The Orphaned Land: New Mexico's Environment Since the Manhattan Project

384 Pages·2011·45.206 MB·English

by  V. B. Price, Nell Farrell

American West / Environment / History
Although most of us prefer not to think about them, hazardous P
wastes, munitions testing, radioactive emissions, and a variety of
R
other issues affect the quality of land, water, and air in the Land of
Enchantment, as they do all over the world. In this book, a veteran
I
New Mexico journalist assembles a vast amount of information on C
more than fifty years of deterioration of the state’s environment,
most of it hitherto available only in scattered newspaper articles E
and government reports. Price sees New Mexico as a microcosm
of global ecological degradation. Suggesting that New Mexico’s
environment is seriously endangered by military, corporate, and
urban polluters and consumers, his is the first book to give the
T
general public a realistic perspective on the problems surrounding
the state’s environmental health and resources.
h
e
“ A monumental compen-
dium. I know of no other
book on New Mexico that
covers so broad a field and O
synthesizes so much infor-
The Orphaned Land
mation so accessibly.” r
— Lucy Lippard, author of
p
The Lure of the Local
h
“ In this passionate, monu-
“ In this age of Internet clicks, RSS feeds, and Twitter, journalists can
mentally informed book,
a
V. B. Price takes a view of alert readers to environmental disasters faster than ever. But what
New Mexico as long as it is the public needs most is to slow down, learn our history, and see the n
broad and deep. This is his- world around us ever more clearly, to know it more deeply. Price is
tory that teaches, but more a graceful guide through New Mexico’s complex environmental his- e
import antly, this is history
tory. He exposes the harsh realities, yes, but reminds us of beauty,
that cares.” d
and will awaken in even the most reluctant—or discouraged—reader
— Virginia Scharff, Director,
the instinct to protect not only our homelands, but also the truth.”
Center for the Southwest,
University of New Mexico —Laura Paskus, environmental journalist
L
V. B. Price is an award-winning Albuquerque journalist, poet, novelist, and teacher. a
Among his earlier books is Albuquerque: A City at the End of the World (UNM Press).
n
Nell Farrell is a documentary photographer and writer specializing in Latin America
and the American Southwest. She is the author of Nicaragua Before Now (UNM Press). d
All photographs by Nell Farrell • Cover design by Cheryl Carrington
ISBN 978-0-8263-5049-7
University of New Mexico Press ËxHSKIMGy350497zv*:+:!:+:! V. B. PRICE
unmpress.com | 800-249-7737
Photographs by Nell Farrell
The Orphaned Land

Preface iii
The Orphaned Land
V. B. PRICE
Photographs by Nell Farrell
University of New Mexico Press
Albuquerque
© 2011 by V. B. Price
Photographs © 2011 by Nell Farrell
All rights reserved. Published 2011
Printed in the United States of America
16 15 14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5 6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Price, V. B. (Vincent Barrett)
The orphaned land : New Mexico’s environment since the
Manhattan Project / V. B. Price ; photographs by Nell Farrell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8263-5049-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8263-5051-0 (electronic)
1. New Mexico—Environmental conditions—Case studies.
I. Title.
GE155.N6P75 2011
577.2709789—dc22
2011009569
The photographs in this book were shot in color and
can be viewed as intended at www.nellfarrell.com.
For Rini and our family, far and wide,
and for the children of New Mexico
In memoriam
Clifford Brook
Rosalie Buddington
Patrick Chester Henderson
Warren Russell Martin
Winfield Townley Scott
Sandra Rae Greenwald
Edith Barrett Price
James Michael Jenkinson
Marjorie H. Rini
Helen K. Herman
Milas Hurley
Anne Seymore
Vincent Leonard Price, Jr.
Dudley Wynn
Katherine Simons
Mark Douglas Acuff
Mildred and John Gifford
Reg Williams
Florence and Bev Watts
Joan Hodes
Mary Grant Price
Susie Henderson
Paula Hocks
George Clayton Pearl
S. Jack Rini
Cecil Robert Lloyd
What we do anywhere matters, but especially here. It matters very
much. Mesas, mountains, rivers and trees, winds and rains are as sen-
sitive to the actions and thoughts of humans as we are to their forces.
They take into themselves what we give off, and give it out again.
— Edith Warner, In the Shadow of Los Alamos:
Selected Writings of Edith Warner
And they were sawing off the branches on which they were sitting,
while shouting across their experiences to one another how to saw
more efficiently. And they went crashing down into the deep. And
those who watched them shook their heads and continued sawing
vigorously.
—Bertolt Brecht, Exile III
“F or the New Mexico Reservation,” he said. “I had the same idea as
you. . . . Wanted to have a look at the savages. Got a permit to New
Mexico. . . . I actually dream about it sometimes. . . .” They slept that
night in Santa Fe. The hotel was excellent. . . . “Five hundred and
sixty thousand square kilometers, divided into four distinct Sub-
Reservations, each surrounded by a tension wire fence. . . . Upwards
of five thousand kilometers of fencing at sixty thousand volts. . . .
To touch the fence is instant death,” pronounced the Warden sol-
emnly. “There’s no escape from a Savage Reservation. . . . Those, I
repeat, who are born in the Reservation are destined to die there.”
—Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Contents
Preface
— ix —
Acknowledgments
— xv —
Introduction
— 2 —
Chapter One: Key Human Impacts
on the New Mexico Environment
— 18 —
Chapter Two: Water: A Desert Among Eons of Oceans
— 54 —
Chapter Three: Environmental Discrimination:
Dumping on the Poor
— 96 —
Chapter Four: Toxic Waste:
“Everything Has to Go Somewhere”
— 146 —
Chapter Five: Urban/Rural Struggles: The Broader Habitat
— 222 —
Chapter Six: Conditions, Conclusions, New Paths to Follow
— 296 —
Notes
— 309 —
Selected Bibliography
— 339 —
Index
— 347 —

Preface
Laypeople can sometimes go where professionals fear to tread, but
even the enthusiastic have to rein themselves in. When I began
this book, I thought I was going to write an environmental history of
New Mexico from the start to when I finished. I soon realized that I
was not equipped to undertake that enormous task. I am a journalist,
not a historian or a geographer. My interests lie primarily in the pres-
ent. Reading Kevin Fernlund’s The Cold War in the American West
made it clear to me that my starting point should be the Manhattan
Project. But the subject remained overwhelming, so I decided to focus
on environmental justice, water, toxic waste, and the complicated
interactions of urban and rural life.
Fernlund asks “whether the cold war transformed or deformed
the American West.”1 A good portion of my environmental account-
ing of New Mexico since the middle of the twentieth century deals
with that question. The Cold War is intimately connected with New
Mexico’s modern history because of the importance of nuclear weap-
onry to our state’s intellectual culture and economy and because,
during the period of the Cold War and after, an amazing amount of
damage was done to our environment.
In every chapter of this book, readers will encounter questions
that have to do with knowledge. How do we know what we know?
Who is credible and who is not? Whose account deserves suspicion?
What is a scientific “fact,” what is biased spin, and how do you tell
the difference?
Information on the history and condition of our environment over
the last seventy years is, paradoxically, both abundant and extremely
difficult to come by. One of the challenges of trying to write about
the subject is the lack of publicly available scientific data, and that
is partly because so much of the information in question has been
gathered and interpreted by public and private entities with political
or profit motives.
Often the best a researcher can do is build a broad picture from cir-
cumstantial evidence reported in the mainstream press and by nongov-
ernmental organizations. When it’s possible to compare interpretations
ix