RAIN!!!!

Changes in recycling (& they had us so well trained...)

Mixed paper is NO LONGER a recyclable product.  Changes in Chinese material recycling markets in the past six months have caused dramatic changes in New Mexico recycling opportunities. Since China no longer accepts from the US a number of recycled materials to be repurposed, most New Mexico recycling centers have significantly reduced the range of material they will accept, or stopped recycling all together except for corrugated cardboard. Southwest US markets are insufficiently developed to create adequate demand for many recycled materials.

Two of those materials no longer accepted in our region are Paperboard and Mixed Paper. 

      Paperboard is that thin cardboard packaging in which we get soft drinks, beer, cereal, toothpaste, hair coloring, and a thousand other consumer products (see examples below). Mixed paper is white office paper (unless you shred paper, more about this in a future article), magazines, slick colored newspaper fallouts, catalogs, slick junk mail, etc. If you have been recycling these types of material, you will now need to place them in your trash along with other items to be discarded, eventually to be transported to the landfill.

Mixed Paper dumpster will be removed from our Green Tree Waste site.

Please let your friends and neighbors know about these changes and keep recycling those other things like clean No. 1 and No. 2 plastic, shredded office paper, aluminum and clean steel cans, corrugated cardboard, etc.

2018 State Water Plan requests public comment

New Mexico First Blog
New State Water Plan open for public comment
Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Important announcement: the draft 2018 State Water Plan has been released by the Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) and the Office of the State Engineer (OSE) for public comment. Although New Mexico First is not the author of this document, we highly encourage people who care about New Mexico’s water future to review the plan and submit comments. The draft plan has three parts – a policy section, a technical report and a legal landmarks summary. The comment period is open until August 10. Both the DRAFT State Water Plan https://drive.google.com/…/1nShFo9lSGDWz2KHtBQpZ5ZzMi8DnHfLS
and Comment Form are available online
http://nmose.isc.commentinput.com/?id=n9m8s7

In the 2014 New Mexico First Town Hall on water, participants advocated to strengthen and continue the state water planning process. Accordingly, New Mexico First has supported these latest water planning efforts by organizing a State Water Planning Town Hall in December 2017. This town hall provided the ISC with public input before the draft plan was developed. Given the importance of this work to our state, we sincerely hope you will your offer comments on this new plan.

Statement from Sun Valley Water and Sanitation District

“A monthly water sample collected July 9 following the NM Drinking Water Bureau protocols showed test evidence of coliform contamination. The sample location was near the La Junta Guest Ranch where the Water District has been doing fire hydrant flushing. After the contamination was reported to the Drinking Water Bureau, Sun Valley System Operator quickly increased chlorination in the system storage tanks and at a nearby well. Within the week, the entire system chlorination was examined and balanced, again by the Sun Valley staff. A larger follow up sample drawn by an independent operator on July 23 was tested by the local lab, which found no further contamination in the Sun Valley System. The required Environment Department posting may be found in the window of the Bonito Fire Station.” 
Thanks. 

Sun Valley Water & Sanitation DIstrict ongoing improvements

New pipeline for Cottage Grove in Little Creek Estates. 
Replaces pipeline installed ~1969

program of interest at Capitan Public Library: Sunday, July 15 at 2 pm "Precipitation variations in the Southwestern United States" presented by Bob Harper

Climate models tend to predict an increasingly arid 
future for the Southwestern United States, in large
part because of increased evaporation due to rising
global temperatures.  But current climate models do
not handle precipitation well, and are not able to 
accurately model natural variability.

This talk will leave the climate models, 
and present actual precipitation data across 
the Southwestern United States from 1860 to the 
present, focusing on the long term natural variability, 
which to date is much larger than any global warming
related precipitation component.  Multi-decadal variations 
of average precipitation of +/-20% around the long 
term mean are largely driven by Pacific Ocean sea surface
temperature changes.  

Presented by Bob Harper.  He has a A.B. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University (1965) & a PhD in Space Physics from Rice University (1972).  His dissertation was on the dynamics of the Earth's Upper Atmosphere. Harper was also a geophysicist in the Petroleum Industry.

Light refreshments afterwards.  

rain update from July 9th - And it is raining again RIGHT NOW! YEA!