A gathering for growth

Photo: Residents of northern Santa Fe County discussed their visions for the future during a three-day planning workshop held as part of Santa Fe Countya TMs general-plan update and land-use code rewrite ...

[pablo blanco]

Aamodt and the wastewater project were passed in Harry Montoya's district with no community outreach. To this day most people are not aware that the County approved Aamodt in the middle of the night. The only outreach within the community was by the State, they had a few meetings that the County sat in on. People were so angry at these meetings they were practically throwing rotten tomatoes at the lawyers. The later meetings that the state held, public discussion was not allowed. During the negotiations there were secret meetings with the County and the Pueblos.
Harry is living in fantasy land, his job as our commissioner is to represent our wishes. He has been well aware of the opposition to Aamodt. And he tries to marginalize us by saying that there are only a few disgruntled people. People have lives and the few of us who have the time to bring the communities concerns to the commissioners are berated for our attempts to represent the community. Harry, you know there are thousands of us and were you to have had meetings in the public this would have been obvious.
Removing the capping of the wells was only one issue in the settlement, Harry was made aware of the other issues that have not gone away. From conversations with Harry I don't think he understands the settlement, it is 70 pages and written in a language few if any can understand. The court will expect thousands of us to sign a very complicated document that essentially does an end run around state statutes.
The County has relied for advice by the attorney who was in on the discussion for the inclusion of the County water system. The settlement negotiations were in secret, anyone attending could not disclose the particulars.
I have had discussions with Harry about the loss of protection for agriculture and he did not understand the concept. This provision alone will accelerate the loss of agriculture and allow the Pueblos to make priority calls on unused water rights. Loss of priority protection is forever. Priority calls by the Pueblos in the infrequent times there is not enough water for their existing agriculture is temporary. The Pueblos intend to go after our water rights aggressively. But Harry will be long gone by the time that starts to happen.
Aamodt will allow for deep wells that could cause the failure of Nambe Dam. It will certainly deplete and impair the groundwater. Those whose wells go dry will have little recourse. Monitoring wells in the Pojoaque area have dropped below detection levels already.

[pablo blanco]

To date we have over 1,100 signatures opposing Aamodt. Amongst those few who support the settlement are a few realtors, the president of the PVID and some acequias in Tesuque who might be getting a good deal but only if they can prove they are using ALL of their water rights. The water master will go after even portions of water rights that are not being used. State statutes however allow for notification and remedy before forfeiture.

The parties that have approved Aamodt include the Governor who also refused to meet with us. Our Senators (Bingaman and Udall) are pushing for legislation and funding right now knowing of the opposition, they too refuse to come out to the community for a round table forum. The federal government opposes the settlement based on the costs. Our taxes will go up in the County, the State will be using funding that is direly needed for other necessary projects. County contributions appear to be about 60 million. The State might have to kick in 200+ million. Aamodt is under the radar for these funding issues. In comparison Aamodt will rival other State projects such as the Railrunner. It will also rival the Buckman direct diversion in costs.

The County cannot even define the end users for this system. We did a poll of 250 people and less than 1 percent agrees to consider signing up. The County will be responsible for a half million dollars in operation and maintenance fees yearly whether people sign up or not.

Aamodt will have a water authority with eminent domain powers. The Pueblos might be part of this authority. They will have condemnation powers and might take over the mutual domestics in the area. We will have no ability to influence development. This water authority essentially creates a water district without having to go through the normal channels of disclosure to the community.

I do not consider the one meeting Harry had which was essentially an informational meeting and a very short question and answer period afterwards worthy of the term outreach, it was far too little far too late. The horse is out of the barn and the gate is shut on Aamodt. If Harry had his own meetings with his constituents in the area before making the decisions for Aamodt and the Wastewater project I would like to know about them. Public notice for County meetings at the downtown County chambers is often couched in indeterminate language in a newspaper and is hardly outreach, it only meets the bare requirements of the law.

The County funded the Espanola Basin Regional Planning Issues Forum. There was an article awhile back that described the kind of discussions that are being made with the Pueblos in this forum. The wastewater treatment system on Pojoaque Pueblo land was one that was discussed and formulated in these meetings. SF County went into an MOU with Pojoaque Pueblo several years ago, no one knew about this. The public is not allowed to these meetings, yet we have paid for it and our elected officials continue to support them.

At the very least there should be a counterpart forum for non Pueblo people but Harry refuses to consider this. Harry should take a good look in the mirror, when he voted for these projects he was related to Pojoaque Pueblo, a clear conflict of interest. There seems to be no end to the ethical lapses in our government. If Harry and the rest of the County commissioners think it is okay to continue to approve these large systems without community disclosure and outreach within the community well in advance of approval they only have themselves to live with. Our elected officials who have forced these decisions on us are pitiful and cowardly, there is no excuse for this kind of behavior.

[so true]

"Contract planners hired by the county to gather public input and draft new land-use plans and rules said they sympathized with the residents' concerns. Los Angeles-based land-use attorney Robert Freilich said the county's practices are "a wreck." "It's piecemeal, it's unfair, it's discriminatory," Freilich said".

so true.