Protect the Gila River

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Action Request from the Gila Conservation Coalition

The Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) and the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) released a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Gila River diversion project (NM Unit) proposed by the NM Central Arizona Project (CAP) Entity.
As joint leads for the NEPA process the BOR and the ISC are taking public comment until June 8 on four diversion/storage action alternatives and the no action alternative.
Tell the Bureau of Reclamation to select the No Action Alternative
It’s well past time to stop wasting NM Unit Funds on the failed Gila diversion planning process and instead direct funding to priority community water projects to meet the needs of everyone in southwest New Mexico.
The proposed New Mexico Unit alternatives do not pass even minimum standards of viability:
  • Financially infeasible – Project water under all alternatives is too expensive for farmers to buy. Even assuming public subsidy for project construction costs, the cost of water per acre-foot likely exceeds farmers’ willingness to pay.
  • Not economically viable – Costs to the economy as a whole for all diversion alternatives are greater than the benefits. None of the action alternatives “maximize public benefits” as required by the Water Resources Development Act, and therefore the no action alternative should be selected.
  • Unfair – The NM Unit Fund should be used to implement priority water projects in southwest New Mexico benefiting 60,000 people, rather than to subsidize water for a handful of irrigators.
  • Harmful to threatened and endangered species and riparian habitat along the Gila and San Francisco rivers – NM Unit diversion alternatives will decrease stream flow and cause disturbance that will adversely affect native vegetation and degrade riparian habitat, impacting threatened and endangered birds, native fish and snakes.
  • Impact historic and cultural properties and human remains – All alternatives will impact many historic and cultural sites, such as small pueblos, pithouse villages, and rock art sites, as well as disturb human remains significant to Tribes.

Take Action: Advocate for the No Action Alternative

Immediate and future water needs in southwest New Mexico can be met cost-effectively by implementing non-diversion alternatives. We can spend the NM Unit Fund (more than $70 million) on priority community water projects that will create a secure water supply for 60,000 people far into the future without building a costly Gila diversion that requires massive ongoing public subsidy to benefit a very few and damages significant cultural resources and ecologically critical riparian habitat.

Sister Joan Brown Quoted in NCR Article on Laudato Si

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“There has to be some deep-seeded shifts in the church for us to really grapple with this largest ethical and moral concern of our time. And the longer it takes us, the more we run into greater storms, greater need for emergency relief.”  -Sister Joan Brown, executive director New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light.

On May 24, the National Catholic Reporter published an article examining whether the Catholic Church and the faith community at large have heeded the message in Pope Francis’ encyclical letter on the environment, Laudato Si: Care: On Care for Our Common Home.

According to the article, entitled “Five years ago, Pope Francis asked us to care for Earth. Have we listened?” there has been much conversation in faith circles around the global climate crisis,  even though we are far short of our goals.  The conversation puts a major emphasis on the Philippines: a country facing extreme negative repercussions from climate change.  Climate activist Br. Jaazeal Jakosalem Jakosalem said Laudato Si’ has affirmed the work of church leaders in the Philippines to address the climate emergency by placing creation care squarely in the framework of church teaching.

The commitment to addressing climate change has led bishops in the Philippines and Ireland to divest from fossil fuels.

Despite these small victories, the overall effort to promote a broad campaign against climate change within the charge has fallen short. “Even with those examples, the consensus among Catholic ecological leaders is those responses have been not nearly as widespread as Francis sought with his universal call “for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet,” said the NCR article, authored by Brian Roewe.

“Sadly, the urgency of this ecological conversion seems not to have been grasped by international politics, where the response to the problems raised by global issues such as climate change remains very weak and a source of grave concern,” Pope Francis said in January in remarks to the Vatican diplomatic corps.

Sister Joan Brown, executive director New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light in Albuquerque agrees. “There has to be some deep-seeded shifts in the church for us to really grapple with this largest ethical and moral concern of our time. And the longer it takes us, the more we run into greater storms, greater need for emergency relief,” said Sister Joan.   Read full article

Text of Prof. Rich Wood’s Presentation on Laudato Si

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On May 20, University of New Mexico Prof. Richard L. Wood helped us commemorate the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment. Dr. Wood shared his thoughts online via Zoom. Here is a video. Below is an excerpt from the presentation followed by a link to the full text on the NMIPL blog.

St. Francis, like Pope Francis, deeply experienced the joy of living in God’s love. I would like to begin my reflections there, based on Pope Francis’ other great encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium: The Joy of the Gospel. There, Francis emphasized living in daily encounter with the Spirit of Life, within the intimate flow of relationship between Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit.

One thing we can do now, every day, is to make sure we are living within that intimate flow, cultivating a spiritual practice individually and (hopefully again soon) communally that provides a bedrock of joy in our lives and relationships because we know we are loved, we know we are sinners in the arms of a forgiving God, intimately embraced by the One that theologian Elizabeth Johnson calls “She Who Is”. It is that kind of encounter, lived intimately and mystically, that I think Jesus, Francis, and Clare all lived, and into which Pope Francis is calling us today. Here is the full text