ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — For years, Sonia Ornelas has looked forward to the acequia blessing event in the South Valley each May. Now her young children join her in praying for rain and tossing…
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The Wildlife Refuge Helping a Community Fight for Environmental Justice
Egrets gather at an irrigation canal near the Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, on June 23, 2014.
Photo by Roberto E. Rosales / Albuquerque Journal / ZUMAPRESS.com / Alamy
Can this New Mexico community get green space without the gentrification that usually follows?
Apr 16, 2021
The South Valley in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was once a thriving oasis of food production watered by a network of historic irrigation canals, or
acequias. Today, it’s home to several historic neighborhoods along the Rio Grande, including Mountain View.
After much of the area was rezoned in the 1960s, the residents, who are mainly Chicanos as well as recent immigrants, came under siege by the structural forces of environmental racism that dictate who lives near polluters and who doesnât. Mountain View was soon enveloped by industry â auto recyclers, Albuquerqueâs sewage plant, paint facilities and fertilizer suppliers â that left a legacy of contaminated groundwater, two Superfund sites and high levels of air pollution.
Now, six decades later, Mountain View is facing yet another transformation. In 2012, the community became the first in the agencyâs south-west region to have a piece of land within it â 570 acres â designated as an âurban wildlife refugeâ managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The program started 11 years ago as a way to connect with new and more diverse segments of the population, by meeting people where they live â including the 82% of Americans who reside in
President Joe Biden (left) greets John Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate, on Jan. 27 as he arrives at the White House to speak on climate change. (Photo: Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
In February, Beverly Wright linked the legacy of slavery and the Jim Crow era with energy development. In March, President Joe Biden appointed Wright to his White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
Wright, the founder of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, is joined on the council by Jade Begay of the Indigenous Environmental Network, who co-wrote a 2018 op-ed in EcoWatch contending that climate change is “colonialism” and “cultural genocide.”
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