An interview with Kevin Bixby, Southwest Environmental Center Executive Director.
Las Cruces, NM – On this edition of PUENTES a la comunidad, bridges to the community, host Emily Guerra spoke with Southwest Environmental Center Executive Director, Kevin Bixby, about the proposed Green Amendment to New Mexico’s Bill of Rights sponsored by Senators Antoinette Sedillo Lopez and Bill Soules, and Rep. Joanne Ferrary. He says the proposed bill would ensure in a meaningful way the people’s right to a healthy environment. If passed, it will be on the ballot for the general election in 2022. Bixby says there are only two other states in the nation that have a Green Amendment, they are Montana and Pennsylvania.
This story was originally published by the Guardian
as part of their two-year series, This Land is Your Land, examining the threats facing America’s public lands, with support from the Society of Environmental Journalists, and is republished by permission.
Imagine the world without its most famous rivers: Egypt without the Nile, or London without the Thames. In Las Cruces, New Mexico, residents don’t have to envision the West without the Rio Grande – it runs dry in their city almost every single year.
But this isn’t its natural state.
Isaac Melendrez, who was born near Las Cruces in 1934 and contributed to an oral history of the Rio Grande, remembered swimming in the river with his family as a child, while throngs of birds soared overhead. During the rainy season, the river’s floodwaters sounded like trains. Now?
But this isn’t its natural state.
Isaac Melendrez, who was born near Las Cruces in 1934 and contributed to an oral history of the Rio Grande, remembered swimming in the river with his family as a child, while throngs of birds soared overhead. During the rainy season, the river’s floodwaters sounded like trains. Now?
“It’s shrunk just about as much as it can,” Melendrez said. “I don’t know what else they can take from it.”
In the past, the Rio Grande would run through Las Cruces for the irrigation season from February to October. But last year, the river didn’t flow until March, and was dry by September. In 2021, the Elephant Butte Irrigation District (Ebid), in charge of measuring and releasing water to Las Cruces from upstream dams, estimated that water levels will be so low they won’t arrive until June and it will probably be gone again at the end of July.
Comnmentary: New Mexico leaders are applauding the Joint Resolution pre-filed Monday, January 4, by Senator Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, Senator Bill Soules, and Representative Joanne Ferrary to amend the New Mexico Constitution in order to add enforceable environmental rights. Senator Mimi Stewart, Senator Harold Pope, Jr, Representative Tara Luján and Representative Andrea Romero are signing on as co-sponsors in support. The Joint Resolution proposing the amendment was pre-filed by the sponsors on the first day legislators could pre-file their legislative proposals for the 2021 legislative session.
The Joint Resolution proposes amending the state constitution’s Bill of Rights to recognize and protect the rights of all of the people of New Mexico “to a clean and healthy environment, including pure water, clean air, healthy ecosystems, and a stable climate, and to the preservation of the natural, cultural, scenic and healthful qualities of the environment”; to ensure