For 25 years, the New Mexico Environmental Law Center has worked every day to protect our region's water, land and air from toxic pollution; and to help New Mexico's many and diverse communities protect their environment.
Court Stalls Effort to Revamp NM Oil and Gas Rules
A state district judge has stalled administrative efforts by New Mexico regulators to revamp rules that govern how oil and gas developers handle drilling waste.
Judge Raymond Ortiz has granted a request by the New Mexico Environmental Law Center that the state Oil Conservation Commission be prohibited from reconsidering the pit rule until legal appeals have been resolved. Wisconsin Rapids Tribune
Court Stops Industry’s and Commission’s Attempt to Gut Pit Rule
SANTA FE, N.M. — On February 14th, the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe stopped efforts by the New Mexico Oil Conservation 
Commission and the oil and gas industry, to repeal the Pit Rule. Judge Raymond Ortiz ordered the Writ of Prohibition (issued late yesterday) granting the New Mexico Environmental Law Center’s (NMELC) request that the Commission be prohibited from reconsidering the Pit Rule until all the court appeals of the rule have been resolved.
“This writ from the court not only protects New Mexico’s groundwater for the time being, but also sends a signal to the Martinez administration and industry that they must follow the same rules as the rest of us,” says Eric Jantz, Staff Attorney of the NMELC, who filed the petition for the writ on behalf of its client, Earthworks’ Oil and Gas Accountability Project (OGAP). “The oil and gas industry wanted the best of both worlds – to have an appeal in the works but on hold, and a chance to re-write the rule – and the Commission was prepared to give it to them. Thankfully, the Court stepped in and said ‘enough.’”
NM Officials Consider Request for Water Appropriation Involving Billions of Gallons
Draper, Frederick and about a dozen other attorneys on both sides of the case gathered at a courthouse in Socorro earlier this week to present their arguments. A hearing officer is now working on a recommendation for Verhines.
Critics dismiss the idea that denying the ranch’s application would somehow hamper efforts to create jobs and spur economic development in New Mexico. They contend that adhering to the appropriation doctrine — which calls for there to be a beneficial use for the water and that no other water rights holders be harmed — is more important to ensure sustainable management of the resource in the future.
“The prior appropriation doctrine got started in the Gold Rush days. Its purpose was to make sure everybody got as much water as they needed and no more. If you took more than you needed, they shot you,“ Frederick said. “Hopefully the doctrine still means something.“ The Republic
OSE Weighs Motion to Dismiss San Augustin Water Claim
New Mexico Environmental Law Center attorney Bruce Frederick, who represents about 80 area residents who oppose the application, said 17.5 billion gallons is about the amount of water the city of Albuquerque consumes in a year…
“The ranch’s desire to exploit a free public resource for private profit is nothing new. The courts have consistently held that speculation in public water harms the public and conflicts with the [state] law of prior appropriation” The Light of New Mexico
Water Proposal Contested in Socorro
The occasion was a state hearing on an application by Augustin Plains Ranch to install as many as 37 wells and pump an amount equivalent to Albuquerque’s entire annual water consumption. The application does not specify who among the Rio Grande Valley’s cities and farms might buy the water… Before the state even begins considering whether the pumping will cause harm to high country residents, it should dismiss the application because it is simply too vague to be considered, argued Bruce Frederick of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center.
The problem, Frederick said, is that the ranch’s water pumping application does not say where the water will go and who will use it. For a water transfer to be legal under New Mexico law, it must specify the “place and purpose of use” on the pipeline’s receiving end, he said. Albuquerque Journal
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OSE Examiner Hears Arguments
Attorneys on both sides made arguments on two motions to dismiss an application by Augustin Plains Ranch LLC to pump 54,000 acre-feet of groundwater per year from the San Agustin Basin. The hearing was held Tuesday before a Office of the State Engineer hearing examiner at the Socorro County Courthouse…
Bruce Frederick, an attorney for the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, representing about 80 of the more than 200 protestants, argued that the application should be thrown out on its face because it does not meet the requirement of stating a beneficial use. He characterized the application are speculative in that it tells little about how the water would be used, where and for what purpose. “The fact is, nobody, not even the Ranch, knows the answers to these questions,” he said. DChieftain.com