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Credit NMFO Commentary: Community leaders and nonprofit organizations are applauding New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham for signing House Bill 200 into law today. The legislation,which was co-sponsored by Reps. Matthew McQueen and Nathan Small and Senate President Pro Tempore Mimi Stewart and Sen. Siah Correa Hemphill, ends the proposed Gila diversion project and fast-tracks the spending of the remaining approximately $80 million in the NM Unit Fund for priority water projects, creating long-term water security and jobs in southwest New Mexico (Catron, Grant, Hidalgo and Luna Counties).
“House Bill 200 is a fiscal responsibility bill. It will create jobs, stimulate the economy, and improve lives,”
The Gila River is proposed for federal wild and scenic designation.
Howard Hutchinson bought his first parcel of land in southwestern New Mexico near the Gila Wilderness in the 1970s.
“I hitchhiked into here in 1973. And I said, ‘Wow, paradise. This is awesome. This is where I want to live to raise my family,’” Hutchinson told
NM Political Report.
At the time, Hutchinson said he was a “radical environmentalist,” and an early member of the controversial environmental group Earth First.
But Hutchinson said his views on environmentalism have evolved since then.
“As I aged, and became closer with a lot of the longtime residents here, I began to realize that there was a land use ethic that they had developed quite naturally,” he said. “You don’t develop that land use ethic, and you don’t survive in the arid Southwest. That’s just the facts of the matter.”