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New Mexico In Depth (https://nmindepth.com/)

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Nuclear Regulatory Commission slows decision about Church Rock uranium cleanup

By Marjorie Childress, New Mexico In Depth | June 16, 2022

Resisting fast fashion

Oil and Gas: Big giving, Big statehouse influence

From our blog

  • We all need to learn more about boarding schools and their legacy

    This week the U.S. Interior Department released a 100-page report on the lasting consequences of the federal Indian boarding school system. You might recall last June Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo, announced the federal agency would investigate the extent of the loss of human life and legacy of the […]

  • New Mexico In Depth hires Bella Davis to report on Indigenous Affairs

    New Mexico In Depth’s 2020/2021 academic reporting fellow Bella Davis returns as full-time staff this summer with a focus on Indigenous affairs, thanks to funding from Report for America.  Report for America is a national program that helps fund reporting positions in local newsrooms. “Report for America provides a unique opportunity for journalists to pursue […]

  • Critical race theory is a GOP bogeyman

    Last weekend, Derek Matthews, the founder of the Gathering of Nations Pow Wow, asked GOP state lawmaker and GOP gubernatorial hopeful Rebecca Dow to pull a campaign commercial that talked about “critical race theory. Standing on a stage with Dow in front of thousands of Native people who had flocked to the Albuquerque event from […]

  • Climate change and the third world, in New Mexico

    In reporting two recent stories about abandoned uranium mines north of Church Rock, N.M., I heard residents say several times that they want federal officials to take action, not just more talk about cleaning up radioactive waste left practically in their backyards for 40 or more years. I also heard how exhausting it is for the people […]

  • ABQ city councilor’s political group steps up to PAC

    Another political season. Another new political group with a forgettable but vaguely feel-good name. In March, a new entity registered with the Secretary of State: Working Together New Mexico. Albuquerque City Councilor Louie Sanchez, who represents part of the city’s westside, has said its purpose is to support the campaigns of particular candidates.  Sanchez didn’t file […]

  • It’s time for lawmakers to embrace transparency (Updated)

    Update: Shortly after publishing the following newsletter on Friday, Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, wrote in an email to New Mexico in Depth that lawmakers would include transparency in a revised junior bill during an upcoming special session. She said lawmakers would use as a model new transparency measures passed last year for […]

  • Trump ally Couy Griffin pushes election audit in Otero County. Not all Republicans like it.

    Otero County is the latest local front in a war that is dividing Republicans over the 2020 election. The County Commission in southeastern New Mexico has paid for a $50,000 study they call an audit of the county’s election results, provoking headlines after voters complained that volunteers who are going door-to-door quizzing them are asking […]

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Recent Posts

  • Local redistricting efforts highlight tough choices

    Screen capture of the Albuquerque Citizens Redistricting Committee meeting on April 27, 2022 At a recent Zoom meeting of the Albuquerque Citizens Redistricting Committee, members furrowed their brows and squinted into their computer monitors, examining a newly drafted map that would balance population in each of nine City Council districts.  Member Travis Kellerman, a self-described data-obsessed futurist, had asked the committee's consultants to find a way to empower voters by dividing the council districts in a way that didn't pack so many socioeconomically vulnerable residents into two districts in the city's southern half. The new concept cut the city's International District in half vertically, combining each piece with wealthier neighborhoods north of I-40.

  • Take uranium contamination off our land, Navajos urge federal nuclear officials 

    The gale-force winds that swept across New Mexico on Friday, driving fires and evacuations, gave Diné residents in a small western New Mexico community an opportunity to demonstrate first hand the danger they live with every day.Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) members were in the Red Water Pond Road community, about 20 minutes northeast of Gallup, to hear local input on a controversial plan to clean up a nearby abandoned uranium mine. It was the first visit anyone could recall by NRC commissioners to the Navajo Nation, where the agency regulates four uranium mills.

  • Money for abandoned uranium mine cleanup spurs questions about design, jobs

    This story is part of a collaboration from the Institute for Nonprofit News Rural News Network in partnership with INN members Indian Country Today, Buffalo's Fire, InvestigateWest, KOSU, New Mexico In Depth, Underscore and Wisconsin Watch, as well as partners Mvskoke Media, Osage News and Rawhide Press. Series logo by Mvskoke Creative.

  • New harassment allegations against lawmaker prompt call for state ethics commission to handle future complaints

    Representatives of eight organizations called for a powerful state senator to resign Monday or for his legislative colleagues to remove him from office if he didn’t leave, in an open letter containing new allegations of sexual harassment and bullying.The accusations against Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto come a month after a lobbyist for Progress Now New Mexico, Marianna Anaya, accused the Albuquerque Democrat of sexually harassing her. Seven of the eight people accusing Ivey-Soto on Monday in the open letter were not named but gave the organizations’ permission to share their experiences, the letter states.  After receiving Anaya’s complaint in February, legislative leaders opened an investigation into Ivey-Soto, adhering to a system where complaints against state lawmakers are kept confidential in a procedure overseen by other lawmakers. Ivey-Soto told New Mexico In Depth on Monday that he “will participate” in that investigation, but declined to respond to the specific allegations listed in Monday’s three-page letter, sent to state Senate leadership and media organizations.

  • Veto of dark spending bill outrages lawmakers

    Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, has vetoed lawmakers' dark spending bill, casually called the “junior bill”, and they don’t like it.  The vetoed Senate Bill 48 cobbles together spending by individual lawmakers into one long list of projects worth $50 million in total.  The junior bill doesn’t happen every year but when it does, it’s held sacrosanct by lawmakers, who each get part of the pie to divvy up. The  junior bill doesn’t disclose which lawmaker makes which appropriation, and lawmakers exempt that information from state transparency laws.

  • A win for New Mexico’s vulnerable population

    New Mexico lawmakers made consequential changes for the state’s most vulnerable people during the short 30-day legislative session this year, made possible by a tidal wave of cash. Top of the list of consequential bills is the big boost in teacher pay.

  • Staring down the clock, lawmakers make moves to keep voting rights alive

    Every year it seems, bills people have sweated over for months languish in the final days of the legislative session. Only a few are destined to make it, in a competition for time involving many hard choices.  As the clock winds down to noon tomorrow, lawmakers are attempting to funnel bills through a window that grows smaller by the hour.  At this stage, successful measures have broad support or the backing of lawmakers who have the muscle to push them through.

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