Tuesday, September 11, 2007

PNM as Hypocrites

Every month Bobbi and I shell out extra dollars to be in the Public Service Company of New Mexico's green program. We feel it is the right thing to do to buy wind energy to keep carbon out of the air. Now, PNM says they will buy power from the plant that will be burning our Pinon and Juniper forests for fuel. That harebrained idea is actually moving along and PNM is aiding and abetting it by saying they will be a customer of the Torrance County Western Water and Power plant. The New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board shrugged their shoulders yesterday and granted an air quality permit to the plant. Secretary of the Environment Department Ron Curry had delayed the project, but now it looks to be back on track.

The best thing everyone could do right now is to put pressure on PNM and other utility companies not to buy this power. PNM will stand as a huge hypocrite if they participate. Next time you see PNM CEO Jeff Sterba tell him what you think.

The State Land Office has also enabled this fiasco by granting a no bid lease to strip state lands of the Pinon/Juniper forests that we all know so well. Where are the media investigations of that little movida? Where are Legislative inquiries into this?

Who will protect Pinon forests?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Journal reports the plant will cost $80Million, and generate enough electricity for 800 homes. Uh, that's a cost of $100,000 per home. In who's book is this somehow and efficient method of generating electricity, an incinerator burning our trees for profit at a tremendous cost to New Mexicans.

Prabhu Singh said...

I agree it's a "harebrained idea."
One thing that I don't understand is why every house in New Mexico is not utilizing passive solar? It just requires facing windows in the right direction. This should be done on all new houses.
Corporate interests run this country. We can't even be free of them if we try. I don't know anybody who has built their own house, their own car, provides their own fuel and grows their own food. There's basically legislation preventing us from doing all of this.

Daniel R. Patterson, Editor said...

I have to wonder if some ranchers are also pushing this idea to strip tree densities caused by overgrazing, so more grass will grow and allow more overgrazing.

This seems like a 'chaining for energy' type of scheme.

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