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Abundant Valley

Valle Vidal is a natural wonder and thriving ecosystem – and it sits precariously atop valuable methane.

By Kate Nash
Tribune Reporter

INSIDE THE CARSON NATIONAL FOREST – Oscar Simpson scrabbles up a sandstone wall 1,000 feet above the forest floor and rests at the top, looking.

Below him, nearly 40,000 acres of the Valle Vidal stretch out with mint and olive greens, slivers of rusty reds and cornstalk yellows, dots of chocolatey browns.

It’s photogenic terrain superior to what any landscape painter could depict, home to thousands of Rocky Mountain elk, Rio Grande cutthroat trout and microscopic fairy shrimp.

Simpson, president of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, takes a breath, looking across the slice of northern New Mexico framed by some of the state’s highest peaks.

To him, the eastern section of the 101,000 acres of the Carson known as the Valle Vidal Unit is a treasure that provides once-in-a-lifetime elk hunts, fishing, camping and horseback riding.

Others see it as a potential site for coal bed methane drilling.

“There are some places that just shouldn’t be destroyed,” said Simpson, also a spokesman for the Coalition for the Valle Vidal, a group working to stop a 2002 request to the U.S. Forest Service by the El Paso Corp. to consider the area for drilling.

“That’s all we’re asking, is to protect this one little area. The rest of it is open (to energy development),” he says of the Raton Basin, of which the Valle Vidal is a tiny part.

El Paso Corp. spokesman Joe Hollier says the 40,000 acres can be drilled in a way that could fit into the environment. He points to the company’s drilling on Ted Turner’s 500,000-acre Vermejo Ranch, which abuts the Valle Vidal.

“We feel that’s a prime way to do it correctly,” he said. The wildlife has “adapted to the facility very well.”

There, 621 drill pads are spaced every 160 acres, and the surrounding landscape is used to minimize sound and hide the wells, Hollier said. Some of the equipment is painted green.

It’s up to the Forest Service to decide whether to open the area to drilling. If it gives approval, the service would regulate how many and how far apart the drill pads would be on the Valle Vidal.

The agency would also decide the pace of drilling, Hollier said, so it’s hard to know how much coal could be extracted at a time.

Simpson, who used to work for the state regulating the oil and gas industry, said the acreage in dispute would yield between 11 and 36 hours of national energy consumption over 20 years.

And, he said, there’s no way to make drilling equipment pretty.

“I don’t care if you hide it behind a tree or not, it still disrupts wildlife. It turns it into an industrial zone. That’s all there is to it,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Tom Udall, a Democrat from Santa Fe, has introduced a measure that would permanently prevent drilling in the valle. A subcommittee of the House Committee on Resources is expected hold a hearing on the bill Thursday.

“This is a magnificent area, which deserves protection,” he said.

Udall said he started thinking about his bill after taking a tour of the area with Forest Service officials. The agency doesn’t have the authority to withdraw land from future exploration, which is what his measure would do.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a Silver City Democrat, also has a measure pending before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee in the Senate. It would turn the area into a national preserve and prevent drilling. A hearing hasn’t been scheduled on that bill.

But Bob Gallagher, president of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, said it’s premature to consider any such measures.

“The Forest Service should make a decision first as to what would be allowed and where,” he said. “Then, if politicians want to get on the bandwagon, that’s fine.”

Gov. Bill Richardson, a first-term Democrat and former U.S. energy secretary, is pushing a plan that would prohibit degrading the area’s lakes and streams by designating them as outstanding natural resources.

U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, an Albuquerque Republican, is New Mexico’s only GOP lawmaker to come out against drilling the area using current coal bed methane technology.

Simpson, who hunts elk and deer, said his coalition, which includes 800 businesses and groups, is focused on the measures before Congress, because there’s nothing else that could stop energy exploration.

It can take months, if not years, to get a measure through Capitol Hill, he said.

“An act of Congress is the only thing that would protect it permanently,” Simpson said, standing on a cushy bed of pine needles nearly 2,000 miles from D.C.

The needles are where some of the 2,500 elk who live here bed down at night, cuddling against the cold.

The Valle Vidal, or Valley of Abundant Life, is home to the most concentrated elk herd in the state. Wild turkeys wander, and bouquets of wildflowers thrive.

People come by the thousands from across the nation to camp, hike, hunt, fish, take photos and just get away. Visitors include the Boy Scouts, whose Philmont Scout Ranch is nearby.

About 6,000 individuals have joined the coalition in hopes of persuading the federal government to leave the area alone.

The group includes hunters, ranchers, fishers, area business owners and horseback riders.

“It’s not just an isolated group of environmentalists. It’s a broad-based coalition,” Udall said.

About 50,000 people visit the area each year, according to the state Game and Fish Department. Simpson fears those visitors, who bring between $3 million and $5 million a year to primarily Colfax and Taos counties, won’t show up if there is drilling.

The elk that attract so many won’t stick around, either, he said.

“If you want to have a wildlife area and energy exploration, they aren’t compatible,” he said.

Gallagher disagrees.

“They can coexist easily with energy production,” he said.

Near the base of Big Costilla Peak, a 12,739-foot-tall rock pushed up out of the earth, Susan Clagett and Lisa Mandeville walk along the Rio Costilla Creek with their chow mix, Bear.

“We come here because there’s no people, no traffic,” Mandeville said. “How many other places can you come to like this?”

The pair, who work at a souvenir shop in Red River, hike or fish in the valle a few times a week. They don’t want drilling there.

When tourists ask them for advice on local places to visit, they sometimes hesitate to reveal the existence of a gigantic, gorgeous forest nearby.

“We’ve seen bear and their cubs, bald eagles and elk like you wouldn’t believe. . . . You don’t want to tell anybody about it,” Clagett said.

If the Forest Service does give the go-ahead for leases to drill, they would visit less often.

“This is a love affair,” Clagett said. “How did the oil and gas people find this place?”

Published Oct. 24, 2005.

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One border ranch’s battles

One border ranch’s battles

By Kate Nash
Tribune Reporter

LUNA COUNTY, NEW MEXICO – The dogs at the Johnson ranch bark nearly all night, warning residents of the immigrants who are crossing this remote ranch land at the southern edge of New Mexico.

They bark at the people they can’t see, hundreds at a time, stealing into the night and into the United States.

From his front porch, after the sun has set, cattle rancher Joe Johnson can hear immigrants converse as they stream in from Mexico.

He can’t see them, but when the sun rises, he’ll know the damage they’ve done.

As Johnson wakes up, often cringing at the thought of the work he’ll have to do to fix his cattle fence or his water lines, his dogs head to sleep for the day.

That’s not the only thing that’s out of sync with the rest of the world down here.

Down here, Cadillacs and minivans are abandoned when they get stuck in the Johnsons’ sand. Piles of backpacks, clothes, water bottles and trash line the arroyos. And residents seethe, living in the wake of what thousands of immigrants a year leave behind.

While Border Patrol officials aren’t sure of the exact increase of immigrants crossing into the United States in the area around Deming, Johnson estimates traffic has increased 500 percent this year over last.

The debate over how to handle the situation has been ratcheted up, as well, with Gov. Bill Richardson last week declaring a state of emergency in four southern New Mexico counties and with civilian members of the Minuteman Project set to monitor the border this fall.

“We are being invaded by another country,” says Johnson, whose family started living off the land in Luna County in 1918.

`An emergency-type situation’

Johnson, a looming 42-year-old with a sun-battered cowboy hat, can’t recall the first time he realized immigrants were using his ranch as a gateway to the United States. Mexicans have been crossing for pretty much as long as he can remember.

With the recent increase, response times from law enforcement have declined, he said.

The Johnsons say they put in almost daily calls to the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, which employs 1,229 agents and includes two western Texas counties plus all of New Mexico. Law enforcement also includes a handful of State Police officers and Luna County sheriff’s deputies. They used to respond within minutes but now take an hour or more, Johnson said.

“It’s strictly because they are overwhelmed,” he said.

Johnson is too. Tired, inundated and fed up.

He recently lost 155,000 gallons of water from a storage tank when he says immigrants broke one of his water lines in search of something to soothe their thirst.

Immigrants, who have carved foot paths as well as dirt roads across Johnson’s property, break holes in his fence, which for eight miles is the U.S.-Mexico border.

That fence keeps his cattle in and Mexican cattle out – a boundary that’s crucial when it comes to controlling livestock diseases.

“It could be horrendous for the industry. If foot-and-mouth came across, it could be horrible,” Johnson said.

While Johnson’s cattle have plenty of space to roam in the Chihuahuan desert, that same vastness causes him some consternation.

The Border Patrol has told the Johnsons to avoid some pockets of their 102,000-acre property, especially at night.

“There are areas where if you have work to do, you’d better get it done early,” said Teresa Johnson, Joe’s wife.

In this rugged space where crime seems as far away as New York or Seattle, the Johnsons could talk all day about the problems they’ve had with immigrants.

Joe Johnson said he and his brother were held at gunpoint once, by immigrants who then stole their pickup. Late last month, Johnson said, seven people knocked on the door of his brother house, saying other immigrants were shooting at them and had kidnapped three women who were traveling with them. The women were released a short time later, Johnson said.

The Johnsons have become increasingly vocal about their situation. They’ve talked to their state representatives, to their U.S. representatives, to anyone who will listen, he said.

“We’ve done everything but get down on our knees begging,” he said.

Part of a homeland security bill recently approved by the Senate contains money for 1,000 new Border Patrol agents nationwide. It also would appropriate about $256 million for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia. Both Sen. Pete Domenici, an Albuquerque Republican, and Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a Silver City Democrat, have praised the bill and the money it will bring to the state if approved by the House in its current form and signed by President Bush.

Still, residents doubt any solution will be quick.

“If it takes two years to get control, I can’t imagine. I couldn’t imagine the way it is today,” Johnson said.

Knowing that more agents might be heading to the border doesn’t put Johnson at ease. Agents are in training for 19 weeks before they are assigned to their posts.

“I think it’s an emergency-type situation. We need someone here now. We can’t wait. They need to deploy more agents or the military or National Guard. Somebody.”

Sitting at their kitchen table, Teresa Johnson agrees.

“We have so many people over there fighting (in Iraq), and maybe I’m selfish, but I think we need to look out for No. 1.”

Who’ll guard the border?

An hour west of the Johnsons’ ranch, in nearby Grant County, just miles from the Continental Divide but not much else, horse trainer Robert Been is also fed up.

A member of the Rough Riders, a mounted subset of the Minuteman Project, Been says he watched St. Catherine of Sienna Catholic Church in the outpost of Hachita slowly get ruined by immigrants taking shelter.

Locals earlier this year boarded up the church because of the garbage, the rotting food and the human waste inside.

That’s just one sign that the area is changing, Been says.

“We used to never lock our doors. Now it’s like you don’t dare leave it open,” Been said.

Like the Johnsons, Been has had problems with his water.

“I have to haul my water. I don’t need 20 or 30 people taking a bath with it,” he said.

His neighbors have been robbed of food, clothes, guns and trucks, he says, and left with piles of water bottles and twisted bicycles, which immigrants ride until the tires go flat.

The bitter joke in this area, ringed by the Hatchet and the Cedar mountains, is that the 40 or 50 residents ought to start a bike shop. Or a plastic bottle recycling business.

Stationing the National Guard along the border doesn’t sound like a bad idea to Been, either. New recruits could get some experience in the harsh landscape, he said.

Richardson, however, has said he doesn’t think Guard members are needed. His emergency declaration frees money for more state and local law enforcement.

Doug Mosier, a U.S. Border Patrol public affairs officer, said the government wants its agents to do the often-dangerous work.

“We would always prefer to have trained Border Patrol agents to do that kind of work,” he said. “We understand the passion and commitment of U.S. citizens.”

Been says he’d like to see dozens more agents stationed closer to the border than N.M. 9, the southernmost paved road in Luna County.

While Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner recently floated the idea of a civilian group that would help the Border Patrol, Mosier said he’s not aware of any plans to do that. A Department of Homeland Security spokesman has said there are no plans to use a civilian patrol.

Been and other Minutemen say something has to be done, especially in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

“Bush should go explain to the victims of 9-11 why he hasn’t secured our border. If someone was trying to break into my house, the first thing I would do is close the doors,” said Been, looking almost like the Marlboro Man as he smokes and leads a horse along in the desert, which for a fleeting moment is cloudy.

Come October, Been and other members of the Minuteman Project plan to patrol the border, looking for crossers and reporting them to the Border Patrol, an undertaking similar to a recent monthlong operation in Arizona.

The group, however, has been met with some ire.

Jackie Hadzic, state director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said her group opposes the Minutemen but supports law enforcement.

While neither group wants criminals entering the country from other places, “we don’t have enough workers,” she said. “Americans don’t take the jobs, even in cities with 30 percent unemployment.”

Many immigrants, she said, are simply looking for a better life.

“They are hardworking people,” she said. “Do you know how hard it is to be working in fields?

“They pay into Social Security, they pay taxes, they are helping us out, and we are helping them back.”

Her group, which has held anti-Minutemen protests in Las Cruces, is looking into how to express its opposition to the group this fall.

William Norris, southern coordinator for the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps of New Mexico, said members of the group are getting trained for October duty.

“Our primary concern is national security,” he said. “You don’t know who is bringing what.”

Norris said he’s particularly worried about the number of OTMs, or Other Than Mexican people, entering the United States.

“Abdul has a very similar complexion to Juan. You can’t tell them apart,” he said.

Border Patrol officials estimate that OTMs make up about 3.5 percent of immigrants apprehended in the El Paso Sector but 35 percent to 40 percent in parts of south Texas.

While the Minutemen have created a stir in Arizona and southern New Mexico cities like Las Cruces, Norris and Been say they aren’t an anti-immigration group. They say their group is active on the Mexican and Canadian borders.

But, they say, immigrants need to follow the law.

“You need to come through the gate and do it right,” Norris said.

Norris, who constructs rock walls for a living, said he’s disappointed in federal officials for not doing more to defend the border.

“They want cheap labor, and they are willing to risk terrorism to get it,” he said.

Published Aug. 20, 2005.

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Republican Susana Martinez becomes first female Hispanic governor

Republican Susana Martinez becomes first female Hispanic governor

By Kate Nash | The New Mexican

LAS CRUCES — A year ago, Susana Martinez was just a few months into her nascent gubernatorial campaign, a district attorney largely unknown outside her hometown here.

Just six months later, it was unclear whether she could elbow through the primary, facing well-known Republicans who had more money, and some said, more muscle. To say the least, things have changed dramatically.

Her ascent as a rising Republican star was marked at the Hotel Encanto de Las Cruces, where Tuesday night she gave an acceptance speech as New Mexico’s governor-elect.

Martinez and lieutenant governor candidate John Sanchez bested Democrats Diane Denish and Brian Colón by 54 to 46 percent, with 21 of 33 counties reporting, according to the Secretary of State’s website.

“At the end of the day, New Mexicans chose a different direction and I thank them for their trust and their courage,” Martinez told a crowd of about 1,000 supporters, as many wearing cowboy boots as dress shoes.

“This victory tonight says something that someone who grew up in a working family just a few miles from the border can achieve anything,” she said.

The rise will take Martinez, an El Pasoan by birth, from a neighborhood not too far from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, to the Governor’s Mansion in Santa Fe. From high school student-body president to the fourth floor of the state Capitol. From a prosecutor known in legal circles to the biggest name in the state — and to one now mentioned by syndicated columnist George Will as a potential vice presidential candidate.

It means the 51-year-old lawyer will rule more than a Doña Ana County prosecutor’s office. It means she will be the chief executive of a state where she pledged during her speech to “create jobs, get our books in order, eliminate the corruption and turn our schools around.

“We’re going to get our books in order and end the shell games that have taken place in the Roundhouse for the last eight years,” she told a crowd of supporters, many of whom wore “I ‘heart’ Governor Martinez” T-shirts, or buttons, or both, and waved the campaign’s black and yellow signs for TV live shots.

So how did the once teenage security guard who patrolled the parking lots outside bingo games become New Mexico’s first female governor and the country’s first Hispanic female governor?

Observers say it was a grueling campaign schedule, a no-holds-barred debate style and a play-to-win-no-matter-what mentality.

The slumping economy, and an anti-incumbent sentiment also helped, local political scientists said.

“I’m absolutely sure a number of voters picked Martinez as an anti-(Gov. Bill) Richardson vote,” University of New Mexico political science professor Christine Sierra said. “And Diane Denish got caught in the crosshairs.”

Denish for a good part of the campaign worked to distance herself from Richardson, but Martinez constantly tried to tie Denish to him and what Martinez said were his failures as governor.

Lonna Atkeson, another a UNM professor, said Martinez also had a nationwide movement behind her. “She had the wind behind her of the national Republicans,” Atkeson said.

The movement was large. Across the country, the GOP picked up 11 governor’s offices, including the one in Santa Fe that Democrats have held for the past eight years and where many thought a year ago Denish would be a shoo-in.

While Martinez was nothing but smiles at the swanky hotel, where mariachis greeted guests on plush carpets, the job she starts Jan. 1 will be tough. She and her husband, Doña Ana County Undersheriff Chuck Franco, move to the City Different at a time of sagging revenues, angry voters and general dislike of what’s happened in Santa Fe.

“They really are going to have to make some hard choices,” Atkeson said. “If she (Martinez) isn’t going to raise taxes, she’s going to have to make cuts, and that’s not popular.”

As she campaigned, Martinez rolled out various ideas for dealing with the budget, education, crime — albeit short on details.

Martinez will face another complicating factor: the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

“It will be a very tough job, both in the challenge of cutting down the deficit and balancing a budget with money we don’t have,” Sierra said. “But before that even, she still has to work with a Democratic majority in the Legislature.”

Part of the rub, no doubt, will come as the state delves into the task of political redistricting based on new census numbers, something Sierra predicted would end up in court, as it did a decade ago after former Republican Gov. Gary Johnson become locked in his own battle with a Democratic Legislature.

And, part of her new work may mean persuading some who didn’t vote for her that she can do the job, and persuading everyone else that she can get up to speed on the intricacies of the Capitol’s fourth floor, and pronto.

“We don’t know a lot about executive women because there haven’t been too many of them,” Atkeson said. “But I’m assuming she’s going to run the state like she did her district attorney’s office.”

Whatever her work entails starting in 2011, for now, her goal no doubt is to rest. And to get ready. Between now and then, she will leave the job to which she was first elected in 1996, and Franco will retire from his.

At the end of her 14-minute speech, Martinez asked for supporters to continue their prayers for her and her campaign.

She then shook hands in the crowd, and was off, likely to more sleep than she’s had in months.

Published Nov. 2, 2010.