Gross misconduct at the Legislature - but the People are rising up. Blackstone beware.
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
We started the legislative session with a reminder that WE GOT US. It is WE, THE PEOPLE that will create the change we want to see. Nowhere was that more apparent than the juxtaposition between the hundreds of people showing up for six hours to speak against Blackstone at the PRC on Tuesday with the utter failure of the leadership in the New Mexico House and Senate to protect the people against the predicted and already extremely apparent collapse of our ecosystem as a consequence of continual fossil fuel combustion. The Clear Horizons Act, a bill already severely compromised by unfettered allowance of questionable offsets in lieu of actual emissions reductions, was brought to a floor vote without the necessary work from Democratic Party leadership to ensure it had the votes to pass.
We know from long years of experience that when a party in control of the House, the Senate and the Governor's seat wants to get something passed, it can do so. The Clear Horizons Act was allowed to die on that floor despite the best efforts of its sponsor and advocates for more than two years.
The Microgrid Oversight Act, arguably the most important climate bill this session, didn't get a message from the Governor until two weeks after the short session had already begun. Despite heroic efforts from Senator Steinborn and other sponsors, who managed to push the bill quickly through two committees and a close floor vote in the Senate, House leadership ignored hundreds of emails and calls asking for a final committee meeting and floor vote in the last three days of the session, claiming that it could not afford three hours of debate on a life and death issue for every New Mexican.
Bill McKibben reports that an El Niño brewing in the Pacific is poised to drive temperatures to a new record, bringing with it more wind, more storms, and more drought. This week people died in California and Colorado when extreme snowfall fell across the Sierra's and winds kicked up dust from parched earth across the south. They are just the beginning of climate related fatalities we will see this year. We know that more deadly storms are coming, that extreme heat will mean deadly risk to infants and the elderly, that our homeowners insurance system will fail, resulting in a collapse of property values and our economy, that our rivers and wells are already starting to run dry, and that ultimately grocery store shelves will empty when plants and technology can no longer adapt to the climate crisis.
Economic development at any cost - the sorry excuse given for killing regulation and propping up industry at almost every turn - will not materialize when the people do not have the resources to buy whatever it is corporations are trying to sell. The economy depends on a healthy earth, as do all of us.
The failure of our State's leadership to take any meaningful action to protect the environment amounts to gross misconduct, corrupt malfeasance and a death sentence for many.
THE PEOPLE ARE NOT PLAYING. WE GOT US.
On Tuesday, for more than six hours, New Mexicans showed up in person at the University of New Mexico to tell PRC Commissioners that Blackstone is not welcome in New Mexico. They brought the facts, they brought their creativity and they spoke truth to power. Not one person spoke in support of Blackstone.
Their comments were picked up today in the American Prospect, an important financial news site, including those of Blake Eliason, an Albuquerque-based economics researcher, who told the Commission “If PNM is acquired by a Blackstone subsidiary, the power of this commission to regulate the market for the distribution of power in this state will be severely diminished," and Roxanne Pacheco, a member of Indivisible Albuquerque, who told them “In this new era of AI, these tech giants are scrambling rapidly to expand their data centers, upgrade transmission lines, shore up the grid, buy up more land for more data centers, and access or acquire water rights for cooling these systems. We live in a desert, and we are already facing a water shortage, if not crisis.”
The New Mexico Foundation for Civic Excellence, too, published an exhaustive report explaining why the proposed merger violates the public interest standard and will result in extreme rate increases for New Mexican families and small businesses.
More Perfect Union and Punch Up produced compelling videos documenting the fight against Blackstone in Texas and now in New Mexico.
New Mexican residents, journalists and organizations all over the state are joining together to oppose Blackstone's plan to exploit New Mexico ratepayers and resources for the buildout of their AI empire.
WE GOT US.
WITH THE LEGISLATURES FAILURE, WE WILL TAKE THE FIGHT TO THESE DATA CENTERS ONE BY ONE TODAY TAKE ACTION ON PROJECT JUPITER AIR PERMITS
NMED is accepting public comment on the two deceptive air quality permits submitted by Acoma LLC to power Project Jupiter with fossil fueled gas turbines until March 2nd. They are asking permission to build more gas powered generation than all of PNM's existing generation resources. To permit emissions of more climate changing pollutants than Albuquerque, Las Cruces and Santa Fe combined. And all of this in a community where air quality is already a deadly problem because of nearby oil and gas operations. We made it easy for you to submit comment by email using the link below.
NMED has thus far appeared to accept the cynical division of these two monster grids into two separate projects despite the fact that the East and West Microgrids:
Are under common ownership and control
Are located less than one mile apart
Serve the same facility
Fall under the same industrial classification
Under EPA and NMED rules, these facts require treatment as one stationary source. When combined, emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), particulate matter (PM), and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) exceed major source thresholds, which would trigger stronger pollution controls and review. Artificially splitting the Project unlawfully circumvents these protections, but when the Air Quality Bureau sent the permits back for some changes it did not demand that Acoma LLC properly combine the projects under one permit.
Further, the permit applications rely on unenforceable "synthetic minor" emission limits that are not based on any specified physical or operational restrictions, such as limits on operating hours, fuel use, or turbine capacity. Full operation of the proposed turbines would result in emissions hundreds of tons per year above legal major source thresholds.
Nobody trusts Acoma LLC to monitor and self-regulate their pollution, and NMED cannot be naive enough to accept their word as evidence. Because the stated limits are unenforceable, the Project’s full potential emissions based on the proposed turbines must be used, making each Microgrid, and the Project as a whole, a major pollution source that must be regulated as such.
If allowed to proceed as proposed, the Acoma LLC microgrid will result in destructive climate impacts, worsen ozone pollution and violate health standards in a community that will face all of the environmental degradation and pollution while the profits flow to Wall Street shareholders. We are demanding that the Air Quality Bureau reject the permits outright, or at the very least, hold a public hearing before granting permission for the project.
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