Members of nearly a dozen community organizations, along with five tractors belonging to local farmers, marched to the Bernalillo County Commission office to share their concerns about how the proposed city would affect the area’s already limited water supply.
Virginia Necochea, executive director of the Center for Social Sustainable Systems, said despite their opposition to the plan, the Contra Santolina coalition is not an anti-growth group.
“We are concerned citizens are trying to spread information about the negative impact of Santolina,” she said. “We have to prioritize our existing communities — we should come first.”
Some also attended the protest to show their concern for an op-ed piece in the Albuquerque Journal that was written by Art de la Cruz.
Commissioner de la Cruz, vice-chair of the commission that would make the final decision on the plan, wrote “Santolina development isn’t the threat opponents claim” in favor of the plan on March 23.
In it, Cruz characterized opponents of the plan — many of whom he represents — as “spreading fear” in the community. Cruz wrote that he supported the decades-spanning plan to place the community on undeveloped land, rather than allowing the owners to sell it in smaller parcels. Unplanned development would be haphazard and even more risk to the water supply, he wrote.
The Southwest Organizing Project, a non-profit advocacy group, issued a press release saying citizens are upset that Cruz wrote his opinion before hearing testimony.
In response to de la Cruz’s letter, “the New Mexico Environmental Law Center filed a request for recusal with the Bernalillo County Commission on behalf of SWOP, New Mexico Health Equity Working Group and Pajarito Village Association. This request asks that de la Cruz recuse himself or that the commission disqualify him because he is not impartial,” according to the release.
The motion stated that the commission’s hearing of the plan was a “quasi-judicial” matter, and that de la Cruz was biased. Attorney Dick Minzner, representing Western Albuquerque Land Holdings, the development company for Santolina, argued that the commission was a legislative body and that the motion did not apply. De la Cruz declined to recuse himself, and there was no motion by any other commissioner to excuse him.
Santiago Maestas, president of the South Valley Regional Association of Acequias, said because of drought conditions, farmers in the area are forced to borrow water from the city of Albuquerque just to irrigate their fields. He said farmers in the South Valley already owe more than 50,000 acre-feet of water to the city. In the past, farmers had enough water to plant a spring crop as well as a summer crop.
“Sometimes there was enough water to do a fall planting,” he said. “Now, many farms in the South Valley only get enough water for one crop a year. If Santolina goes through, there won’t even be enough water to borrow. That water will go to the subdivisions.”
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
He said that the project would take more than 47,000 acre feet of water from the acequias.
“We don’t use water to make microchips,” he said. “We use it to grow food to feed our children, and that’s the highest value.”
Sayrah Namaste, a staff member at the New Mexico chapter of the American Friends Service Committee, said that allied activists hand-delivered a letter to the London office of Barclays Bank asking the corporation to halt the plan. Other activists delivered another copy of the letter to Barclays’ Chicago office.
This is not the first time such a plan was suggested. In 2006, a similar plan would have approved the development of the SunCal project. The proposal was defeated and the company owning the land was sued in 2010 for non-payment of loans. The land is now owned by Barclays Bank, a multi-national corporation based in London.
The project includes a planned residential community that would cover nearly 13,700 acres — about 22 square miles — on Albuquerque’s west side.
At press time, the commission had not reached a decision but will meet Thursday at 9 a.m. to continue.
Steve “Mo” Fye is a copy editor at the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo.
