Jack Loeffler

In 2009, I produced a documentary radio program entitled, Aldo Leopold in the Southwest. In my travels, I met Estella Leopold, youngest of the five children spawned by Aldo Leopold and Estella Luna Bergere Leopold, herself a native of Santa Fe, and member of the revered Luna family that have lived in New Mexico for many generations. Estella the younger is one of America’s most distinguished paleobotanists, now professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is also a wonderful folk musician whose repertoire includes dozens of Hispano folksongs recalled and sung by her family when she was a child.

When I recorded my interview with her in her home in Seattle, she recounted tales of her childhood that helped characterize both her father and mother, both of whom were wildly intelligent, deeply sensitive human beings whose commitment to family generated a model of conduct to which we should all aspire with mighty resolve. As we sat at her dining room table, Estella recounted the following recollection about how the seven members of the Leopold family reacted to the farm with its shack that Aldo Leopold bought in Sand County, Wisconsin where he wrote much of his magnum opus, A Sand County Almanac.

“…When we first got there it was a cold spring day. We had to drive around through the cornfield to get to the shack because the main road was under water and cold as heck. We got there and there was about three feet of manure in the corner of the cabin. We looked around and it was very bleak, lots of burrs. It was very open wasteland. The farmer had gone broke putting in corn after corn and left for Texas. And Dad got it for taxes at eight dollars an acre. So we got there and Mother looked around and said ‘Aldo, are you sure you want to bring the children up here?’ And Dad said something like ‘Yeah, we’re going to plant all this stuff. Put pinery up there on the ridge and put prairie out on the cornfield and won’t that be wonderful?’ And so it was. It was great. So we began work on the shack and it became our home away from home. No utilities, just our pump, and the Parthenon—the privy—down the way on the edge of the riverbank. Well, it was the edge of a terrace.

“We were there every weekend all the way through the ‘30s and the ’40s—just about every weekend. Absolutely lovely. We built the fireplace and we fixed the roof and we put in windows and screens. Finally we put in a floor because we had a clay floor first. Mother said we had to fix that so we did. We had bunks. We had a great time up there. We were doing restoration ecology, which was the beginning of restoration ecology. We put prairie plants into the cornfield and after a while there were enough weeds and these plants that we could burn it off. We set fire to it and right away the grasses began to expand because as the flames would come upwind, the grass would drop over behind the flames and drop the seeds on the fertilized ash and produce new plants. Pretty soon it became a tall grass prairie. It was wonderful.

“Then we began adding flowering plants to that prairie. But right now the deer get those, and it’s pretty hard to maintain that because you really need to live there and have a dog there all the time to keep the deer off. Otherwise you get what we have, which is a tall grass prairie. But at Nina’s [her elder sister’s] house where the dogs are, there’re many, many flowers. There’s 250 native species in that prairie, so it’s a gorgeous garden of flowers every spring and summer. It’s just marvelous.”

This is one of my favorite stories of thousands that I’ve recorded over the last half-century because it contains elements necessary to not only heal habitat, but also heal our badly broken culture, especially as we try to peer through the opacity that clouds our view into the immediate future.

Aldo Leopold came to the American Southwest in 1909 as a young forest ranger. Over the following years, he wandered by horse through the forest regions of the New Mexico and Arizona territories (they wouldn’t become states till 1912). He observed massive soil erosion and gradually came to attribute much of that to over-grazing by cattle and sheep, and to the presence of wagon trails carved through an arid landscape that is subject to seasonal torrential rains. Years later, he applied his growing ecological perspective to the farmer-burnt-out 80 acres that he had bought in Wisconsin, and thus, with the help of his family, initiated the practice of restoration ecology.

While Aldo Leopold may well have been the first within the context of Western culture to practice restoration ecology in America, he was certainly not the first to enhance habitat in the New World. Here in the Southwest, there are examples of habitat enhancement that extend into antiquity among cultures such as the Hohokam with their irrigation canals in the Sonoran Desert of yore, the Río Grande Puebloans with water catchment systems that restore water to aquifers, the Hopis with carefully selected multiple breeds of corn that work within the arid habitat of the Hopi mesas, the Zunis with their waffle gardens, and the Hispanos with their acequia systems, and recognition of water and land as common pool resources that must not be privatized for financial profit.

Part of Aldo Leopold’s genius was to comprehend the potential of ailing land abandoned by a farmer who had egregiously over-worked the soil, then study the surrounding habitat to identify the indigenous plant and animal life, then invigorate a family practice of restoration ecology that not only reinstated health of habitat, but instilled in every family member an understanding of the inter-relatedness of every aspect of the biotic community, and the absolute need for a system of ethics that includes the land as well as ourselves and other species within our cultural purview.

The profundity of this lesson is of such vast importance today that should we not heed its wisdom and contemplate its implications, we may fail to veer from our present course to disaster.

Restoration ecology is currently the next necessary step beyond conservation. In a way, President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to employ a myriad of the unemployed during the Great Depression of the 1930s by creating the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to create rip-rap in arroyos to retard erosion, build fire-lookout towers, re-plant seedlings in the wake of the onslaught of the timber industry, and other modes of conduct that he regarded as vital for restoring a failed economic system, and aligning that with an attempt to ensure future health of the natural environment. He also re-invigorated the arts by funding artists of every persuasion to pursue their creative vision. Thus, Roosevelt sought a means to re-create the handcrafted lifestyles that harkened back to the earliest days of young America, when people worked rather than held down jobs.

Leopold took this a giant step further by putting the land first and involving his family in its ecological restoration. He did this in such a fashion that each family member not only adopted his perspective as their own, but also went on to evolve a collective body of work that remains an unprecedented contribution to a culture of practice that is itself culturally restorative. In the broader sense, restoration ecology and cultural restoration may be perceived as mutually inclusive, each vital to the other. And implicit in this clearly definable culture of practice is the de-secularization of habitat, the re-sacrilization of homeland.

Restoration ecology in conjunction with cultural restoration and re-sacrilization of homeland must be enshrined as fundamental to our greater human culture of practice. How this is accomplished is up to each individual. It must certainly occur from within the grassroots of human culture; it lies beyond the ken of today’s corporate-dominated political systems that are proven antithetic to this way of being. Many, if not most, of today’s institutions are based on economic growth for its own sake, a principle that must be redefined.

Somehow, we must collectively foster a paradigm founded in a form of expanded consciousness that includes restoration of habitat, hard work on behalf of the greater good for the entire biotic community, and satisfaction with return to a hand-crafted lifestyle shaped by evolving imagination assisted by appropriate technology that is harmonious within the flow of Nature—all within a world of diminishing resources. This is a tall order in today’s political milieu that has shifted from that of a young, exuberant democracy of two centuries past, to the oligarchy that currently presides. Our present body politic is antithetic to the environmental standards that we must assume if we are to wend our way through the stormy times ahead.

In 1969, the National Environmental Policy Act was passed by both the Senate and House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States, and was signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon on January 1, 1970. Its purpose appears in the preamble as follows:

“To declare a national policy which will encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment; to promote efforts which will prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere and stimulate the health and welfare of man; to enrich the understanding of the ecological systems and natural resources important to the Nation; and to establish a Council on Environmental Quality.”

Since 1970, the human population of our planet has nearly doubled. Our species’ perceived needs have grown proportionately. We abide within an economic system based on limitless growth. Our natural resources dwindle in direct proportion to our growth, and today, economics overshadows sound ecology by magnitudes within the Zeitgeist of modern global culture. In our quest for natural resources we have left a wake of devastation through natural habitats vital for the maintenance of a viable biotic community. We have committed an immense number of fellow species to extinction. We have created a body of law that gradually erodes our National Environmental Policy Act, many laws designed to define and defend the Policy of Limitless Growth that our capitalist system demands.

What a de-spirited legacy we are embedding in collective human consciousness. By celebrating the privatization of common pool resources for financial gain, we have gone un-Natural.

What can we do?

First, we must individually and collectively ingest the level of jeopardy to which we have exposed not just ourselves, but the entire biotic community. Then we must determine the wellspring of the calamity, part of which resides in each and every one of us. Then, within the realm of regional and national politics, identify that which serves the greatest good for the entire biotic community and reject that which does not, honestly critiquing elected officials within our current two-party system, where truths are hidden in the shadows of hyperbolic rhetoric. Then we must vote accordingly.

Secondly, we must individually and collectively look to our respective homelands and seek both where jeopardy lies, and what homeland itself indicates to be the path to balance within. This is precisely what Aldo Leopold did on the family 80-acre farm in Sand County.

Third, we look to science to reveal and evaluate of our state of peril, and for the technology that is most applicable for our endeavor. Science is an essential tool for determining the truth, and its correct application is required if we are to clear the hurdles that lie immediately before us. However, although science is necessary for complete perspective, it alone will not save us from ourselves.

Fourth, after strengthening both our perspective and resolve as bulwarks vital for maintaining the state of mind and discipline necessary for the task at hand, we may then initiate restoration ecology as a culture of practice, and in so doing allow ourselves to celebrate our cultural restoration as well, as we consciously re-align ourselves with habitat. Thus, we re-sacrilize homeland.

The requirements for success include adopting a bioregional perspective from within which to operate as we intelligently proceed as restorers of homeland to ecological balance. For this, we can take a mighty cue from our Puebloan neighbors whose culture continues to survive relatively intact as it has have for centuries. We can look to traditional Hispano culture in the northern Río Grande watershed as a model of survivability and resilience relative to homeland. We can support local farmers’ markets and food cooperatives, wherein sound ecological practices are revealed in the arrays of homegrown foods in which we delight. A fine source of bioregional theory may be found in Gary Snyder’s superb book, The Practice of the Wild.

Fifth, we can only succeed by initiating a meaningful level of decentralization of political power relative to national and regional governing bodies that are largely under the sway of corporate economics. This may require civil disobedience. It may indeed involve a level of homeland protection that is not to be confused with Homeland Security. We must ever bear in mind that presently, political legislation often rules in favor of economics over health of habitat. In that sense, human law and Natural law are frequently at loggerheads.

If all of this seems overwhelming and beyond one’s ken, one can plant some tomatoes, set out water for the birds, and write a poem—and empower one’s self to interpret the voices of homeland in juxtaposition with what one reads in the Times or hears during the News Hour.

The level of self-discipline required of each of us as we proceed into the coming decade is profound. We must literally begin by becoming well informed. I highly recommend reading A Great Aridness by William deBuys, Tropic of Chaos by Christian Parenti and Let the Water Do the Work by Bill Zeedyk and Van Clothier. I also recommend listening to the 14-part radio series, Watersheds As Commons, produced by Celestia Loeffler and myself, available to be heard by visiting our website at www.loreoftheland.organd reviewing Audio Downloads in the menu.

The Internet itself is a tool of extraordinary magnitude that may be used successfully in behalf of home habitat. But it must be visited judiciously and not over-used. Rather, we must spend as much time as we can out of doors, swimming in the flow of Nature, working to restore habitat, while contemplating the great mystery that urged life and consciousness into being on this lovely planet Earth warmed by our Sun— grateful for our brief link with Eternity.

Jack Loeffler is the author of numerous books, including Healing the West: Voices of Culture and Habitat. He is the recipient of the NM Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, and the Edgar Lee Hewett Award for Writing from the NM Historical Society. He was honored as a Santa Fe Living Treasure in 2009. For more info, visit www.loreoftheland.org.

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Kudos for focus (January 2012) on acequias, a topic I covered for years for a major New Mexico daily. Based on that and a lifetime centered around water—from watching a family well dry up, to fighting two Colorado water projects—I share former NM Acequia Commissioner Wilfred Guttierez’ apprehensions about the threat to acequias in the early 21st century.

As warned by the Scripps Institute, the Pacific Institute, the National Academy of Sciences, the University of Colorado, author William deBuys and others, the Southwest is in the crosshairs of mushrooming population, drought and global warming. DeBuys writes: “If you live in the Southwest or just about anywhere in the American West, you or your children and grandchildren could soon enough be facing the Age of Thirst, which may also prove to be the greatest water crisis in the history of civilization.” I fear he understates the situation a bit!

The United States is the world’s third most populated nation behind only China and India, and despite Census Bureau efforts to obfuscate the fact, it grows—70 percent from immigration—by a whopping 1.1 percent a year, or a doubling time of 65 years or less. The Southwest is the fastest-growing region of that high-growth nation, and often experiences growth rates—between 2 and 3 percent per annum—matched only in Africa! We are almost identical in geographic size and climate to China, which was at roughly our current population of 314 million just one hundred years ago. We can anticipate a China-like population of one billion, possible by next century if current trends hold!

The Southwest is mostly dependent on the waters of just one river, the Colorado and its tributaries. It is today more an elaborate plumbing system than a river system. When the river was allocated—legally divided between Upper and Lower basin states in 1922—16.4 million acre-feet of water was allocated before it was determined only about 14.2 million acre feet flow in the river. Further studies showed the average more likely to be 13.5 million acre feet even as, since 1922, the region’s population has exploded, with towns experiencing a thousand-fold increase in population to become mega-cities resting in the midst of five deserts with a population of 60 million, up from about two million or three million 100 years ago.

In the current drought—more likely just a return to drier norms after 1965-1996, the wettest time in the Southwest in 1,000 years—flows on the Colorado fell as low as 5.4 million acre feet, while levels at Lake Mead plummeted by 130 feet. Just seven feet above that would trigger a region-wide water emergency.

A “fifty-year reliable water supply” in reservoirs disappeared in less than three years, which is part of why the National Academy, the Scripps Institute, myself and others increasingly insist that if there is insufficient water for the current population, it is irresponsible for our “leaders” (a word I always use with quotes) to push for more growth based on the mirage of conservation, “technofixes” or energy-intensive desalting.

Few doubt that acequias will be hit first, worst and hardest as the water picture grows ugly, as small, politically weak bodies won’t stand a prayer next to the demands of cities. Our leaders owe us acknowledgement of our nation’s exploding population and the regional implications of that growth on limited resources like water, plus the greater implications to the land-based cultures and traditions so many of us love so dearly. In short, it is time for them to acknowledge the consequences of their actions!

Kathleene Parker

Rio Rancho, NM

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 Map Documents Water Concerns in New Mexico

A comprehensive map documenting concerns about water resources on the part of New Mexico community and religious organizations was dedicated last month in the Rotunda of the State Capitol. The map shows how current and historical industrial activities have impacted water, air and land, as well as urban and rural populations and the health of wildlife, plants, birds and fish.

The major waters of the state and areas that have been, and in many cases, continue to be compromised by the oil and gas industry, the nuclear fuel chain, and coal-fired power plants are detailed on the map. Areas affected by smoke plumes from the 2000 Cerro Grande wildfire and the 2011 Las Conchas Fire are also shown.

Over a year in the making, the project was initiated by the Partnership for Earth Spirituality (PES) in association with Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety (CCNS) andthe Multicultural Alliance for Safe Environment (MASE). The Catholic Sisters of Mercy – Northeast Community of the US, funded the project. The organizations envision the map, corresponding brochure and websites as a resource and tool for community groups to educate and engage citizenry in protecting their communities. The map is being distributed to city, state and federal legislators.

“Water is a sacred trust and it is threatened. We must protect our water, air and land,” said Sister Marlene Perrotte, a PES board member. Sr. Joan Brown, Executive Director of New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light, who also worked on the project, said, “As we experience increased and longer droughts–an expression of climate change­–the precious gift of water becomes more threatened by pollutants. We are morally obligated to speak for the children, the Earth and the future ones whose voices are usually not represented. Actions addressing pollution from coal-fired power plants and calling for accountability in the oil and gas industry are expressions of an informed faith.”

“Water and life are inseparable,” said Sr. Rose Marie Cecchini, Director of the Office of Life, Justice, Peace and Creation Stewardship in Gallup, NM. “Here in the Southwest, we already see evidence of the erosion of the living systems of Earth, which will intensify with global climate change. This New Mexico map places the truth starkly before our eyes and impels us to change our cultural assaults on water, air, land and wildlife while we have time.”

Joni Arends, Executive Director of CCNS, spoke at the Capitol gathering. She said, “When we look at the map we see contaminated areas around the state. It is essential to know that the safeguards to protect people and environment are based on a “Reference Man,” defined as a Caucasian man between 20 and 30 years of age, 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighing 154 pounds. He is a Western European or North American and lives in a climate with an average temperature of from 50 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit.¹ The Reference Man is not representative of the most vulnerable, such as pregnant women, infants, children, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems. Nor does it take into account the lifestyles and food sources of Indigenous and land-based communities.”

The map, references used to create it and additional information about how you can get involved are available on the website http://SacredTrustNM.org

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THROUGHOUT NEW MEXICO

As the Southwest becomes more arid due to growth and climate change, water resources become ever more stretched. As water quantity decreases, water quality is more easily compromised. Approximately 90% of New Mexicans rely on groundwater for drinking.

Oil and Gas Industrial Contamination

New Mexico ranks second in natural gas production and fifth in oil production within the U.S. During 2001, 69.9 million barrels of oil and 1.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas were produced.

• Safeguards such as the 2008 Pit Rule theoretically reduce contamination of shallow groundwater aquifers. Before 2008, the oil industry self-reported more than 700 cases of groundwater contamination due to oil and gas development.

• Hydrofracking is a method of injecting millions of gallons of clean water mixed with toxic chemicals and radioactive sand into a well. The pressure fractures the shale and props open fissures that enable natural gas to flow more freely out of the well. The safety of the water is a growing concern.

• This process is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act.

• Each coalbed methane well uses from 50,000 to 350,000 gallons of water.

• Deeper horizontal shale wells can use 2 to 10 million gallons of water per well.

NORTHWEST NEW MEXICO

The San Juan River Basin provides the majority of drinking water for the area.

Coal Cycle

Surface water and groundwater are contaminated during extraction of coal, its subsequent preparation and the disposal of mine waste if no mitigating measures are used.

• Sites have been abandoned without adequate reclamation.

• Coal mining and power plants utilize large amounts of water.

• In 2010, coal-fired power plants emitted 72.3 % of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the U.S.

• In 2010, the San Juan Generating Station produced more than 8.5 million tons of carbon air pollution and consumed more than 9.3 billion gallons of clean water.

• According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the San Juan Generating Station is the 18^th highest nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide emitter of the 496 U.S. coal-fired power plants.

• Over 90% of the state’s power-related GHG emissions occur at coal-fired power plants. The plants at San Juan and the Four Corners produce 75% of the total emissions.

• Because of intensive gas, oil and coal industries in New Mexico, the per capita GHG emissions are almost twice the U.S. average (42 v. 25).

WESTERN NEW MEXICO

Regional aquifers, springs and small rivers provide water for this area.

• Groundwater and soil in the Churchrock area is threatened and contaminated.

• New uranium mining is being proposed in the Grants uranium mining belt.

Uranium mining and milling

• About 40% of the uranium extracted in the U.S. was mined and milled in New Mexico.

• From 1952 to 1990, the Homestake Mill produced 21 million tons of uranium mine tailings.

• On July 16, 1979, the Churchrock Milldam of uranium milling wastes collapsed, spilling 100 million gallons of radioactive liquid and 1,100 tons of mill tailings into the Puerco River.

• Today, years after mine and mill closures, contaminants affect aquifers, surface water, air and land.

NORTH-CENTRAL NEW MEXICO

In 2008 the EPA designated Española Basin as a sole source drinking water aquifer.

Nuclear weapons manufacturing and waste storage at Los Alamos National Laboratory

• Over 21 million cubic feet of chemical and radioactive wastes have been buried in unlined pits, trenches, and shafts at LANL, with 2,100 sites that have the potential to release contaminants into canyons feeding the Rio Grande and recharging the regional aquifer.

CENTRAL NEW MEXICO

Aquifers and the Rio Grande Basin provide drinking water for Central New Mexico.

Kirtland Air Force Base and Sandia National Laboratories

• At Sandia National Laboratories, 1.5 million cubic feet of radioactive and hazardous wastes are buried in unlined pits and trenches at the mixed waste landfill dump. No effective monitoring is in place.

• Both eight million gallons of leaked jet fuel as well as perchlorate from open-air detonation and burning of rocket motors now contaminate Albuquerque’s aquifer.

Trinity Nuclear Weapon Test Site and White Sands Missile Range

• The first plutonium-based atomic device detonated at the Trinity Site on July 16, 1945, released 13.2 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium, of which 2.6 pounds fissioned. The remaining 10.6 pounds dispersed over farms, ranches, fields, milk cows and rainwater cisterns.

• Cancer mortality rates for the four counties surrounding the Trinity Site (Lincoln, Otero, Sierra and Socorro) are three to eight times the national rate.

SOUTHEASTERN NEW MEXICO

The Ogallala Aquifer lies under almost all of Eastern New Mexico and West Texas. The Pecos River is a major surface water body.

Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)

• WIPP is the world’s first waste repository for nuclear and toxic materials from nuclear weapons that are hazardous for thousands of generations.

Uranium Enrichment, Processing and Deconversion Facilities

• In 2010, URENCO began enriching uranium, generating tons of depleted uranium (DU) hexafluoride waste near Eunice, where 5,016 containers can be stored on site.

• International Isotopes proposes a DU hexafluoride deconversion facility near Hobbs to deconvert DU hexafluoride to DU oxide, which would be disposed at a yet-to-be-determined location.

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Though Santa Fe, New Mexico, and its constant stream of international visitors, can take pride in some of the finest air quality of any US city, it comes at a notable cost to the inhabitants of the Navajo Nation, which is home to five coal power plants in and around the reservation. The San Juan Generating Station, primary source for Santa Fe’s electricity, is rated as one of the most polluting coal plants in the US. Countless Navajo children are being born with asthma, and coal is also viewed as a culprit for high rates of chronic bronchitis, lung cancer and heart disease among the Navajo.

Toxins such as mercury, arsenic, formaldehyde and lead rain down on the environment and extract a tremendous toll. Coal mining on the reservation has a decades-long history of health effects on the miners, along with the resultant coal ash, which is placed in unlined holding bins to the tune of millions of tons annually. The coal ash, which contains many of the same toxic chemicals, continues leaching into the groundwater and poses a potential environmental hazard for generations to come. So, the question arises, isn’t it about time to clean things up and move toward a more sustainable means of generating electricity? It’s a known fact that NM averages over 300 days of sunshine annually.

Powers Square Off

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), given some real teeth under the Obama administration, recently targeted the most polluting coal plants in the US. The San Juan Generating Station and the Four Corners coal-burning plants, both located in northwest NM, have been determined to be two of the most polluting plants in question. This, along with recent California laws prohibiting utilities from investing in most coal-fired plants, has helped trigger an imminent shift in NM that regulators and environmentalists hope will lead to cleaner air for the entire Four Corners region. Arizona Public Service Co. (APS), the main operator of the Four Corners plant, has committed to shutting down three of the five generating units that are the biggest polluters.

The San Juan Station is owned and operated by Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM), which also owns 13 percent of the remaining two units at the Four Corners Plant. PNM recently teamed with NM Gov. Susana Martinez to fight the EPA rulings and appears determined to maintain the status quo at San Juan at all costs. Their perspective is that this source of “cheap” energy cannot be replaced affordably. Ironically, despite PNM’s continuing mission to maintain profits for their investors, rate hikes have been granted by the NM Public Regulatory Commission (PRC) on a regular basis. There has been a 45 percent increase in electricity rates since 2008.

A NM state law passed during the Richardson administration mandated that PNM produce 10 percent of its electricity generation requirements from renewable sources by this year. Instead of meeting this mandate, PNM’s most recent lobbying effort at the PRC has gotten the amount reduced to 5 percent. The fast-dwindling Renewable Energy Credits supplied to residential producers of solar electricity are being lobbied away by PNM’s highly paid legal team at the PRC. Of course, all these efforts and expenditures are financed with ratepayer proceeds. Homeowners had received 13 cents a kilowatt-hour for all renewable energy produced as recently as 2010. The credit is now down to 5 cents a kilowatt-hour and will soon disappear altogether. The fact that the NM Legislature approved a bill several years ago guaranteeing PNM’s profits for the next 30 years certainly doesn’t help the move toward renewable energy. Does any other private enterprise you know have a business model of guaranteed profits?

If PNM would commit to spending their (our) money to clean up their act, and NM’s environment, instead of funneling massive dollars into lawyers, lobbying efforts and PR spin, some progress certainly could be made. But, as mentioned, they are determined to continue fighting to maintain the same technology that has been polluting the Navajo Nation for the past 50-plus years.

The Energy-Water Nexus

Water is ultimately the most precious resource in the arid Southwest. The San Juan Generating Station alone consumes 1.5 times more water than the annual usage of the city of Santa Fe. Despite PNM claims of water recycling, this amount of water consumption is unsustainable, especially now that both Santa Fe and Albuquerque are utilizing Rio Grande River water to supplement their municipal supplies. The San Juan River, water source for the San Juan Station, is a major tributary to the Rio Grande.

A little-known and perplexing aspect of our antiquated power distribution system is that a mere 29 percent of energy production at the plants is typically available at point of use. This means that during the 223-mile transmission journey from the San Juan Station to Santa Fe, the other 71% is lost. It’s hardly an efficient system, especially considering the environmental and human costs involved. This level of inefficiency seemed permissible during our rise through the Industrial Revolution, the seemingly endless supply of cheap fossil fuel with little knowledge of the consequences. We are now moving steadily forward in the 21^st century, with maximum profits to investors being the primary reason to maintain a mid-20th century technology. So, the question arises…what might be the solution to this unsustainable mess?

Solutions

First of all, anyone with knowledge of PNM’s history and corporate mission to maintain the old ways at all cost, knows there’s a steep slope to climb in overcoming this politically entrenched corporate monopoly. In many ways PNM represents what’s absolutely worst about single-bottom-line, business-as-usual profiteering. Profits from this “free enterprise” operation directly leave the state in the pockets of investors, creating a drain rather than a stimulus for our local economy. This, along with the nicely funded lobbying efforts and teams of lawyers, compromises the environment and typically, the will of the people, with undue influence in the legislative process. So what solutions may be present to begin the move away from dirty coal to secure a truly sustainable future for NM?

For the second time in the past decade, there is a movement afoot to pursue the concept of a publicly owned, renewable municipal energy grid for Santa Fe and Santa Fe County. The first attempt, which had gathered much support and momentum, mysteriously fizzled out about six years ago. Changes in economic conditions appeared to be the culprit, but one can only wonder about the influence of the powers that be.

Now the time has arrived for another conscious attempt to bring this obvious solution into play. Locally owned and generated, renewable power would solve the issue of keeping proceeds in the community, would be a catalyst for potential green jobs, alleviate the issue of transmission loss and bring about the ultimate goal of clean energy as the source of our power. Boulder, Colo. recently passed a public referendum after conducting a feasibility study, and is now rapidly moving toward its own municipally owned utility. One can look at numerous, successful examples of this approach around the country. Help build the groundswell of public support in Santa Fe by signing a petition in support of this concept, whose time has come. Go to www.unicopia.org and click Petitions.

Faren Dancer is an award-winning designer, builder, educator and activist. His UNICOPIA GREEN RADIO show is each Saturday at 4 pm on KTRC (1260 AM), simulcast at santafe.com. All the archived shows are available at www.unicopia.org. Email: Faren@unicopia.org

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Gary Vaughn

I’m sure you’ve already read PNM’S 218 page “2011-2030 Electric Integrated Resource Plan” hasn’t everyone? It was filed with the New Mexico Public Regulatory Commission last July. Formal protests to the plan were filed soon afterwards, and the PRC has already issued a formal “decision” on part of the plan.

All of this is fascinating, but the real reason you might be interested is that the IRP clearly lays out PNM’s vision for your energy future. Inquiring minds want to know what’s in store.

Those GFT readers with an executive mind-set need only digest the IRP’s two-page “Executive Summary.”Here are the four “Themes and Observations” from page 1:

* “Existing baseload resources [that means coal & nuclear] are least cost even when considering environmental compliance uncertainty.”

* “Natural gas, in combination with energy efficiency and load management, is the least cost future resource additions.”

* “Renewable resources are added to meet regulatory requirements, but increase cost and degrade system operation.”

*” Environmental rules and regulations add significant costs to customers.”

Now you only need two more sentences from the executive summary to be able to come to the same conclusions that PNM has reached in the remaining 216 pages:

“The most cost-effective portfolio meets electric system demand, provides acceptable system reliability and operational flexibility, meets renewable portfolio standard (RPS) and other regulatory requirements, and minimizes financial cost to the customer.”

“The most cost effective resource portfolio meets Renewable Energy Act (REA) RPS requirements up to the established cost limits.”

If you executives want to skip the amusing details (complete with ref page numbers), then jump down to the “Bottom Line” section below; the rest of you might enjoy trying to think like PNM.

FASCINATING CONCLUSIONS

PNM’s overriding objective—to meet electric demands in the “most cost effective way”—leads PNM to conclude that:

1) “The most cost-effective resource portfolio includes all existing resources since they are least cost.” (p. 3) [This obviously includes all PNM coal- and nuclear-powered generating plants, as well as all existing gas-fired plants—even the oldest and least efficient and most polluting.]

2) “Environmental regulations may increase costs for capital investments and/or resource operations; paying these costs and continuing to operate the existing facilities represents the overall least-cost risk mitigation strategy. The cost of other alternatives would be much greater to PNM customers.” (p. 10)

3) “Since renewable resources were not least cost alternatives, they are included in the portfolio to meet regulatory requirements.” (p. 3)

4) Coal, nuclear and natural gas resources are firm, dispatchable and reliable. Renewable resources are non-firm, unpredictable, intermittent and unreliable. (throughout)

5) “Renewable technologies are not cost effective additions to the system, since they cannot economically compete against dispatchable, full capacity value resources such as gas turbines.” (p. 145)

6) “Energy efficiency is a least-cost resource.” (p. 6) The IRP states that early studies of residential smart meters have shown energy savings of 5–20%, however “PNM believes that smart grid meters would not be implemented in the short term for its service territory.” (p. 112)

7) “New Mexico’s abundant supply of solar irradiance makes this a potentially attractive energy resource for PNM.” (p. 88) However, the IRP includes a detailed state map supporting PNM’s argument that “Solar radiation potential is the greatest in the SW region of NM, but the value of solar generation is the highest in the north.” (p. 89) [What’s a utility to do?]

8) “Renewable additions in the action plan period were added exclusively for compliance with RPS mandates and in accordance with Rule 572 [cost cap] in its current form. If Rule 572 is modified, PNM will pursue renewable additions that are compliant with the modifications.” (p. 15) [It should be noted that PNM is pushing to reduce the current cost cap %.]

9) PNM plans to add additional natural gas facilities to meet demand growth. The report states that modern combined-cycle gas plants have greater fuel efficiency and operational flexibility and lower pollution and CO2 outputs than the older combustion gas plants. PNM plans to add ZERO combined-cycle plants in the future, because they are more expensive to build than combustion gas plants. (p. 108)

10) The IRP acknowledges that wind and PV require little or no water, have no fuel costs, and emit no pollution or CO2. However, PNM claims it would need additional natural gas-powered plants to back up these “unreliable” sources, so there is, in fact, significant pollution and CO2 directly associated with these RE resources. (p. 7)

11) In the event of an extended drought, PNM has a back-up plan to secure additional supplies of water in the Four Corners area for their water-intensive coal-powered plants. (p. 63) The San Juan Generating Plant already uses about twice as much water every year as the city of Santa Fe. The Palo Verde nuclear plant in Phoenix uses just as much water as an equal-sized coal plant, but that water use doesn’t count because it is treated “reclaimed” water from the municipal system [that would otherwise flow back into the eco-system]. (p. 62) PNM claims that concentrating solar thermal plants [which they’re certainly not going to deploy] use more water than equal-sized coal or nuclear plants. (p. 62)

12) PNM has a back-up plan to buy Wyoming coal, to be delivered by rail. (p. 92)

13) PNM’s position is that the only meaningful impact of environmental upgrades is to increase cost. (p. 135)

14) PNM concludes that if it agreed to retire the San Juan coal-fired plant by 2017, the EPA would still require PNM to install $850 million [PNM’s estimate] in additional pollution controls by 2016, therefore PNM should keep the San Juan Plant. (p. 136)

15) PNM notes that greenhouse gas emissions and climate change are “polarizing issues.” In PNM’s opinion the real consequences of greenhouse gas emissions are that “the scope, direction and cost of emerging policy actions related to global climate change creates uncertainty for the electric utility industry.” (p. 23)

THE BOTTOM LINE

Ok, so what is PNM telling you via their IRP about their plans for your energy future here in PNM-land?

1) All existing PNM coal, nuclear and natural gas plants, decrepit as they already are, will still be operating 20 years from now. There will be new natural gas plants added to meet demand, and all of those will be the least efficient, most polluting and cheapest natural gas plants available.

2) Air, water and solid-waste pollution control mandates increase electricity rates without adding value for PNM. There are no lines in PNM’s spreadsheets for health and environmental benefits. PNM will install the minimum amount and lowest quality of air, water and solid waste pollution controls possible.

3) The “smart grid” lives in mañana-land. You can forget about “smart meters.”

4) RE is intermittent and expensive and it degrades PNM’s system reliability. PNM will add no additional PV or wind resources unless it has to.

5) Remember the NM RPS requirements for 10% RE by 2011, 15% by 2015 and 20% by 2020? Forget those. It’s 2012 – PNM is at 5.5% RE. PNM says it may reach 10% RE by 2020, but only if it’s forced to.

6) Permission for residential and third-party PV grid-tie interconnects will be much harder to come by. You can kiss Renewable Energy Credit (REC) payments goodbye.

7) Energy efficiency may play a future role, but only if PNM can figure out how to make money at it.

8) Since the climate change debate is contentious, PNM plans to continue doing nothing about it aside from fighting any attempt to regulate CO2 emissions.

9) Electricity rates? Do you really have to ask?

10) What’s good for PNM is good for all New Mexicans.

LET’S DO SOMETHING!

So what should Green Fired-up readers’ next move be? Offer helpful energy efficiency suggestions to PNM? How about serving PNM’s Board of Directors a heaping plateful of hot SOLAR CC cookies? Are PNM executives simply misinformed—in desperate need of a few info-filled presentations by NM RE experts? Let’s just politely say that I’m highly skeptical.

The fast-becoming-competitive RE offerings in wind and PV are already changing the rules of the utility game. NM’s own SW Public Service Company (SPS), along with large electric utilities in Colorado, Arizona and Utah, already realize that fact. Other utilities, like PNM, have decided to pull back, squawk, flap their wings and bury their heads in the sand. If just one of a dozen promising R&D efforts involving increased PV conversion efficiencies pans out, then things will change even faster—with or without REC payments and tax credits. We’re just one energy-storage breakthrough away from making PNM’s 2011 IRP strategy a classic textbook case of utility mismanagement. But those tipping points ain-t quite here yet, so we need to keep on “a-hollerin.”

Spread the word about PNM’s plans. Support organizations that are actively pushing back, such as the NM Coalition for Clean Affordable Energy (CCAE); the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club; the Natural Resources Defense Fund; the San Juan Citizens Alliance; the Western Resources Advocates; and New Energy Economy. And keep in mind that the upcoming NM PRC decisions and PRC district representative elections will be critical to all New Mexicans’real renewable energy future.

Here’s the link to PNM’s plan for the next 20 years:

http://www.swenergy.org/news/news/documents/file/PNM_IRP_2011-2030_July_2011.pdf

Here’s the link to the formal protest from the CCAE, Sierra Club et al:

http://nmsierraclub.org/sites/default/files/Protest%20PNM%20IRP%208-17-11%20FINAL.pdf

Gary Vaughn is a licensed Professional Engineer in New Mexico, a renewable energy advocate, and vice president of the New Mexico Solar Energy Association. www.nmsea.org

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Institute of American Indian Arts to Host Spring Conference

Monica Gutierrez, Sasha Lapointe, Annie McDonnell, Bonita Rickers

In some ways, climate change is the great equalizer. But in the unraveling of this balance in our climate systems that has already begun, there are some who are affected sooner and more deeply. Indigenous peoples around the world have contributed least to the outpouring of carbon in capitalist-industrial culture, yet they are most vulnerable to the changes in climate as many still depend directly on the local land and sea for their food, medicine and ways of life. Native peoples around the globe are rallying to find ways to preserve their cultures and the ecosystems that their cultures are embedded in. The Indigenous values and knowledge of interdependence with all of nature, and our responsibility to care for all beings are essential parts of the path ahead for all of us. This vision says that the strategies articulated in global climate agreements so far are not enough and will lead to catastrophic consequences. Instead, we need to articulate a new vision, one that challenges the current dominant paradigm of limitless consumption and growth, one that is based on equity and respect between people and the Earth. In Cochabamba, Bolivia at the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change, this vision was articulated in “The Universal Rights of Mother Earth.”

What does it mean to be a culture based on responsibilities rather than a culture based on individual rights? What are the stories, values and perspectives that Indigenous peoples and communities offer in the climate justice movement? What are some ways art can speak to the shifts that are necessary to respond to climate change? What are some of the skills and practices that empower individuals and communities in responding to climate change? To explore some of these questions, the Institute of American Indian Arts will host a spring conference called The Art of Change: Climate Justice and Indigenous Solutions April 20 and 21 on the IAIA campus in Santa Fe. IAIA Student sustainability leaders explain some of the details below.

Sasha Lapointe on Climate Justice:

Climate justice points us to the Indigenous and ancestral ways of being. To move forward with more sustainable alternatives, it is necessary to look back at the ways of our own ancestors and Indigenous people all over the world. Rather than continuing to enable the commodification of the Earth and its resources, each member of every community can take part in finding ways to secure some kind of safety for future generations. That’s what our ancestors did. Rather than the pursuit of economic growth, development and wealth, previous generations perfected the art of living sustainably. One of the similarities between the developed countries most responsible for climate change is a disconnection from the land’s Indigenous people, history and ancestral knowledge. In order to truly shift from the current destructive paradigm, we need to refer to the ancestral models of agriculture, knowledge and ways of life. For example, the basket weavers of my own coastal Salish tribe still practice the ways of their ancestors when it comes to gathering cedar. I often refer to this in my own daily life when thinking of necessity versus want or greed. The way our ancestors collected cedar was in harmony with the environment and sustained them. Rather than strip one tree bare, they would move from tree to tree, in order to prevent taking too much and damaging any one tree. I think of this traditional practice of sustainability and respect in comparison to the dominant model of capitalism that prioritizes efficiency and profit over the health of people and the land.

This ancestral way of gathering cedar reflects how we can relate to any of the Earth’s resources. What do we really need? How does our taking affect the health of the rest of life and ourselves? How do we give back to sustain, not our resources, but the sources of life and well-being.

Bonita Rickers on the Conference Themes and Keynote Speaker:

The Art of Change will focus on four main themes for affecting positive change in our communities. The themes can be viewed as “steps” for action, and they move in a circular fashion, reminding us of the cyclical nature of the Earth.

• Culture and Stories will highlight the importance of ancestral wisdom, intercultural and intergenerational dialogue and connection to place. We will discuss how communities are responding to their own environmental issues, and how Traditional Ecological Knowledge can be connected to the dominant paradigm.
• Creative Communication will address working with what is available, expanding ideas and selecting appropriate artistic mediums and practical resources to meet the needs of communities. We will explore how to effectively communicate with and inspire those who you are working with, as well as communicating with the web of life affected by these issues of climate injustice.
• Skills and Technology focuses on building and working within your environment, particularly using what is immediately available. We want to highlight the importance of accessible forms of renewable energies. We must also address the importance of strengthening connections within communities to bring all skills and resources together for a common goal.
• Tools for Change concentrates on activist strategies, particularly strategies that have been successful and that are cross-cultural, accessible and empowering. What kinds of strategies effectively engage with policy and power to make real change? We will emphasize the importance of knowledge and documentation of the past, understanding present issues and articulating future directions. Lastly, we want to continue stressing the importance of bioregional solutions for climate justice.

Given the breadth and depth of the conference focus, straddling localism and globalism, the personal and the political, and vision and action, we are honored that Winona LaDuke, our keynote speaker, will help set the tone for the event. Winona’s tireless work bridges grassroots economic development and cultural preservation with national and international politics and policy formation. Winona is of the Anishinaabe Tribe of the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. She received her first degree from Harvard University in 1982 in rural economic development and went on to receive her Master’s in community economic development from Antioch University. In 1989, she founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project to pursue the restoration and protection of the land, protect wild rice from genetic modification and commoditization by mainstream agriculture, and to restore local food systems.

In September 2011 an IAIA delegation from the Student Sustainability Leadership class attended the 22^nd Headwaters Climate Change Conference in Gunnison, Colo. Ms. LaDuke won over our hearts and minds at this event, and we were able to lure her to be our keynote speaker at the Art of Change conference.

Monica Gutierrez Explains Conference Details:

On Friday afternoon, April 20, there will be a cob building workshop with IAIA students and Jonah and Lillian Hill from Hopi Tutswa Permaculture, a dinner of local, organic food by Bon Appétit, and a special keynote presentation by Winona LaDuke in the LSC auditorium at 7 pm. Special guest, Mayan elder Flordemayo, one of the 13 Indigenous grandmothers, will open the presentation Friday evening with a prayer.

On Saturday morning, April 21, there will be several key presentations. Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network will speak about international Indigenous climate justice issues and movements. Anna Rondon from Gallup Solar Group and Dave Melton of Sacred Power in Albuquerque will speak about renewable energy in local Native communities. Other guest speakers will speak about Native foods and farming as a strategy of resilience. An intergenerational panel will discuss the major themes of climate justice, art and stories, skills and technologies, tools for change, and current effects of climate change. In the afternoon, there will be a variety of different creative and hands-on workshops in the Center for Lifelong Education building that participants can choose from to explore creative and practical responses to climate change and climate justice issues. After the discussion, IAIA’s Music Club will play around the campfire.

For updates and details, see our facebook page, IAIA’s website (www.iaia.edu), or contact Annie McDonnell at 505.424.5733, amcdonnell@iaia.edu. IAIA’s Student Sustainability Leadership hopes to see you there!

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Erin Sanborn

In most people’s minds, for-profit companies are about making money and non-profit organizations are about “doing good,” and the two shall never meet. Truth be told, there are thousands of organizations, websites and available information that will inspire you, take you on journeys you never imagined and give you hope again. The level of creativity to make changes in our world is everywhere! We don’t have a problem with creativity, examples, opportunity and financing. We have a problem with allocation, access to knowledge and focus.

The hybrids of the traditional non-profit and for-profit companies are emerging everywhere: corporations are writing by-laws about the percentage of profits they donate to the causes/organizations they care deeply about; non-profits are buying patents, forming new companies, bringing products to market and those new companies are committing using those profits to fund education; new entrepreneurs are forming B-corps and social entrepreneurial companies; non-profits are diversifying their revenue streams; mega-corporations are instituting profit-sharing and employee-ownership programs; philanthropy is focused on self-reliance; new types of funding and loan sources are ensuring ownership in the hands of the innovators and employees; new types of public-private partnerships are emerging; and the list goes on.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or an employee of an organization, small or gigantic, you can make a change to influence where profits meet values. You can make a difference. Let’s take the elephant in the room first: Walmart. If you are an employee, get involved in Walmart’s Green/Sustainability work. Apply for funds for a community project such as sourcing local food into the grocery department, grants for teaching children about healthy food choices, “green” your local store, ask the corporation to fund solar panels on all local schools, or develop a project close to your heart and ask this megalith of a corporation to help. This corporation has made a public commitment to such work and they just might fund your proposal.

If you are part of a large organization, convene a meeting with people from all levels of the organization and ask, “How do our profits meet our values? Are there ways we can improve the relationship between profits and values? What are examples and what are our options?”

If you are an entrepreneur and either have a small business or want to start one, talk with a social enterprise consultant, find investment money through your local bank, credit union, the Permaculture Credit Union, the La Montañita Loan Fund, crowd financing or other option. Study triple bottom line and sustainable businesses. Meet WAV Links (Waste as Value Links), where one organization’s waste is another’s material supplier for their products. Consider writing a business plan that takes seriously and yet is lighthearted about how you will bring profits and values together.

Here are just a few resources to explore and to cultivate inspiration:

• Read YES magazine, GreenBiz, Green Fire Times, or Paul Hawken’s book: Blessed Unrest, How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
• Research social enterprise, Biomimicry, Beyond Benign, Green Chemistry and Bioneers
• Volunteer at a food kitchen, pantry or bank and be inspired and humbled
• Go to AllocateYourTaxDollars.org and let the federal government know how you want your tax money spent
• Check in with your favorite non-profit organization, and ask them about sustainability
• Join the New Mexico Green Chamber of Commerce

The changes in our world, where people are doing good things and earning a very decent living, are everywhere. First, together we must help each other open our eyes and share what we know. Second, every small action forward has a sister organization or an example somewhere. We are not alone. Others are traveling the same path. Third, there are those who will lend a helping hand and a good mind. Just ask and put the word out in places that may seem unusual. Follow your intuition. It is just as good as research. Do both. Finally, make a personal commitment to seek out the good news, the inspiring people, the quiet moments, and know that the world of profits for profit’s sake and the small minority of the wealthy is crumbling. Increasingly, products are being developed that have no waste, do not pollute the planet, take care of people and make scads of money! Teach your children they can become an engineer or a lawyer, doctor, entrepreneur, scientist or teacher, and do what they are passionate about, earn a good living, not pollute the planet, and have a wonderful life.

Based in Taos, NM, Erin Sanborn provides Executive Coaching and consulting services through Collaborative Green. 575.770.2991, erin@collaborativegreen.com

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Dick Meyer

Is your landscape “green” if it conserves water? Is it “green” if you don’t use pesticides and herbicides to maintain it? Is it “green” if you harvest rainwater to irrigate? Is it “green” if you use mostly native plants? Is it “green” if you do all of the above?

When it comes to “green” landscaping, green, it seems, is an evolving color. Conserving water and reducing or eliminating the use of chemicals to maintain your landscape are certainly aspects of “green” landscaping. But new thinking about the capacity of our home, business and public community landscapes suggest that there may be far more that can be done in our personal and community landscapes to reduce and remediate the deleterious effects of modern human activity on the global environment.

How green is your landscape? Take the “Green Landscape Test” and see. OK, this isn’t really a test on which you should try to give yourself a score. But a test is a great way to break down a complex issue into its essential components and look at each separately. As you will see, there may be quite a bit more to creating a really green landscape than you thought. So, are you ready? Here’s the test—good luck.

1. Does your landscape use a sustainable quantity of municipal, well or other irrigation water?

Sustainable water use was the first major environmental issue that confronted the modern human landscape. The development and widespread adoption of xeric landscape design, construction, and maintenance practices have been very successful in proving that highly functional and attractive landscapes can be created that will thrive on sustainable quantities of irrigation water. Water use remains a crucial aspect of a green landscape, so this question is worth 20 points.

(One important, often overlooked source of water for landscape use is the rain and snowmelt that simply runs off your property after a rainstorm or as the snow melts in spring. It is not unusual for 50-60% of a residential or commercial property to be covered by either the roofs of the buildings or related driveways, sidewalks, patios or parking areas. If the rain and snow that falls on these parts of the property can be captured and channeled into the landscape, the result is an effective doubling of the natural rainfall for use by the landscape. But don’t try to score your landscape on how well it captures and uses storm water for this question—that’s a part of question #4.)

Give your landscape a score ranging from 0 to 20 points based on the sustainability of your landscape irrigation practices________

2. Does your landscape maximize the sequestration of carbon in soil and plants in order to offset the release of atmospheric carbon caused by the human activity of its occupants?

In the minds of most climate scientists and related experts, increased concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide have been proven to be a major cause of global climate change. The release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere remains a major environmental concern. The use of plants to reduce the energy consumption of buildings is one way to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. But many experts think that there’s an even more effective way to address this environmental issue—through your landscape. Plant tissues are the biosphere’s major carbon sink, so a significant increase in plant tissue volume within our landscapes could be part of a global strategy to reverse increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, this is only effective if those additional plant tissues remain in the landscape and are allowed to decompose in the soil—becoming soil carbon; carbon is what makes topsoil black, by the way. So if you have any significant amount of the euphemistically mislabeled weed barrier in your landscape, you should deduct a few more points from what is likely to be a low score on this item already, because it prevents sloughed seasonal and generational plant tissues from ever reaching the soil organisms that would normally lock up the carbon contained in those plant tissues in the soil as soil organic matter. Because atmospheric carbon is a serious problem that can be impacted in our human landscapes, landscape designs and practices that increase plant size and density and that build soil are an important part of the new green landscape.

Give your landscape a score ranging from 0 to 20 points based on the degree to which your landscape design, construction and maintenance practices capture and retain carbon________

(Unless your landscape is a wilderness area, your score on this question should probably be less than 2.)

3. Does your landscape sustain plant, insect, bird and animal species diversity equal to or greater than that found in the indigenous ecosystems of your geographic region?

While it’s not as widely discussed in the media as global climate change, many leading biologists think that species extinction is potentially as serious an environmental problem as increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The problem of species extinction is commonly thought to be connected to large-scale issues like rainforest deforestation, over-hunting and poaching of wild animals in Third World countries, and overfishing of the planet’s oceans, but species extinction is likely going on in your own backyard. The cause? The failure of traditional and contemporary landscape design philosophies to recognize the intricate and finely tuned interconnectedness of plants, insects, birds and animals and microorganisms within an ecosystem. Most human landscapes can only be described as ecologically inept and incomplete. And, as if our traditional landscape designs weren’t inept and incomplete enough to cause species extinction, our chemical and physical sanitation of lawns and landscape plantings virtually insures that our landscapes are not going to support anything approaching the biodiversity of the indigenous ecosystems that our landscapes replace. Make no mistake about it, to get a perfect score on this test question will not be easy. It will require a greatly increased use of native plants in the landscape. It will require that we learn to appreciate and to enhance the durable beauty of natural landscapes. It will require that we learn to work with nature to create and maintain our landscapes, rather than to continually battle with nature to maintain the unnatural beauty pageants that our landscapes have become. But it will also require that nurseries grow and sell different plants—and that they grow and sell them differently. So getting a perfect score on this question will take some time. But answer the question anyway.

Give your landscape a score ranging from 0 to 20 points based on the degree to which your landscape supports sustainable biodiversity that is equal to or greater than the biodiversity of the indigenous landscape of your region______

4. Does your landscape capture and remediate (to the extent possible) the chemical and other pollutants that would otherwise be washed off the landscaped and paved surfaces of your property and into adjacent aquifers, rivers and streams during a heavy rainstorm or during spring snowmelts?

Human technology and industry have introduced into the planetary environment an almost unfathomable array of natural and unnatural substances to which living organisms had never before been exposed, or never before been exposed to at the levels now seen. The experience of those who have had to face the task of cleaning up entire polluted ecosystems such as lakes or rivers has been that the best long-term solution is to remediate the polluting substances at the point at which they are created or at the point at which they might first enter the natural environment. Because many of these man-made substances are washed into the natural environment when rain accumulates and runs off of the lawns and landscape beds, driveways and parking lots of our human landscapes, civil engineers and community planners are now requiring that large new public landscapes capture their storm water on site and clean it up before releasing it into the streams and rivers of the local watershed. Soil microorganisms have proven themselves very adept at detoxifying most of the substances we humans have come up with to make our lives more convenient; storm water management and on-site bioremediation take advantage of this proven capacity of the biosphere to protect itself. Rain gardens and bioswales are the initial conceptual attempts at workable solutions to this additional important functional requirement of the human landscape. The success of these recent landscape adaptations adds credence to the idea that we can at least begin to solve global environmental issues in our own backyard.

Give your landscape a score ranging from 0 to 20 points based on the degree to which your landscape captures and remediates the storm water that runs off your landscape and property in a heavy rain_______.

5. Does your landscape fully provide for the functional needs of the residents/occupants and other users of the property?

It’s not enough that your landscape solves all of the planet’s environmental problems. In order to get a top score as a green landscape, it also has to be a highly functional landscape for the human beings that live in and around it day in and day out. Are the driveways and parking areas convenient and instinctive to navigate? Do the sidewalks and pathways take you where you want to go comfortably and with appropriate landscape experience? Are the patios, decks and other gathering spaces sized and located functionally within the context of the landscape and the floor plan of the home? These are just a few of the measures of the functionality of a landscape. There should be no tradeoff between function and greenness in a landscape.

Give your landscape a score ranging from 0 to 10 points based on how well your landscape functions for those who use it both regularly and occasionally_______

6. Do the visual and other sensual qualities of your landscape enrich the lives of its residents/occupants and other users of the property throughout the entire year?

Of course, a really green landscape should be visually attractive as well. That’s the original motivation for landscaping in the first place, isn’t it? In fact, there is every reason to think that a 100%-green landscape will also have high visual appeal. Carbon sequestration requires both high plant mass and ecological health. Species diversity also adds the color, interest and movement of insects, birds and small animals to the landscape canvas. Storm water retention can bring a mini-wetland, with its additional palette of bog plants and wildlife to even a fairly small home landscape, not to mention that it can sustainably increase the effective natural precipitation around which your landscape can be designed. So don’t grade your landscape on a curve just because it’s sustainable and green. Green and beautiful are not contradictory terms.

Give your landscape a score ranging from 0 to 10 points based on how well the visual and other sensual qualities of your landscape enrich the lives of its residents/users and neighbors_______

Unless you built your home in a wilderness area without disturbing any of the site that was not a part of the building or its driveways and sidewalks, it’s unlikely that your landscape would score higher than a 40% on this “Green Landscape Test”—and most existing landscapes would probably score below 30%.

The point of this green landscape test is not to make you feel bad about your landscape. The point is to have you begin to think about the opportunity you have to do your share to live sustainably on the planet, and to do so without sacrificing anything in terms of the quality of your living environment. Too often we are led to think that living sustainably will require making significant sacrifices to the quality of our life. But, to the contrary, there is every reason to believe that a fully green landscape will cost about the same as a traditional landscape to install, will cost less than traditional landscaping to maintain, and will have far greater livability and visual interest than traditional landscapes.

Dick Meyer is based in Santa Fe. He is an award-winning nurseryman who has worked in the residential and commercial landscape business for the past 30 years, mostly as the owner and manager of his own landscape design build firm. Meyer has actively explored issues of environmental sustainability through his work. 308.641.2010, dmeyer913@gmail.com

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Camilla Bustamante

What if I proposed that social and cultural aspects of human behavior are not only an influence, but also an integral part of a natural system? It is often believed that environmental sustainability relies on the overall influence of our human behavior and impact on the ecological systems in which we live. Integral to the study of sustainability is the concept of resilience—according to Merriam Webster, resilience is an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. It is widely recognized that resilience is at the core of what can be understood to be sustainable.

Introduced in 1973 by C. S. Holling, in the Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Holling proposed resilience as a key aspect in evaluating ecological systems, and that one consider the qualitative as well as the quantitative aspects in this analysis. Resilience, in the ecological context, refers to an ecosystem’s ability to withstand disturbance while adapting and retaining essential form. In the social and cultural context, resilience can be described as the degree by which a society and its culture are capable of learning, adapting and self-organizing while maintaining common identity. A food system is a direct link between environment and culture, dependent on both the environment that can naturally sustain their growth as well as the societal norms that will nurture and propagate it. So then how is a resilient and sustainable food system deemed to be culturally appropriate?

Ecologist, Jason Bradford, in an article for the Post Carbon Institute, stated that the current U.S. food system is largely influenced by government policy, financial pressure, fossil fuels and market forces, all of which present vulnerable points to the system. Threats to any one of these influences can result in localized food insecurity, even in those areas where the food is grown. Access to healthy, locally grown food continues to predominantly be afforded by those who can attend the “special event” of a farmers’ market, rather than to nearby neighbors or those whose hands have labored in their planting and cultivation.

Starting with a premise observed in nature, let us recognize that the more local and diverse, the more resilient a system. When considering cultural appropriateness of food on the local level, one must consider those foods that are easily grown and cultivated within geographical access. Resiliency refers not only to the types of foods capable of growing in within the 150-day frost free season of northern New Mexico, but also the nutritional diversity found in the various varieties of foods that have become staples in many households. Integration of varieties of greens such as kale, chard and collards provide nutrient-rich options that, with the use of cold frames and greenhouses, can be enjoyed year-round. The integration of more varieties of food, as in the example of vegetable greens, provides the diversity that will support dietary need in the event that one variety of food was to become vulnerable to decline. Bradford points out, and it is observed in nature, more biodiversity equals more resiliency, given the ability to adjust against losses. Farms based on agro-ecological systems are less dependent on outside inputs and less vulnerable to detrimental external influences.

Local, fresh produce has measurably demonstrated more nutrient value as well as socio-cultural benefits. Though Whitney and Rolfes (2011) identified that the strongest influences on food choice are personal preference, habit, ethnic heritage and tradition, social activities such as seed exchange, acequia-cleaning, planting and harvest bring community together to provide the venue for food tradition. Less daily activity and recognition that highly processed foods are less healthy require integration of healthier alternatives that are both ecologically amenable and culturally acceptable. Identification and integration of regionally available food varieties in the local diet as part of modified traditional recipes can be a hallmark of resilience, particularly in reclaiming traditional meals in a sustainable manner. From the environmental health perspective, healing from a century of high-fat, highly processed foods, consider ecologist Stuart L. Pimm’s (1991) definition of resilience as a measure of how fast a system returns to an equilibrium state after a disturbance.

[Fresh Vegi-Chalupa Recipe Here]

Sostenga Chard Burrito (makes 2-4 burritos)

INGREDIENTS

2 lbs fresh chard

¾ cup chopped onion

¾ cup grated cheese (optional)

2 ¼ cup corn

1 tsp olive oil

1 clove garlic

2 cup green chile

Salt and pepper to taste

Large Tortillas

DIRECTIONS

1. Saute onions and add chard, chile, garlic and corn
2. Add cheese, salt and pepper if desired
3. Roll up in a yummy tortilla of your choice
4. Enjoy…

Camilla Bustamante, PH.D., MPH, is Dean of Community, Workforce and CTE at Northern New Mexico College.

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