New Mexico senator’s conservation bills move forward in Congress
Two of U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich’s conservation bills — one to ban new hard-rock mining in the Pecos watershed and the other to create a wilderness area near Taos — are gaining momentum.
The New Mexico Democrat presented the bills this week to a Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee in Washington, D.C., arguing both are necessary to protect two areas of great ecological and cultural value.
The bills will go to a committee hearing to be debated and possibly revised, known as a markup. Whatever versions of the bills make it out of committee will move to the Senate floor for a vote.
The Pecos bill would prevent the leasing, patent and sale of all publicly owned minerals in the watershed, including oil and gas, gold, silver, copper and other hard-rock minerals. Heinrich drafted it in response to an international company exploring mineral extraction in the area.
“The last thing this community wants is an international corporation threatening their water quality,” Heinrich told the Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests and Mining.
Area residents are fighting hard to prevent new industrial activity, Heinrich said, and to protect the “irreplaceable water resources” that make their way of life possible.
“I’m proud to join their efforts with this legislation because water is — hands down — the most valuable resource in my state,” Heinrich said.
In the 1990s, the community fell victim to a disastrous toxic waste spill from a closed mine that killed fish for 11 miles in the Pecos River and cost millions of dollars to clean up, Heinrich said.
No one in the region wants a repeat of the incident, which created a cancer-causing plume in the river, Lela McFerrin, vice president of the Upper Pecos Watershed Association, said in a phone interview.
McFerrin, who strongly supports the bill, said she hopes it passes before Comexico LLC, based in Colorado, obtains a mining permit.
Comexico, a subsidiary of New World Resources, an Australian company, is pursuing a permit to do exploratory drilling for three years, she said.
If the company finds a lode it wants to mine, it could stake a claim and apply for a mining permit, she added.
In a Senate hearing last year, when Heinrich first introduced this bill, he acknowledged that under an 1872 law, those with existing claims can’t be denied their right to mine.
However, a federal forest manager said the government is allowed to regulate how the minerals are extracted.
Heinrich expressed certainty his proposed bill would head off Comexico’s mining efforts.
“It would be very important for us and the Pecos community … and the Pecos River all the way down to Texas,” McFerrin said of the legislation. “You can lose this river. It’s serious.”
Heinrich’s second bill would designate Cerro de la Olla as a wilderness area.
It’s now part of the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, but making it a wilderness would prevent road-building in the historic setting where people have hunted, gathered herbs and collected firewood for generations.
“Cerro de la Olla, with a peak of nearly 10,000 feet, is the home of some of the best elk habitat in Northern New Mexico,” Heinrich told the subcommittee.
The bill is supported by a wide coalition, Heinrich said, including ranchers, hunters, business owners and veterans, as well as Taos Pueblo, the Taos County Commission and the town of Taos.
Neither Taos Pueblo’s governor nor the town manager returned calls seeking comment on the legislation.
The bill also would extend the monument’s boundaries to encompass a private parcel the owner would like to see added to the monument through the federal land conservation fund, Heinrich said.
