shouldn’t have reported the 46,267 lbs of nitrates at all for that reason.
What is Holloman AFB’s “Lagoon G”? It’s the “headwaters” of a series of ponds and manmade wetlands that terminate in Lake Holloman, a land-locked body of water above a naturally brackish water table. There is no “waterway”, as anyone remotely familiar with the Tularosa Basin knows. Is it dangerous to wildlife? Not according to the Audubon Society, who complement HAFB on the wetlands. http://iba.audubon.org/iba/viewSiteProfile.do?siteId=622&navSite=state
So how accurate is the rest of the report and news release in regards to New Mexico? Who knows, because the report doesn’t detail what the other releases really are, and Environment New Mexico was too busy thinking that they had caught HAFB (by definition part of the nasty military-industrial complex) in a major environmental snafu to do any really investigation on their own. Maybe there are some honest-to-goodness nasty polluters here in the great state of New Mexico. I have a refrigerator magnet that reads, “Computers are machines for making bigger mistakes faster”. Instead of doing real research, including validating the results prior to holding a news conference, Environment New Mexico did the equivalent of copying some term paper off the web and claiming it as their own.