Letters to the editor

Climate change an issue

Editor:

In reply to Ms. Crawford’s letter titled “Energy poverty in U.S.,” she seems concerned about energy poverty in the U.S. when she should be concerned about education poverty in the US.

Her letter shows all the indications of a Fox Entertainment education, from the “radical leftists” comment to the fearmongering that fighting climate change is too expensive and useless, now attempting to use Africa as an excuse that any action on climate change is futile.

I invite Ms. Crawford to educate herself on climate change with actual U.S. government data from a U.S. government agency, NASA. She and anyone interested in real climate facts can go to the NASA website and actually learn some real science. climate.nasa.gov

I would also invite Ms. Crawford to further educate herself on African energy, past, present and future by going to the following website and clicking on the PDF document titled “Africa_Energy_Atlas.pdf ” africa-energy-portal.org/reports/atlas-africa-energy-resource

It’s usually easy to spot someone repeating Fox Entertainment mistruths, denials and outright lies. There is a term popular in the computing industry, GIGO (Garbage In-Garbage Out), which usually refers to data, logic or analysis but these “radical right” comments seem to also fit the bill, garbage in from Fox Entertainment — Garbage out in the form of science deniers social media comments and letters to the editor of local newspapers.

William Lumsden

Rio Communities

 

Moving right along

Editor:

A letter writer asked: Could the other side be “right” (even if they are “rats”)?

While another writer in the same issue of the News-Bulletin asserts that the radical left is spending “gadzillions” of dollars to somehow deprive the continent of Africa of electricity. I had to laugh at this attempt to paint the Biden administration as rabid and radical for pushing cheaper ways of supplying electricity and trying to get the world to go along for the sake of the environment.

Everyone knows that every continent uses wind and solar and most first world countries have moved away from non-renewables.

The juxtaposition of these two letters in the News-Bulletin proves a mindset that cannot adjust to reality without hyperbole and drama. Maybe we could all just open our minds up to the possibilities of renewable energy and follow the first letter writer’s thought process.

After all, we are only humans just walking each other home and doing our best to make a purposeful life.

Michelle Tafoya

Los Lunas

Thank you for your help

Editor:

What a success! Our first ever, scholarship drive could not have been possible without our amazing sponsors.

After our “World’s Largest Matanza” was cancelled in January due to the global pandemic, we conducted a scholarship drive. We were able to award 58 $500 scholarships to the class of 2021 from schools within our county.

On behalf of the entire Hispano Chamber of Valencia County, we want to extend a heart-felt thank you to the following donors: AC Disposal, A-Com Technologies, Advanced Environmental Solutions, Altura Real Estate, Paul and Loretta Baca, Belen Consolidated Schools.

First New Mexico Bank, Lori Floyd, JLE, LLC, Koda Builders, Kyzer Farms, Dr. Alice Letteney, Los Lunas Schools, Frank A. Mazza Jr., MPLS Investments, Nino Trujillo and Company, Oñate Feed Company.

Fabian and Elizabeth Padilla, Primary Residential Company, RAKS Building Supply, Rio Grande Financial Network, Lawrence and Carolyn Sánchez, Sisneros Brothers, Sunrise Builders Inc., Tabet Lumber and Wild Woman Kombucha Company.

Thank you for your generosity and commitment to our youth! We are proud of the entire Class of 2021 and wish them the best in all of their future endeavors.

Juliette Romero Benavidez

Board president and chairwoman of the Hispano Chamber of Valencia County

It’s everyone’s water

Editor:

So, whose water is it any ways?

This is a frequent topic of discussion among the members of Valencia Water Watchers as we review sales of thousands of gallons of water from our aquifer to Niagara Bottling company by the village of Los Lunas. The water, irreplaceable, is sold to a company that sells it outside of New Mexico; their profit, our loss.

One acre-foot of water is equal to 325,851 gallons of water, and currently, Niagara is buying at 270 acre-feet of our water. That is about 88 million gallons of water, siphoned out of the aquifer, and gone forever to the New Mexico water users.

Niagara recently was poised to buy another 670 acre-feet of water (somewhere in the neighborhood of more than two billion gallons), but withdrew their request in the face of community protest, only to find some other seller who was willing to sell their access to the aquifer.

We all share the water in the aquifer, yet it seems that municipalities, like the village of Los Lunas, feel quite free, with little transparency and no discussion, to sell what is a precious commodity owned by all of us who live here.

So, just whose water is it any ways? Who gets to discuss, decide, question, protest, be heard? So far, it seems that a few men and the mayor, decides who asks, who speaks, who has any input to the sale of a common resource.

Facebook is another consumer of our water; they are expanding at warp speed, and it is hard to determine how they are hewing to their contract to recycle, re-use and use our water responsibly; but we are asking!

Yes, Valencia County needs income-producing businesses, but we need to hear, see, discuss and have real input into the taking forever of aquifer water that is being depleted. We are in a drought that is so severe that meteorologists keep reaching for new adjectives to describe the depth of the problem.

Is this the time to be selling a limited and valuable resource with little to no input from the citizen users? No water user stands in isolation as they take from the aquifer; every one of us is affected by each permanent withdrawal for the benefit of private companies to the detriment of each of us citizens.

So, indeed, whose water is it really?

Pamela McKenzie

Los Lunas