The Fluid Mineral Leases and Leasing Processes rule updates bonding requirements, minimum bids and royalty rates.

This rule represents the first comprehensive update to the framework that the federal government uses for oil and gas leasing since 1988 and the first time that minimum bonding levels have been updated since 1960. It is also the first increase in royalty rates in more than a century.

“These are the most significant reforms to the federal oil and gas leasing program in decades, and they will cut wasteful speculation, increase returns for the public, and protect taxpayers from being saddled with the costs of environmental cleanups,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a press release.

She said that alongside efforts to clean up orphaned and abandoned wells nationwide, the new rule “will help safeguard the health of our public lands and nearby communities for generations to come.”

In terms of bonding, the minimum bonding level for a lease will increase to $150,000 and companies with multiple leases in a state will need at least $500,000 in bonding. This is a significant increase from the bond amount established in 1960 of $10,000, which the BLM says did not provide an adequate incentive for companies to meet reclamation obligations and was inadequate for covering the potential costs of reclaiming wells should the company fail to do so. This has been a problem as taxpayers have been paying to clean up orphaned wells.

Under the new rule, the bond amounts will be adjusted for inflation every ten years.

When it comes to royalty rates, the new rule sets that rate at 16.67 percent until Aug. 16, 2032. After that point, the 16.67 percent royalty rate will become a minimum rate. The past minimum royalty rate was 12.5 percent.

In terms of minimum bids, companies will now need to bid at least $10 per acre for federal oil and gas leases. This is an increase from $2 per acre. The new rate will be adjusted for inflation starting in 2032. Companies will also pay a rent of $3 per acre annually for the first two years after being issued a lease and then $5 per acre each year for the subsequent six years, after which the rate will increase to $15 per acre annually. In the past, companies have paid $1.50 per acre per year for the first five years and $2 per acre per year for the subsequent five years.

“We are finally providing American taxpayers with a fair return for the development of oil and gas on our public lands,” U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, a Democrat from New Mexico, said in a press release. “This rule strikes the right balance by protecting important wildlife habitat and cultural resources on our public lands from harmful drilling operations and holding oil and gas companies accountable for paying their fair share and cleaning up after themselves.” 

One area of New Mexico that could benefit from the new rule is Carlsbad Caverns National Park, which is situated in the Permian Basin and has faced risks due to nearby fossil fuel extraction.

According to the National Parks Conservation Association, those threats include the risk of gas or fluids leaking into cave passages, which could put visitors in danger.

The rule could empower the BLM to redirect the oil and gas development away from the cave, which could protect the underground caverns and prevent contamination of groundwater.

“This long-overdue Oil and Gas Rule is a safeguard for places like Carlsbad Caverns National Park and its connected landscape, surrounded by one of the nation’s most active oil and gas regions,” Emily Wolf, New Mexico Program Manager at the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), said in a press release.”By protecting these sensitive cave and karst areas around the park, this update should ensure the safety of visitors in underground cave passages, improve air quality and visibility, and protect the park’s—and surrounding landscape’s— spectacular geologic features and clean water resources.”

While the advocacy groups say the rule makes important changes that are decades overdue, some argue that it falls short of addressing climate change.

“While we welcome the long-overdue fiscal and bonding reforms contained in the final rule, we are disappointed that, despite specifically requesting comment on how the rule should address greenhouse gas emissions, the Bureau of Land Management chose not to make any changes to the final rule in response to the many comments it received on this issue,” Melissa Hornbein, senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center, said in a press release. “The Bureau has ample authority to institute the ‘lifecycle’ approach to the federal leasing program we recommended, which would have set the stage for the scientifically mandated managed decline of the federal oil and gas program that is critical to addressing the climate crisis while complying with the Inflation Reduction Act’s requirements for future leasing. While bonding, royalty, and other fiscal reforms are welcome, the Bureau once again missed a critical opportunity to make a meaningful difference with respect to climate with this rule.”

Advocates hope that fossil fuel production will be phased out on public lands in the future, but they say the rule announced Friday is a step forward.

“For decades, oil and gas companies have persistently gotten away with paying rock-bottom prices to drill on public lands with little to no real financial accountability,” Miya King Flaherty, Our Wild New Mexico Organizing Representative at the Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter, said in a press release. “The federal oil and gas leasing program is broken and needs fundamental fiscal reform to ensure frontline communities and taxpayers are not left cleaning the mess. These common-sense updates are a welcome step and we hope the Biden administration will go further and phase out new oil and gas leasing so we can truly address the climate emergency.”

The post BLM increases what companies must pay to extract oil and gas first appeared on NM Political Report.

The lawsuit comes from a coalition of youth, frontline and Indigenous advocates who say the state has failed in its constitutional duty to protect them from pollution associated with oil and gas. 

“The court has the authority to interpret and enforce the constitution. And there is nothing different about the court’s authority or duty when it comes to the pollution control clause,” Gail Evans, an attorney from the Center for Biological Diversity who is representing the plaintiffs, said. 

She said the argument that the court must decide based on Friday’s hearing is whether the plaintiffs have constitutional claims against the state, not whether the state has fulfilled its constitutional duty under the pollution control clause.

The judge has not yet made a decision about dismissing the lawsuit.

“Plaintiffs are frontline community members, Indigenous people and youth that have all been harmed by the state permitting oil and gas production and the pollution that comes with that oil and gas production,” Evans said. “They breathe unhealthy air. Their land and water has been contaminated and depleted. Their cultural resources have been damaged. Their health has been harmed and their environment has been harmed including the loss of plants and animals. They brought this case because of skyrocketing pollution that is permitted by the state through oil and gas production.”

She said the state has not put in place an adequate statutory and regulatory framework to protect community members.

The suit was brought under Article 20 Section 21 of the state constitution, which reads: “The protection of the state’s beautiful and healthful environment is hereby declared to be of fundamental importance to the public interest, health, safety and the general welfare. The legislature shall provide for control of pollution and control of despoilment of the air, water and other natural resources of this state, consistent with the use and development of these resources for the maximum benefit of the people.”

The defendants said that the proper venue for increasing protections is through the legislature and not the court.

Elizabeth Radosevich, an attorney representing the governor and two cabinet secretaries, argued that the plaintiffs have not brought a claim for relief that the court is able to grant. She said the court cannot step in and act in a legislative role.

She argued that there are three important elements in the second sentence of Section 21. First, she said, it assigns the responsibility “clearly and explicitly to the legislature.”

The sentence also requires “a balancing of interests between development of natural resources and pollution control,” she said.

Finally, she said the balance between development of natural resources and pollution control to provide the maximum benefit to people in New Mexico is not a decision that the court can decide but is rather a matter of policy, judgment and competing values. The language, she said, “provides no instruction as to the specific level of pollution control or development of natural resources that might be required.”

Tom Hnasko, an attorney representing the legislature, argued that the plaintiffs are requesting that the court make a “value judgment of a legislative nature.”

“I think it’s very important that everyone understands what the legislature has done in enacting both laws to develop the resources for the economic benefit of our citizens, but also to protect the environment,” he said.

He said the legislature has “spoken” and that the plaintiffs want something different.

“They want this court to take the absolutely unprecedented act of enjoining the legislature and telling them what to do,” Hnasko said.

But Evans argued that the oil and gas industry has been exempted from some important environmental laws such as the Water Quality Control Act. 

She said the plaintiffs are not asking the court to rewrite any statutes or regulations.

“We would like it if the state did that, if (the) state had statutes and regulations that comported with the constitution,” she said. “What we are asking from this court is a declaration that a state is not fulfilling its constitutional duties under the pollution control clause.”

The post Court hears arguments in oil and gas pollution case first appeared on NM Political Report.

New Mexico’s unemployment rate has remained stable at 4.0 percent since October 2023 with the state’s all-time lowest unemployment rate being 3.4 percent in August 2022, according to the Department of Workforce Solutions.

Generally, a 4.0 percent unemployment rate is considered low and can have positive effects on the overall economy.

“Low unemployment usually indicates that businesses are expanding, consumers are spending, and overall economic activity is strong,” Legislative Finance Committee Chief Economist Ismael Torres told the NM Political Report. 

Because of the low employment rate, it is of the utmost importance to grow the labor pool, Torres said.

“Typically, when you have a very low unemployment rate, that I think would be a positive sign for the economy,” University of New Mexico Bureau of Business and Economic Research director Michael “Mo” O’Donnell told the NM Political Report. “The problem this time is I think, there are a few other elements kind of dragging things down.”

These elements include elevated inflation and labor force participation.

The Consumer Price Index, the most widely used inflation measurement, in New Mexico was 3.4 percent in April 2024.

“It’s still above where people would like to see it. It was elevated, quite high, you know, a year and a half, two years ago and I think that there’s still a feeling that households and decision makers are still trying to catch up from that,” O’Donnell said.

As to workforce participation, the age ranges in New Mexico that have the highest unemployment rates are the 25-34 year olds with 7.0 percent unemployment and those aged 65 and up with 6.7 percent unemployment, according to the current New Mexico Labor Market Review.

Related: Report details economic impact of immigrants in Santa Fe

“So if you compare the labor force participation rates, kind of pre- and post-pandemic, we’re still below where we were prior to the pandemic,” O’Donnell said. “And so, you know, I think that that is having an effect on businesses, because businesses are still having difficulty actually recruiting staff to come work for them, which, of course, is also contributing to inflationary factors.”

The current unemployment rate also reflects a change in worker attitudes since the COVID-19 pandemic when pandemic-based layoffs were rampant and workers felt confident to move on to other jobs, UNM Associate Professor of Finance Reilly White told the NM Political Report via email.

“Workers don’t wait by the phone for their old job to call them back – rather, they find new and better opportunities that award them with higher pay and benefits. We’ve seen this across the last few years, with both hiring and quit rates reaching historic highs in 2022,” White said. “The job market has since cooled somewhat, but we still see more job openings than the number of unemployed people (this is due to a skills mismatch between the jobs employers want to fill and the jobs people want to take).”

White also said that the New Mexico labor market was supported by immigrants, “with perhaps half the growth of last year’s job numbers coming from immigrants.” 

There have also been other economic shifts in the 21st century, he said.

These shifts, influenced by globalization, technological advances and changing social attitudes towards work, include a decline in union membership, reevaluation in compensation for essential workers, remote work and technological advances including artificial intelligence, White said.

“The gradual decline in union membership has affected workers’ ability to negotiate for higher wages and better working conditions. This has broader implications for wage growth and income inequality, factors that in turn influence economic health and consumer spending,” White said. 

In 2023, about 10 percent of workers nationwide were union members compared to 1983 when more than 20 percent of workers were union members, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Essential workers’ value was emphasized during the COVID-19 pandemic which led to compensation reevaluation in the more traditionally lower wage sectors, White said.

“This shift towards demanding better wages and benefits represents a structural change in the labor market and poses significant challenges for small businesses and certain sectors adjusting to higher labor costs (notably, leisure and hospitality),” White said.

Working from home, which many found out during the pandemic could be done easily, has remained a part of negotiability for workers “as flexibility commands a premium,” White said.

Technological advancements including artificial intelligence proliferation could allow for a workforce shift over the long term, White said.

“Immediate or catastrophic changes are unlikely – but the workforce will shift and employers will respond to higher labor costs by changing the way they do business,” White said. “The future is still unknown – since the pandemic represented a very extraordinary economy followed by an equally extraordinary recovery, the trends we’re seeing may not be sustainable in the years ahead.”

The post What the low unemployment rates for months means for NM’s economy first appeared on NM Political Report.

The finalized rule was one of three announcements federal officials made during a press conference.

“Climate change poses an existential threat not just to our environment, but to our health, our communities and our economic well being,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said. “As we look to stem the worsening impacts of the climate crisis. We know that clean energy, including transmission lines, solar energy storage projects on public lands, is helping communities across the country to be part of the climate solution while creating good paying jobs.”

The renewable energy rule comes on the heels of the Energy Act of 2020 which gave the U.S. Bureau of Land Management the authority to reduce acreage rents and capacity fees for wind and solar projects. The BLM implemented the lower rates in 2022, but the new rule essentially codifies the rates, which are 80 percent less than rates approved in a 2016 rule. Those lower rates will be in effect through 2035. After that, the rates will transition to 20 percent less than the 2016 rule. 

Laura Daniel-Davis, acting deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior, said the rule also expands the BLM’s ability to accept leasing applications in priority areas without first having to go through a full auction process, though it also “retains the BLM’s ability to hold competitive auctions where that is appropriate.”

It further includes financial incentives for developers to use products manufactured in the United States and to enter into project labor agreements.

Daniel-Davis said the final rule complements the agency’s efforts to update the Western Solar Plan.

“We’re updating the Western solar plan to include more states and streamline the BLM framework for citing solar energy projects across the West in order to support clean energy goals, long term energy security, climate resilience, and improved conservation outcomes,” she said.

BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning highlighted her agency’s role as the largest public land manager in the United States and which, as such, “plays a critical role in America’s clean energy transition.”

Stone-Manning announced that the Arica and Victory Pass solar projects, which are located in California, are now fully operational and are providing 465 megawatts of renewable energy to the grid.

Haaland also announced on Thursday that the Department of the Interior has now permitted more than 25 gigawatts of clean energy projects on federal lands. President Joe Biden had a goal of reaching that level by 2025.

According to a press release, the U.S. now has 29 gigawatts of permitted clean energy projects on public lands. That represents enough energy to power 12 million homes.

“This includes dozens of solar, wind, geothermal projects, as well as gen-tie lines (generation interconnection lines) on public lands that are essential for connecting clean electricity projects on federal and non federal land to the grid,” Haaland said during the press conference.

Additionally, Stone-Manning said that the BLM is currently processing an additional 66 clean energy projects that have been proposed on public lands in the western United States that, if they come into fruition, would provide another 32 gigawatts of renewable electricity to the grid.

“We have many more proposed projects in the queue,” Haaland said. “And I’m confident that we will continue our momentum to ensure that every family and every household across the country benefits from renewable energy.”

The 25 gigawatts that have been permitted represent a huge amount of energy, as White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi noted in his remarks. 

“When we were doing great, big, massive things at the Interior Department during the peak of the (Franklin D.) Roosevelt administration, we built a Hoover Dam that was two gigawatts,” he said, adding that the permitted projects represent 10 times more electricity than the Hoover Dam.

The post Feds announce final renewable energy rule for public lands first appeared on NM Political Report.

For example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new drinking water standards for PFAS chemicals that were announced this week cannot be enforced for private wells because they are not subject to the same level of scrutiny and testing.

And there have been documented cases of PFAS contamination in private wells in New Mexico.

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, a Democrat representing New Mexico, is co-sponsoring legislation known as the Healthy H2O Act that would help protect families who rely on private wells from contaminants like PFAS that can have devastating health impacts.

U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, is leading the effort.  

“Clean water is essential to the health and economic well-being of working families,” Heinrich said in a press release. “I’m proud to cosponsor legislation that will protect New Mexicans in rural communities from dangerous forever chemicals by providing access to new technology that detects and gets rid of water contaminants. Together with the EPA’s new standards for PFAS, these bills will go a long way to keeping New Mexicans safe and helping our state build a stronger foundation for the future.” 

The legislation would provide individuals and non-profits in rural communities with grants to test water and access treatment technology. 

Heinrich previously worked to pass the State Response to Contaminants Program Act, which was included in the bipartisan infrastructure law and provides $5 billion to states to address PFAS and other emerging contaminants in small or disadvantaged communities. According to the press release, Congress intended states to have flexibility in using that funding that would have allowed them to assist private well owners. However, the EPA interprets the law differently and has only allowed private well owners to receive assistance if the money goes to connecting them to public water utilities. This is not always an option for those private well owners.

The new legislation would clarify that the assistance can be provided to private well owners who are not connected to public water systems.

The post Heinrich co-sponsors legislation to address PFAS in private wells first appeared on NM Political Report.

Speaker Javier Martinez, of Albuquerque, spoke to the committee, which is chaired by U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, also a Democrat, about the efforts in New Mexico on the topic. The committee heard expert testimony about the importance of early childhood education. 

Martinez spoke about the state’s leadership in early childhood education due to the investments the state has made. In 2019, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham created the Early Childhood Education and Care Department to oversee early childhood and pre-K education. 

Martinez was involved in the 10-year push to pass the legislation in 2022 that allowed for a constitutional amendment to go to the voters to increase the distribution from the Permanent Land Grant fund to increase funding to the ECECD for early childhood education. Voters overwhelmingly passed the initiative.

Related: Land Grant Permanent Fund constitutional amendment is years in the making

The state has also increased early childhood education assistance so that most middle-income families can receive free early childcare. The state has also reduced the gross receipts taxes for early childcare providers and provided other incentives to encourage quality care and improved wages for early childcare educators.

“For over a decade, a diverse coalition of community champions patiently and persistently built political will to do something big, bold, and significant on early childhood education in New Mexico,” Martinez said through a news release. “Now, we are steadily rebuilding the village it takes to raise a child, so we can give all our kids the fair shot they deserve in life.”

The post NM Speaker testifies on early childcare before a joint congressional committee first appeared on NM Political Report.

Previous Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey enacted a 15-week abortion ban in Arizona in March 2022 but a legal battle then ensued around whether the 1864 law almost completely banning abortion preempts the 15-week ban. On Tuesday, that court case came to a head when the Arizona Supreme Court issued its decision, saying that the 1864 law, created when Arizona first became a territory, is enforceable. If the law goes into effect, it will ban abortion from conception and provide as the only exception if the life of the pregnant person is endangered. The antiquated law would put a provider in Arizona at risk of a felony with up to two-to-five years of jail time, if it is enforced.

This decision caused outrage for many in Arizona. Victoria Lopez, director of program and strategy for American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, told NM Political Report that the decision is “devastating.”

“This is a very basic form of healthcare. Arizonans have faced threats and restrictions for decades [around abortion] but this is particularly devastating for us,” she said. 

The Arizona high court also said that the ruling would have a 14-day waiting period, during which the plaintiff, Planned Parenthood of Arizona, could seek a lower trial court for a review of the 1864 law’s constitutionality, Lopez said. This could create a window for the plaintiffs to seek an injunction or a stay on the Arizona Supreme Court decision, she said.

In addition, there is a 45-day waiting period before the Arizona Supreme Court decision would go into effect after the 14-day waiting period. There is also a ballot initiative to amend Arizona’s constitution to allow abortion up to viability, which is expected to go before voters in November.

Lopez said the ACLU of Arizona is a part of the coalition seeking to pass the ballot initiative. The coalition has more than 500,000 signatures and needs 383,000 more by July 3 to qualify to get the question on the November ballot. Lopez said the coalition’s goal is to go well beyond that number.

She said she thinks the Arizona Supreme Court decision will galvanize both volunteers to help with the initiative and will galvanize voters to come to the polls. Arizona GOP candidate for Senate Kari Lake has backpedaled on her position on the 1864 law after previously voicing support for it, according to Axios.

There are unintended consequences and ripple effects from state abortion bans, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains Regional Director of Government Affairs Jack Teter told NM Political Report.

State bans on abortion cause terrifying medical emergencies for pregnant individuals who want to carry to term but face a health crisis during the pregnancy, Teter said. Providers and hospitals fear providing any kind of medical care in such situations because of the criminalization. 

“What if someone learns they have an ectopic pregnancy and they have to wait while hospital lawyers debate whether they can get care? It’s so inhumane,” he said. 

Abortion clinics and abortion fund providers in New Mexico are watching what is happening in Arizona closely. Teter told NM Political Report that the Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains clinic in Albuquerque finished its expansion last year and can now accept three times the number of patients it could before. 

Jaki Lawrence, spokesperson for PPRM, told NM Political Report by email that 57 percent of PPRM patients in New Mexico currently come from out of state, primarily Texas. PPRM, in addition to expanding its Albuquerque clinic, opened a brick-and-mortar clinic in Las Cruces last year and began offering medication abortion at its Farmington clinic, all in an effort to expand services to meet the needs of patients as more people come from other states to seek abortion in New Mexico.

Related: Planned Parenthood clinics in New Mexico expand, offering medication abortion care at all locations

Teter said that since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, PPRM has provided a little over $12 million for patient assistance in the four-state region, which includes Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico. By contrast, PPRM provided $1.2 million in patient assistance over the four-state region in the year prior to the Dobbs decision, he said. 

Teter said that there are other ripple effects if the Arizona 1864 ban is enforced. He said the patients traveling to Arizona for an abortion due to bans in other states will have to travel somewhere else, including New Mexico. 

“It’s not sustainable to live in two countries where it’s a felony in some states and constitutionally protected in other states,” he said.

Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder, president and chief executive officer of Whole Woman’s Health, a clinic that relocated from Texas to Albuquerque in response to Texas abortion bans, told NM Political Report that Whole Woman’s Health is about to double its space. That expansion is part of a renovation the clinic planned from the beginning to expand services, which will include contraceptive care and intrauterine device availability for the local community. 

Hagstrom Miller said the abortion bans in more than 20 states is “changing the landscape for those of us [in the field], our care model is different.”

She said the clinic has abortion funds available to help individuals with the cost of the procedure but also for the wrap-around cost disruption in people’s work. She said the clinic sees patients who must drive all night to reach the clinic then after the procedure, drive back to their home state the same night.

“The drive is more dangerous than the procedure,” she said. 

Hagstrom Miller said emergency situations when pregnant individuals learn they are suffering a fetal anomaly or a miscarriage but can’t get treatment due to the state’s abortion ban, is something the clinic has seen happening a lot in Texas. 

“This law in Arizona, it predates the end of slavery. People need to really understand this is what we’re going back to in so many ways even though our country has moved forward and secured civil rights,” she said.

Hagstrom Miller said almost 70 percent of the individuals seeking abortion at Whole Woman’s Health are already parents and the clinic provides additional support to accommodate traveling families. She said the bans put the health and safety of women and families at risk.

“There is so much trauma happening, not only to people denied an abortion but also to those denied comprehensive reproductive healthcare,” she said.

Joan Lamunyon Sanford, executive director of Faith Roots Reproductive Action (an abortion fund provider formerly known as New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice), told NM Political Report that the abortion fund is prepared to accept more callers who need practical assistance to obtain an abortion in New Mexico.

“We’ll take the lessons we’ve learned from Texas,” she said.

Faith Roots Reproductive Action began offering help for organized group flights for abortion patients flying in from parts of Texas in response to the Texas bans a few years ago. Lamunyon Sanford said the organization is not currently planning to do the same for Arizona if the 1864 ban is enforced, but the nonprofit would consider that as an option.

“We will welcome anyone from Arizona,” she said.

One of the ways in which Faith Roots Reproductive Action have responded to the crisis in reproductive care occurring due to the abortion bans has been to expand its practical assistance to also include childcare stipends starting this past winter, Lamunyon Sanford said.

The Arizona Attorney General has announced that she will not enforce the 1864 law even if it does become enforceable, but Lamunyon Sanford said that does not preclude Arizona county attorneys or district attorneys or sheriff’s offices from trying to enforce the law.

“In 1864 the age of consent in Arizona was 10 years old. This was a package of laws the territorial legislature drafted and accepted and ten years old as the age of consent was a part of that. That puts this into the context of being so out of touch,” she said.

The post How the AZ Supreme Court decision on abortion impacts New Mexico first appeared on NM Political Report.

This is the first time there has been a nationwide, legally enforceable drinking water standard for PFAS chemicals.

“Drinking water contaminated with PFAS has plagued communities across this country for too long,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a press release.

He said the current administration has prioritized tackling PFAS contamination. 

“Our PFAS Strategic Roadmap marshals the full breadth of EPA’s authority and resources to protect people from these harmful forever chemicals,” he said. “Today, I am proud to finalize this critical piece of our Roadmap, and in doing so, save thousands of lives and help ensure our children grow up healthier.”  

The rule requires public water utilities to monitor for some of the most common PFAS chemicals. The utilities have three years to complete the initial monitoring and begin providing the public with information about the levels of PFAs in their drinking water. They also have five years to implement strategies to reduce PFAS levels if the monitoring shows chemicals in exceedance of the maximum contaminant levels allowed under the new standards.

There are approximately 66,000 public drinking water systems and the EPA estimates that between 6 percent and 10 percent of them may be required to reduce PFAS levels in order to meet the new standards.

Related: Source of PFAS contamination in Santa Fe County remains unknown

The new standards don’t cover every type of PFAS chemical, however they do address some of the more common constituents.

The standards set limits of four parts per trillion for PFOA as well as PFOS and 10 parts per trillion for PFNA, PFHxS and HFPO-DA.

When it comes to the mixture of four PFAS chemicals that together are known as Gen X— PFNA, PFHxS, PFBS and HFPO-DA—the standards are based upon the hazard of the mixture.

“As a result of the announcement that’s been made today, 100 million people will soon have safer water,” Scott Faber with the Environmental Working Group said during a press conference. The Environmental Working Group has been advocating for greater protections against PFAS chemicals for years.

Faber cited the EPA estimate that approximately 100 million people are currently consuming drinking water that exceeds the new standards for PFAS.

PFAS has been linked to various health conditions including cancer and liver disease.

The EPA also announced $1 billion in funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law to assist states and territories fund PFAS detection and treatment systems that will help water utilities meet the new standards. 

“These new limits confirm that these chemicals are toxic at very low levels,” Olga Naidenko, vice president of investigations at the EWG, said in a press release. “While these six PFAS are some of the most well-studied PFAS, nearly every week there are new scientific studies documenting an increasing number of ways that the whole class of PFAS could damage our bodies and threaten our health.” 

Hope Grosse from the Pennsylvania-based Buxmont Coalition for Safe Water described the EPA’s announcement as a “monumental victory for all Americans.”

Grosse said she has been impacted by PFAS exposure. She learned about the presence of PFAS in her drinking water in 2014.

“This is both an emotional day and a day that restores my faith in our leaders,” she said. “Polluters have known for decades about PFAS (that) was building up in our blood and making us all sick.”

Related: NMED secretary: PFAS drinking water standards are a start, but not a silver bullet for addressing the contamination

New Mexico waterways

In New Mexico, much of the attention around PFAS has focused on the contamination from military bases. But that is not the only place where PFAS contamination is occuring. 

A team from the U.S. Geological Survey in coordination with the New Mexico Environment Department monitored PFAS in the Rio Grande and found that urban areas are the most significant contributor to contamination in the state’s largest river.

The team of researchers released two studies documenting this.

The first study was an assessment of PFAS contamination in waters across New Mexico. During that study, the researchers sampled water from 117 groundwater wells and 18 surface water locations between August 2020 and October 2021. The team detected PFAS in all of the major rivers and found that concentrations were highest downstream from urban areas.

“The comprehensive survey of New Mexico’s major rivers and evaluation of groundwater quality across the state is critical in helping NMED protect these valuable resources,” Andy Jochems, Source Water Protection Team Lead from the New Mexico Environment Department, said in a press release. “The science provided by the USGS helps us make informed decisions about our drinking water resources into the future.”  

That led to a follow up study focused on the Rio Grande as it flows through Albuquerque. The scientists found that PFAS levels were 10 times higher in downstream samples than compared to areas upstream of the urban area.

“Our study highlights the complex nature of chemicals associated with urban areas and their impact on river systems,” Kimberly Beisner, USGS hydrologist and lead author of the studies, said. “The data show that urban areas can be a major contributor of PFAS to rivers, with constantly changing concentrations due to wastewater discharge, stormwater runoff and other sources.”

People who are concerned about PFAS in their drinking water can take steps at home to reduce their exposure. Granular activated carbon, reverse osmosis systems or ion exchange resins are three types of filters that the EPA says can remove some of the common types of PFAS from drinking water. These filters can cost between $20 and $1,000.

Drinking water is one way that people can be exposed to PFAS, however the chemicals are widespread throughout the environment and can be found in a variety of household products including cosmetics, furniture, carpets and cleaning supplies.

As more people become aware of the dangers of PFAS, federal and state agencies have taken steps to reduce the ways people are exposed. For example, in February, the EPA announced that grease-proof material that contains PFAS chemicals can no longer be used in food packaging.

The post EPA announces new drinking water standards for PFAS chemicals first appeared on NM Political Report.

In an emotional event Monday evening, a panel moderated by Source NM reporter Patrick Lohmann discussed the wildfire and the struggles that people have faced since it burned through their communities in northern New Mexico.

The panel discussion took place at the Indigo Theater in Las Vegas following a screening of the unfinished documentary “Mora is Burning.” The advocacy group Coalition for Fire Fund Fairness hosted the event.

“We all know and we all remember that this was the federal government’s gross mismanagement,” former Attorney General Hector Balderas said at the start of the event.

The Hermits Peak Fire started on April 6, 2022 when a prescribed burn got out of control amid high spring winds. It later joined with the Calf Canyon Fire, which ignited from embers left over in slash piles that had been burned over the winter. The U.S. Forest Service has taken responsibility for both fires.

Balderas said 900 structures burned and 33,000 acres were scorched.

“The trauma that was suffered from our communities is truly regrettable and unforgivable,” Balderas said. 

Toby Dolan’s family lost three homes—the one that he shared with his wife, his mother’s home and his grandmother’s home.

“We filed our notice of loss early on, and it was seven months before it was even acknowledged,” he said.

Yolanda Cruz spoke about how FEMA lost her documentation three times before finally processing her claim.

This is not an uncommon problem.

Colt Hagmaier, assistant administrator of the Recovery Directorate within the Office of Response and Recovery at FEMA, said that those issues should be resolved now. He explained that some documents were lost due to employee error while others were lost when switching from one system to another.

He said that he has seen signs of improvement, including more claims being moved at a faster rate.

“We have doubled the number of people that we’ve provided compensation to just since January 1,” he said. “We are now at $470 million in compensation provided; another $100 million or so that’s in the final process of being provided.”

He acknowledged that there were errors, including mistakes that he made.

“I had never been to New Mexico before this fire. I didn’t know a lot about New Mexico, to be honest with you,” he said.

Hagmaier said he came in at the end of the Cerro Grande fire claims process and was responsible for closing out those claims. 

The Cerro Grande Fire, which was also started when a prescribed burn got out of control, charred areas near Los Alamos in 2000.

He said the Cerro Grande compensation program was largely completed by the time he got involved and he only saw the very end of it.

“I will say that I made mistakes. I assumed this would be very similar to Cerro Grande. It’s nothing like Cerro Grande,” he said. “And so I don’t know if anyone has ever apologized to you. But I will tell you that I’m sorry. I’m sorry about the fire. I’m sorry about the challenges you’ve faced. I’m sorry that things have taken as long as they have.”

Hagmaier said FEMA is in the final stages of finding a new operations director at the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Claims Office. The previous operations director stepped down from that role in January.

He said it is important that the new operations director understands New Mexico.

“History has not been kind to this part of the country,” he said. “And so I think it’s important that we hire someone who understands that history, understands the multiple cultural communities here and does not make the mistake that I did of assuming that Las Vegas and Los Alamos and Mora are all the same. Because they’re not.”

The post Panel discussion marks two-year anniversary of the Hermits Peak Fire first appeared on NM Political Report.

Researchers from Stanford University say nonresidential rooftops could bridge some of the equity gaps if used in a community solar setup. The researchers published their findings in late March in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Energy.

“We are dedicated to studying solar, especially how to make the solar adoption more equitable,” Zhecheng Wang said. 

Wang is one of the study’s coauthors and a postdoctoral fellow at the university’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

He said the team has a long history of investigating solar development and has built a dataset of where solar is being deployed throughout the United States.

That dataset is known as DeepSolar and it was constructed using machine learning. The team is using the DeepSolar dataset to examine the equity gap in solar and determine why certain communities are lagging behind.

Wang said the dataset provides the researchers with information such as GPS coordinates, size and installation dates for every solar installation in the country.

“That is constructed by applying AI on the remote sensing images to detect solar,” he explained.

Study results

While the researchers found that commercial rooftops in more affluent areas are more likely to have rooftop solar, that gap is significantly lower than the equity gap when it comes to residential solar. There is a 38 percent gap between the amount of electricity generated by nonresidential rooftop solar in affluent and disadvantaged communities compared to a 67 percent gap in residential rooftop solar.

Part of this equity gap comes from the fact that people with lower incomes are less likely to own their houses and are more likely to live in multi-family housing such as apartment complexes. 

They looked both at the installations of nonresidential solar as well as the number of unused rooftops that would be good candidates for solar. Researchers examined the data for years 2006 through 2016 and then again for 2022. 

Additionally, they calculated the average annual costs for producing solar in each area. Those can change from place to place. New Mexico, for example, has plenty of sunlight and therefore tends to have lower costs than many other states. Using nonresidential rooftops, the researchers placed those costs at 6.4 cents per kilowatt hour in New Mexico. 

But even in northern states where there is less sunlight, the costs associated with solar are lower than residential electricity rates.

The researchers explored creating microgrids that would be powered by solar on building rooftops that are larger than 1,000 square meters, or about 3,200 square feet. They estimated that 63 percent of disadvantaged communities could meet at least 20 percent of their annual residential electricity demand by using solar power generated from arrays on those large, nonresidential rooftops. 

The study was a follow up on past work.

“Previously, we found that there’s ingrained disparities in residential solar adoption,” Wang said.

The team of researchers previously studied the impact of tax incentives on the deployment of solar in low-income communities. They found that tax rebates don’t tend to spur adoption of rooftop solar in low-income communities, in part because lower income families often don’t see the same types of benefits from tax breaks.

Wang said that using nonresidential rooftops to generate solar power for nearby households could help bridge the equity gap but requires support from state policies.

He said that nonresidential rooftop solar tends to be more sensitive to policies as well as factors like the commercial entities’ revenue stream. In contrast, rooftop solar tends to be highly dependent on the homeowner’s income.

Commercial rooftops also tend to be larger, which means they can generate more electricity than a residential rooftop.

Wang described a situation in which the commercial entity could generate not only all the electricity to meet the business’s needs, but also additional electricity that could be sent to nearby households.

He said this would also increase energy security in disadvantaged communities. Having locally generated power would make it less likely that they would lose access to electricity during extreme weather or other climate change induced events.

Advantages and disadvantages in New Mexico

Andrew Stone, the president of NM People’s Energy Cooperative, said one advantage of using rooftops for community solar is that it reduces conflict.

NM People’s Energy Cooperative focuses on providing solar energy to people who rent or who cannot afford rooftop solar. In that way, Stone said the organization’s goals align well with the goals of New Mexico’s community solar program.

There tends to be very little, if any, opposition to adding solar panels on top of a big box store. Meanwhile, a solar project with battery storage in Santa Fe County that is not part of the community solar program has faced significant backlash from nearby residents who are concerned that battery fires may lead to devastating consequences due to proximity to natural gas infrastructure.

“Land use contention is a problematic thing, especially with so much of our land being Indigenous land with sacred components to it,” Stone said.

He said Albuquerque has strip malls with “tons and tons of roof.”

“Instead of creating land use contention with (agricultural) land, or possibly land that will be developed later, the roof is really a great idea,” he said.

Stone said that the nonresidential rooftops don’t necessarily have to be commercial businesses. He envisioned churches with rooftop solar that could provide energy to congregants. 

Coalition for Community Solar Access Senior Regional Director of Policy and Government Affairs Kevin Cray said there are advantages of rooftop community solar, which would generally utilize nonresidential rooftops, though they could also be installed on apartment complexes.

He said using nonresidential rooftops as sites for community solar arrays has particularly been successful in the eastern United States where there tends to be a higher population density and less land available for large-scale community solar projects.

For example, Cray said New Jersey has almost exclusively rooftop arrays for community solar.

He said from a development perspective, placing the community solar arrays on rooftops may lead to lower lease rates for the developers and lower interconnection costs.

At the same time, rooftops have some disadvantages.

Cray said rooftop solar arrays produced less electricity than ground-mounted arrays. This is in part because ground-mounted arrays can be designed to track the path of the sun while rooftop arrays tend to be fixed and may not even be angled in an optimal way for energy production.

Stone said there have been developments to increase the amount of electricity rooftop solar generates, including what is known as bifacial solar panels. These arrays have photovoltaic cells on both the top and bottom of the panels.

“If you’re on a white roof, the photons are bouncing all around, and you can get even more efficiency out of that same square footage,” Stone said.

But, Cray said, there is a significant difference in how much solar a rooftop array can generate compared to a ground-mounted system.

“The losses that you’re looking at are upwards of 40 percent of the capacity,” Cray said. 

That is important because New Mexico has a 200 megawatt cap on the amount of community solar that can be developed in the state.

“So if you have a capacity constraint program, such as New Mexico’s where there’s a limit of 200 megawatts, there might be a good argument to say we should really be prioritizing those 200 megawatts towards sites are going to have optimal production so that we create the most bill credits, the most benefits, the most opportunities to subscribe that we can with the limited available capacity,” Cray said.

At the same time, he said he would like to see some rooftop community solar.

“I think they present a great test case and would provide the (New Mexico Public Regulation Commission) useful information as they kind of think about the future of the program,” he said. 

He said that moving toward rooftop community solar may come later on and that New Mexico’s community solar program is still in its early stages.

The post Could business rooftops increase access to solar energy in low-income neighborhoods? first appeared on NM Political Report.