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By Nancy Seewald
From the Rio Grande Sierran, Jan./Feb. 2008
In late January Governor Richardson issued an official executive order calling for a moratorium on State drilling permits in the Galisteo Basin and Santa Fe County. The Governor called for studies of the impacts of oil and gas exploration and production in the fragile basin.
Dozens of citizens rallied for clean energy at the
Roundhouse on a snowy February day. The event was sponsored by WildEarth
Guardians, which commissioned renowned artist Bob Haozous to create
20-foot-high steel sculptures depicting the visual representation of the
threat of oil and gas. Anyone interested in “hosting” one of these rigs
on their property as a public protest against oil and gas drilling
should contact Rebecca Sobel, WildEarth Guardians Conservation Organizer
(505/988-9126 ext. 1152,
rsobel@wildearthguardians.org).
(Photo by Ellen Cavalli)
Three weeks later the Santa Fe Board of County Commissioners surprised the citizens who have been demanding an extension of the three-month County moratorium and a comprehensive planning process. The Commissioners proposed a moratorium for at least 12 months, hired a land use expert, and called for a comprehensive land use planning process.
Citizens have argued for many months that the County must complete studies of the complex geology and hydrology of the area and address the threats of oil and gas exploration in the larger context of the County growth plan. Archaeological surveys and adverse economic impact studies must also be conducted. Now Dr. Bob Freilich has been retained by the County to assist in the drafting of comprehensive land use plans.
Dr. Freilich has promised that citizens will be part of the process, and that he is not overly concerned with the threats of lawsuits by the oil and gas industry. Hundreds of residents who have devoted thousands of hours to attending public meetings, calling their elected officials, and writing articulate letters and articles can now breathe a little easier. But Industry has promised that they will fight this encroachment on their unrestrained pursuit of those last marginal and difficult-to-recover hydrocarbons. Industry will continue to lobby state and federal officials to circumvent and preempt county zoning authority.
The lively public debate about the rights of citizens to take back their power on the local level and demand that their local officials zone polluting industries out of their yards and away from limited water resources will continue. Thousands of citizens of Santa Fe County insist that there is no preemption of county authority to protect rural residential areas and save our aquifers and cultural resources.
For more information, contact Johnny Micou of Drilling Santa Fe (505/474-3061, drillingsantafe@ earthlink.net), or visit Drilling Santa Fe’s website (www.drillingsantafe.org).
The Chapter's Northern Group has responded to the Galisteo Basin controversy with a Dec. 5, 2007, position paper calling for several specific improvements to the New Mexico Surface Owners Protection Act. To paper.
By Nancy Seewald
From the Rio Grande Sierran, Jan./Feb. 2008
On November 27, 2007, the Santa Fe County Commissioners declared a three month moratorium on the issuance of drilling permits for oil and gas exploration. Due to the protests from citizens, the exploration company from Houston had failed to grandfather old abandoned and plugged wells in order to circumvent the rigorous protections of the 1993 ordinance governing oil and gas development in the county.
Bedrock-fracturing crew on Galisteo Creek on April 20, 2007. (Photo by Johnny Micou)
Now the oil and gas industry has a chance to develop a highly speculative play in a very fragile aquifer in the Galisteo Basin if the County Commissioners pass a weaker ordinance. The New Mexico Oil and Gas Association has already threatened to sue individuals or organizations that “vilify” the industry as thousands of citizens have organized to protest the destruction of the Galisteo watershed.
On December 12, Tecton Energy LLC, from Houston, applied to the Oil Conservation Division (OCD) for three drilling permits. The besieged director of OCD, Mark Fesmire, has called for a public hearing before these controversial permits will be approved by the State. Tecton has agreed to adhere to Rule 21, the special rule that increased protections for the aquifer under the Otero Mesa in southeast New Mexico. However, two of the permits would involve drilling very close to the floodplain, the alluvial aquifer, and homes and water wells along the Galisteo creekbed.
Tecton has agreed to use closed-loop systems for the hazardous drilling waste. But they still propose to drill in rural residential areas near a very shallow alluvial aquifer. Several of the wells drilled in this area in the 1980s were potential gas wells, but prices plummeted before the infrastructure could be built to transport natural gas. It would be a disaster for this watershed to become a maze of collection lines, roads, and pipelines, regardless of any promises to adhere to tighter protections.
This battle could impact other areas of New Mexico. The easy money has been made in oil and gas development in New Mexico, and it is now time for citizens to demand a shift in how this state finances public schools as New Mexico transitions to the inevitable change to solar, biomass, wind, and other renewable resources. The State could make money from our wind and our sunshine, and that is our future.
If there were vast fortunes to be made by out-of-state oil and gas companies plundering the Galisteo Basin or other areas along the vast Albuquerque Rift, then some of those wells drilled 25 years ago would have been left in production. The exploration companies are leasing thousands of acres from Valencia County up through Sandoval County and on to Rio Arriba. Even if only a small percentage of their exploratory wells are ever placed into production, the devastation from this risky endeavor would last for decades.
The one well in the Galisteo creekbed that has produced sporadically over the years is a dismal failure. In spite of all of the chemicals and water that were forced into that hard, impermeable formation, the old well is not producing. The sad fact is that the oil and gas industry is rushing to plunder the most difficult and potentially hazardous marginal plays left to them. They are moving into areas where even more high-pressure chemicals and water would be blasted into formations to release the last vestiges of oil and gas.
Citizens must demand the strictest of environmental protections as Industry fights back against every county or state initiative to protect the health of the air, water, wildlife, and neighborhoods of our state. It is time to write your legislators. The oil and gas industry is lobbying them relentlessly, and we must lobby just as hard. It is the twilight of oil and gas exploitation in New Mexico. Do you want clean air and water or the noxious pollution of a coalbed methane field or a tight-sand gas field? It is time to organize with your neighbors and speak up. The stakes are too high. Take back the power that every resident has to demand that their county officials zone polluting industries away from residential areas, cultural resources, surface water, and aquifers. Don’t allow the oil and gas lobby to intimidate the legislature into overriding county authority, as they are now threatening to do.
For more information, contact Nancy Seewald (nancyseewald@earthlink.net) or visit Drilling Santa Fe’s website (http://drillingsantafe.org).
By Ellen Cavalli, Sierran Editor
From the Rio Grande Sierran, Jan./Feb. 2008
Six days after the birth of my son, recovering from a cesarean section and barely getting by on three hours of sleep a night, I received a frantic call: “It looks like they’re going to drill next to your land!”
Five months earlier, in March 2007, I learned that a Texas-based oil and gas exploration company was preparing to reenter a 20-year-old oil well on the banks of the Galisteo River near Cerrillos, about 20 miles south of Santa Fe. And there were rumors that the company planned on drilling elsewhere in the Galisteo Basin. The news took the community by surprise.
Benjamin joined his parents at a march in Santa Fe in early December. (Photo by Garret Vreeland)
The rural residential area is populated by a Wild West mix of retired cowboy types and growing families of all socioeconomic classes, bed-and-breakfast inns and small businesses, and lots of friendly dogs and horses, with the random chicken, goat, and llama. Gold had been mined in the nearby Ortiz Mountains many years ago, but oil and gas drilling? A handful of wells had been drilled in the 1980s but were quickly abandoned because of the near impossibility of extracting the oil and gas from the tight rock.
Stunned and in a bit of denial, the community wasn’t sure how to respond. As the editor of this newsletter, I thought the topic might make a good story, so I emailed some people I knew, asking if they were interested in writing an article. But that’s as far as I wanted to get involved. I was pregnant and busy running my freelance editorial business, and I didn’t live there anymore. My husband and I had recently moved to Dixon, about 50 miles north of Santa Fe, to try our hand at farming. But we still owned our small house and 10 acres in the Ortiz foothills and rented it out to a wonderful woman with two dogs, a horse, and a goat – a perfect fit. We could have sold our place, but we couldn’t bear to cut our ties to the area or the people.
Over the course of the next four months, I ran a couple of articles on the drilling threat but stayed on the periphery of the growing movement. I felt I had done my part by publicizing the problem and connecting key activists in the area. And I thought someone – the County or the State or some well established group – would step in and protect the residents, the land, and importantly, the aquifer from certain devastation. I pay my taxes, contribute to causes. Wasn’t that enough? I wanted to focus on becoming a mom, a big enough job on its own.
But then came that phone call in early August. It was Cindy, our tenant. She had just come from a community breakfast meeting where Nancy, a neighbor whose ranch in Texas had been destroyed by gas drilling just a year earlier, displayed maps of proposed exploratory wells. The maps were terrible, but Cindy was able to decipher where our place was located, and right next to it was the mark of doom: a dot indicating a planned well. The exploration company was preparing to apply for drilling permits. And word was, the Galisteo Basin was the beginning. If recoverable oil or gas were found, more companies would jump into the fray, drilling as far south as Socorro and as far north as Nambe.
This wasn’t an isolated situation. The maps made it clear that the exploration company expected to be granted variances from the County’s existing mining ordinance, which specifically applied to oil and gas. Given how powerful the oil and gas industry is in New Mexico – about a quarter of the state’s revenues come from oil and gas extraction, and what’s more, the president of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association is a close ally of Governor Richardson – it seemed that those variances would be granted. If drilling were allowed to commence, nearly all of Santa Fe County would become a sacrifice zone. I couldn’t bury my head in the sand any longer. Clearly no one was going to rescue us.
Oil and gas drilling is nasty business. It wastes unfathomable amounts of clean drinking water – typically hundreds of thousands of gallons per well. The toxic chemicals used during the drilling and extraction processes leach into aquifers and nearby water wells. Open waste pits allow even more contaminants to soak into the soil and water table. Gas flaring emits dangerous pollutants into the air. Trucks and rigs tear up and erode the soil and destroy vegetation. Wildlife and livestock die from drinking poisonous water and antifreeze puddles at well sites. Gas pipelines riddle the landscape. Generators roar to torturous noise levels. Property values and real estate sales plummet. Local businesses and tourism dry up. Lives and livelihoods are ruined forever. (And there is no guarantee exploratory wells will deliver results. The Texas company destroyed five acres and part of a road near the Galisteo River for an exploratory well that did not go into production.)
Other oil- and gas-producing areas of New Mexico, particularly the San Juan and Permian Basins, are nearly played out, yet oil and gas are selling at alltime high prices. The industry is desperately searching for marginal, messy, “unconventional” sources. And that’s why its sights are set on the fragile Galisteo Basin and surrounding Santa Fe Embayment.
And that’s why I became an activist, albeit reluctantly. I joined a local grassroots organization, Drilling Santa Fe. I’m not a public speaker – there’s a reason why I’m an editor, working behind the scenes. But I’ve found ways to push beyond my comfort zone. I educate myself on the many adverse impacts of oil and gas activities. I sign petitions. I write letters – lots and lots of letters – to the county commissioners and state representatives, urging them to protect our environment and way of life.
I cajole my friends to write letters and attend events as well. I participate in strategy meetings and help coordinate our group’s efforts. I go to every public meeting, with my husband and infant son in tow. I send letters to local papers. I help others write their own. My husband Scott and I write, design, and distribute flyers, educational materials, and ads. We march in protest. We’re working on practical ways to make the County and State models of sustainability and renewable energy. My son Benjamin has attended more activist events in his first five months of life than I had in my first 35 years. This fight has become a routine part of our lives, much like grocery shopping, paycheck work, diaper changing. And along the way, I’ve had the sincere honor of working with and learning from the smartest, most inspiring people I’ve ever known.
Sometimes I feel overwhelmed and exhausted. Fighting the most powerful industry in the world while juggling freelance work and full-time baby care is tricky, to say the least. But I refuse to give in to the paralyzing power of despair, or the temptation to leave the fight up to someone else. If I think I’m stressed and inconvenienced now, imagine the stress and inconvenience of living among thousands of oil and gas wells. The consequences of doing nothing would be far worse than the nuisances that go in hand with activism. The urgency to get involved couldn’t be greater. In fact, I feel that inaction is tantamount to complicity. Whatever happens, I’ll know that I did everything within my power to save Santa Fe County.
Sometimes I look back at my pre-baby/pre-activist days. The Old Me certainly got more sleep (something the New Me sorely misses), but she didn’t have my newfound sense of purpose. When I found my voice, I found my power, and I wouldn’t go back. Inasmuch as motherhood has changed my life forever, so too has activism.
If you’re looking for a New Year’s resolution, take my advice: Find a cause that speaks to your heart and get involved. You’ll make a difference. And you’ll love the New You. To learn more about the urgent drilling issue in Santa Fe County, visit Drilling Santa Fe’s website (http://drillingsantafe.org), or contact me – I never thought I’d say that!
