I made it to the 9/25 P&Z commission meeting—and was glad to be a firsthand witness to events, and couldn’t resist adding my 2 cents worth (I stated that the ESCA position was no fracking in the ABQ Basin, we based our support on Don Phillips excellent research on the risks involved, and that therefore the Block proposal did not meet our criteria and both of the CWG proposals did. I did add a personal comment about the CWG that in my former life, when I wanted one proposal and had multiples presented I would have locked them in a barn, and sent in Pizza until they agreed on one.
Surprisingly (at least to me) the Commission decided the best way to decide what and how many to send forward was to consider (vote on) them individually—and as a result the two they approved were the CWG Science team proposal and the “Baseline” (which I understand to be basically the original Stoddard with a few changes, possibly input by members of the County Commission). The failure of the CWG Ordinance team proposal (couldn’t even gain a second) caused a major outcry by its supporters who screamed “SHAME, etc” and tried to disrupt the meeting—a lack of civility that I could not support. It seemed that they fully expected both CWG proposals to be sent up—but a P&Z Commissioner commented (I believe it was to me offline) that missing the deadlines hurt them, as I felt it would and should. I am thankful that the Science team drove hard to get done what they did (the Ordinance team proposal wasn’t finalized and presented to the P&Z staff until 9/21/18 (and I do not know when staff sent it to the P&Z Commissioners–I would not have wanted to spend time on unfinished drafts if it were me on the Commission).. The Block proposal was also rejected as we felt should have also been done to the Baseline proposal.
Subsequent to the above P&Z meeting, I reviewed the comparison (provided on pp 41-42 of the Part 2 posting on the County website http://www.sandovalcountynm.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/OGPublicComments-WkEnding9-28-18-Part-2.pdf ) which was attached to David Craig’s submittal on 9-21 of the Ordinance committee proposal. I am concerned, as I had expressed to members of both CWG groups, that being divided we substantially increase the possibility that the Baseline proposal will be passed and that would be disastrous for our water supply. Since only one alternative sent to the County Commissioners meets the ES-CA criteria (no fracking in the ABQ Basin), the Science committee proposal (which in my review is substantively equivalent to the Ordinance committee proposal that the P&Z Commission rejected), we need to get behind it rather than risking splitting support at the County Commissioner level and instead allowing the Springfield proposal (Baseline) to win the day. If there’s something important that is missing, then let’s work with our Commissioners to see if it can be added.
Dick Ulmer, Chairman, ES-CA Land Use Protection Trust Board