CALLS TO ACTION: NO TO NEW GAS, NO TO FRACKED WASTE AS "WATER"!!!
Please join us as we continue to fight for environmental and racial justice in New Mexico -
Join us for critical action & learning in the coming days and checkout our recent article on the connection between climate & racial justice as well as the Frontlines Climate Justice Platform we are a part of at the national level that was just released this week.
THIS SATURDAY JULY 25TH 5PM PLEASE JOIN US:
for the 3rd Installment of our webinar series. YUCCA and Walk The Talk are co-hosting "The Road To Abolition" a panel discussion on how Santa Fe as a community can go forward on a path to abolishing the military industrial complex and dismantling institutional racism. We're honored to be hosting Attiana Virella-Fuentes, Miguel Acosta, Bekah Wolf, Lyla June Johnston and David Correia as our panelists.
Next week on July 30 New Mexico Oil Conservation Commission (OCC) will host a hearing starting at 9AM and we need you there! The Hearing is the first of New Mexico's regulatory efforts to pass off toxic and radioactive oil and gas toxic waste as "produced water". The OCC proposal would make it easier for companies to use their toxic waste to drill and frack wells. The new rules would even open the door for the industry’s waste to be dumped on roads, agricultural lands, and discharged into streams.
We can't let that happen! Many of you joined us for our action at the Environment & Energy & Natural Resource Department's public meeting about toxic fracking waste last year -- we need to keep the pressure up!
Our goal is to get 50 diverse community members to participate in the hearing and share our strong opposition to the OCC proposal as well as the process.
In addition to providing public comment at the hearing, send a written comment to the Oil Conservation Commission by emailing the Commission Clerk, Florene Davidson at florene.davidson@state.nm.us.
Our partners Wild Earth Guardians (WEG) and New Energy Economy both intervened in the rule-making proceeding as official legal parties. You can read their analysis and position on the draft rule HERE, read an article about just how dangerous this stuff is HERE in this article from Rolling Stone. Wild Earth Guardians is collecting petition signatures targeting the Administration HERE and org sign-ons HERE.
THIS COMING MONDAY AT 3:30PM We're hosting a crash course with Rebecca Sobel from WEG and Mariel Nanasi from NEE so we can all prepare for the hearing.
They'll share their analysis of the proposed rule, provide talking points and training material and answer questions. We'll have a chance to discuss together which angles we plan on taking in order to better coordinate our testimony and YUCCA will share about the additional action we have planned.
We need you to do one other thing next week that is absolutely critical. In January, many of your joined us and our partners from the frontlines to testify at the Replacement Power hearing for San Juan against PNM's proposal for more gas. We stood together to demand 100% renewables and justice for impacted communities. The good news is that all of our collective advocacy worked!!!
Thanks to our public outcry combined with fierce legal work by New Energy Economy and the Coalition for Clean and Affordable Energy to challenge PNM's proposal and argue for an 100% renewable alternative -- the Hearing Examiners Recommended Decision issued a few weeks ago favored CCAE's 100% renewable plus storage.
Now the Commission has to decide. In their subsequent filing PNM argued against the Recommended Decision saying that the Commission should choose instead an alternative proposal put forward by the Sierra Club for renewables plus storage plus gas. While this proposal has less gas (200 megawatts versus 440 megawatts) than PNM's preferred portfolio, it still will mean a 2 unit gas plant and a new gas pipeline -- both in the Four Corners region - impacting the health of our Diné relatives on the frontlines and our climate. It is an unacceptable "alternative". The Commission needs to hear loud and clear that fracking and gas pipelines are not acceptable replacements for coal in the age of renewables and climate justice. Please call them before next Wednesday's Commission meeting and let them know that the best environmental, jobs, and economic development proposal before them is CCAE's proposed 100% renewables plus storage portfolio and they should ACCEPT the Hearing Examiner's Recommended Decision. District 1 - Cynthia B Hall - (505) 827-8015 District 2 - Jeff Byrd - (505) 827-4531 District 3 - Valerie Espinoza - (505) 827-4533 District 4 - T. Becenti-Aguilar - (505) 827-8019 District 5 - Stephen Fischmann - (505) 827-8020 Not sure who your commissioner is? Click here
Oliver Hillenkamp, a local youth organizer interning with YUCCA said “The same oppressive systems that are destroying the Earth are exploiting communities of color and Indigenous communities,” he said....
Artemisio Romero y Carver agreed. Romero y Carver, a leader of the local youth climate activist group YUCCA — Youth United for Climate Crisis Action — and the city of Santa Fe’s youth poet laureate, has spent the last month helping to organize demonstrations with another youth-led group, Walk The Talk, which focuses on raising awareness about police brutality and systemic racism. It’s all climate justice work, he said.
Black and Indigenous communities are disproportionately affected by police brutality, just as they are disproportionately affected by the novel coronavirus and the fossil fuel industry, Romero y Carver said.
Environmental Justice: Protecting frontline communities from continuing harms of fossil fuel, industrial, and built environment pollution.
Just Recovery: Ensuring just and equitable recovery from, and resiliency against, climate disasters.
Climate Equity Accountability: Elevating equity and stakeholder decision-making in federal climate rules and programmatic investments.
Energy Democracy: Remaking the monopoly fossil fuel energy system as a clean, renewably-sourced, and democratically-controlled commons.