I wrote a piece for this morning’s Albuquerque Journal trying to address what I think is a misunderstanding afoot in New Mexico about the future of Los Alamos and Sandia labs – the idea that they can shift to energy reserach as support for nuclear weapons spending declines. It ain’t gonna be easy: During the …
The New Mexico legislature has repeatedly failed to grapple with the problem of who owns deep brackish groundwater, and how its use will be regulated. My colleague Sean Olson has a story in this morning’s Albuquerque Journal that illustrates the mess that has resulted, as folks with development interests elbow one another out of the …
Continue reading ‘Legislative Failings and New Mexico Water Wars’ »
Jim, your check’s in the mail: I often disagree with the Albuquerque Journal. Some say they kill good trees to make a bad paper. But frankly, I don’t know what I would do with out them informing me of real news every day. (Don’t worry, if you click through you’ll see I stripped out most …
Before I came here – before I even thought about coming here – I read Hillerman’s Fly on the Wall. It was my first introduction. After I got here, I used The Great Taos Bank Robbery as my formal introduction. We were a degree of separation apart, and I treasure the fact that the guy …
Lab May Be Nuke Center Federal officials will unveil a proposal today to make Los Alamos National Laboratory the nation’s center for nuclear weapons plutonium research, consolidating work now done at other sites around the country. The proposal, to be unveiled at a news conference in Oak Ridge, Tenn., lays out a road map for …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere, Plutonium Edition’ »
Apparently, when the price of something goes up, consumption goes down. Who knew?
Some stuff I wrote elsewhere about a potentially huge New Mexico water law court decision: A state court this week threw out New Mexicans’ longstanding legal right to drill a domestic water well without having to worry about whether it would leave less water for their neighbors. The ruling is a victory for activists who …
Some stuff I wrote elsewhere, on the fate of the U.S. nuclear weapons budget: I say “it appears” because I don’t have any paper out of the committee yet, just a guy in a bar (I swear, this is how it happened) reading the statement to me over a bad cell phone connection. More later, …
I spent some time yesterday on a story that encapsulates a lot of energy issues here in New Mexico. Southeastern New Mexico is oil patch country, sitting atop the Permian Basin. Oil production there has long been in decline, but we’re seeing a bit of a boomlet there. $135 a barrel oil will do that. …
getting paid to float down a boat on a river: But among the river people there also is some nervousness about the future. Much of the funding for bosque habitat restoration work has come courtesy of Pete Domenici, who is retiring at the end of his current term. Love or hate those dreaded pork barrel …