Environmental Working Group
Working group name/topic: EnvironmentOverarching Goals and Objective – In what ways does this topic area need to progress to achieve greater sustainability?
(e.g., Move rapidly towards creating affordable, low carbon transportation options in Santa Fe)
1. Mitigating catastrophic events, such as fires, prolonged drought, and contaminants from LANL
2. Understanding, preserving, and supporting ecology and ecosystem services in our watersheds
3. Monitoring and preserving air quality
4. Engaging the community around environmental stewardship
5. Developing an operational vision for sustainability management in governing bodies
Overview – Background information that could provide history, recent context (facts/figures), relevance for a sustainable community, strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats (SWOT) analysis.
(Text in many of these background sections seems to be drawn from existing documents, and should be properly cited)
MITIGATING CATASTROPHIC EVENTS
Fireshed Management
The Greater Santa Fe Fireshed is an area of concern for the City of Santa Fe, Santa Fe County, the Pueblo of Tesuque, the Santa Fe National Forest, the communities within and adjacent to its boundary, those who recreate and enjoy this majestic landscape, and the tourism and ecotourism economies that benefit from it. Forest, fire and water managers agree that after more than a century of fire suppression this area is at great risk to high-severity wildfire. Such an event would not only negatively affect the forested areas for decades, it could endanger a major portion of Santa Fe’s water supply by removing the forests that retain the snowpack, and release post-fire debris and sediment flows into the city’s two reservoirs. Post-fire erosion and flooding could endanger the public, damage homes, road infrastructure, and restrict access to the Santa Fe Ski Basin, a major economic driver in the community.
Released in 2014, the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy was developed by federal, state, tribal and local government representatives as well as stakeholders. The Strategy calls on land managers to work collaboratively across boundaries and use the best science to: 1) safely and effectively respond to wildfire; 2) restore and maintain fire resilient landscapes, and 3) promote fire-adapted communities.
In December 2015 the New Mexico State Forester Tony Delfin and the City of Santa Fe Fire Chief Erik Litzenberg convened a meeting of municipal, county, state, federal, and non-profit partners to discuss the Santa Fe Fireshed. In January 2016, the Santa Fe City Council adopted the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Resolution. In February 2016 the Santa Fe Board of County Commissioners adopted a Greater Santa Fe Fireshed resolution as well.
The Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition is comprised of organizations and individuals who are working to improve the ecological condition of the area through the development and implementation of the Resilience Strategy. The Resilience Strategy will create an agreed upon foundation for the Coalition members to anchor and guide their work. The Coalition includes (groups can be added as support grows):
· New Mexico State Forestry
· Pueblo of Tesuque
· Santa Fe Watershed Association
· City of Santa Fe Fire Department
· City of Santa Fe Water Division
· Santa Fe County
· Santa Fe National Forest: Espanola and Pecos Ranger Districts
· Region 3 of the USDA Forest Service
· The Nature Conservancy
· The Forest Stewards Guild
· Wildfire Network
· Santa Fe – Pojoaque Soil and Water Conservation District
· Natural Resource Conservation Service
· New Mexico Forest Industry Association
· USGS Jemez Mountain Field Station
· New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute
The Coalition has identified values in the Fireshed that could be affected by fire and post-fire events. Specifically, traditional cultural landscape uses by the Pueblo of Tesuque including:
· Irrigation for agriculture.
· Hunting as a traditional use.
· Forest products for ceremonial purposes.
· Other traditional uses.
· Maintain acequias and water used for agricultural irrigation, particularly for indigenous and traditional communities.
· Healthy forests and watersheds that support biological diversity, by ensuring habitat for wildlife and resilient plant communities
· Maintain economic vitality of the Santa Fe area economy as it relates to water availability, real estate, recreation, tourism, and other ecosystem services that are at-risk from wildfire.
· Conserve water resources that are vital to communities and their long-term sustainability.
· Consider roadless characteristics when developing management plans.
Furthermore, the Coalition has identified additional social goals. These are to increase public understanding and acceptance of:
· The ecological role of smoke in understory diversity.
· Wildfire as a natural process.
· Wildfire, fire adapted ecosystems, and land management options and techniques.
LANL Cleanup
Nuclear weapons research and production at LANL have released radioactive and hazardous contaminants into the Rio Grande and the Espanola Basin Aquifer, designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as a Sole Source Aquifer.
LANL’s radioactive and toxic wastes are located as close as eighteen miles from the Santa Fe Plaza, five miles from the City’s Buckman Well Field and threaten the Buckman Diversion Project on the Rio Grande during storm events, which together provides two-thirds of Santa Fe’s drinking water. These radioactive and toxic wastes are buried in unlined pits and shafts, in contrast to the composite liners and leachate collection systems that the New Mexico Environment Department requires of all local governments.
Labs plan for cleaning contaminants is primarily cap and cover. There are currently 55-60 aquifer level groundwater monitoring wells, 60-70 mid-level monitoring wells, spread across 40 square mile property. Materials prior to the 1970s is unknown and uncharacterized. The monitoring wells will only detect water soluble materials (perchlorate, tritium, etc.) but not necessarily non-soluble materials (plutonium) unless they happen to pass through the monitoring well. The well testing results are available but not easily accessible, and tests indicate that water soluble contaminants, such as plutonium, are in the water table. LANL takes samples at Buckman well field annually or biannually. There is no water sampling done by the city that would reveal presence of radioactive wastes (many of which are heavy and precipitate out into the mud). It might be more effective to find DOE funding to test surface water from storm events.
The New Mexico Environment Department recently signed a revised Consent Order governing cleanup at LANL that is a giveaway to the Department of Energy (DOE) because it lacks enforceability. It should be overturned once a new governor is in office.
Directly linked to the new Consent Order, DOE has announced that the cost of “Remaining Legacy Cleanup” of radioactive and toxic wastes from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) will cost from $2.9 billion up to $3.8 billion through fiscal year 2035 (way too low). For comparison, the Lab spends around $1.5 billion PER YEAR on nuclear weapons activities.
That “cleanup” cost estimate clearly assumes that the Lab’s major radioactive and toxic wastes dumps will not be cleaned up. Instead they will be “capped and covered,” leaving some 200,000 cubic yards of radioactive and toxic wastes at Area G, its largest waste dump. Those wastes sit in unlined pits and trenches, 800 feet above groundwater and three miles uphill from the Rio Grande (plutonium contaminants have been detected 200 feet below Area G).
ECOLOGY AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES IN OUR WATERSHEDS
Watershed Management
· The Santa Fe River Watershed is 285 square miles – from Lake Peak (12,408’) in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the confluence with the Rio Grande at Cochiti (5,220’).
· 10% of this area (17,400 acres) lies above the City of Santa Fe, primarily within the Santa Fe National Forest.
· At Lake Peak, precipitation averages 35 inches/year; at Santa Fe 14 inches/year; at Cochiti 10 inches/year.
· The Santa Fe River is 46 miles long.
· The reach from Santa Fe Lake to Nichols Dam is roughly 10 miles.
· The Santa Fe River was first dammed in 1881. The Old Stone Dam filled with silt during a flash flood in the fall of 1904. It is now within the 188-acre Santa Fe Canyon Preserve, managed by The Nature Conservancy and open to the public (but not to dogs).
· The stream gauge below McClure Reservoir has recorded annual flows as exceptionally high as 19,000 acre feet (in 1919) and as low as 1,530 (1950).
Descriptions of Santa Fe by 17th, 18th, and 19th-century European visitors refer to the Santa Fe River as a trout stream, and Santa Feans now in their forties and younger recall fishing in (and skating on) the river. According to the hydrographic survey of 1914, the flow of the river at that time was diverted by at least 38 ditches to irrigate 1,267 acres at an average application rate of 4.5 acre-feet per acre, for a total of 5,701 acre-feet. The furthest upstream irrigated fields were in the area now occupied by the City’s McClure Reservoir; the furthest downstream were farms in La Bajada that are still under acequia-fed irrigation. This amount of irrigation argues that there was generally sufficient flow in the river throughout that long reach, to warrant the effort to divert it.
The regular dewatering of the Santa Fe River seems to have begun in the late 1940s, when water demand in the City began to approach the supply available from the reservoirs above town. Five wells were installed near the Santa Fe River; they supplied 68% of the City’s drinking water in 1951, and from that point forward served as an important supplemental water source, and occasionally (until the Buckman well field was brought on line in 1972) the major source for the City. In addition to the City’s riverside wells, there has been a tremendous proliferation of domestic and other permitted wells within the Santa Fe watershed.
The Santa Fe Watershed Association contracted with the Model Forest Policy Program to develop a climate adaptation plan through their Climate Solutions University planning process. A team of experts from the greater Santa Fe community worked with CSU to develop this plan that was release initially in December 2013. Content from the plan include text below:
Stormwater- With the development of Santa Fe over the past four centuries, land within the watershed has undergone a shift to increased percentages of pavement and structures that have reduced the water absorption capacity of the land and increased the speed and volume of runoff during rainfall events. This, in turn, has reduced groundwater recharge rates and increased the erosion of our arroyos and riverbeds. Even a slight increase in impervious surfaces can greatly affect water quality. Natural environments filter water, slow drainage and store water in the ground. Urban environments encourage faster runoff that can wash away topsoil, degrade arroyos, channelize rivers and wash pollutants directly into streams and rivers. Effects of this can be seen throughout the watershed and would be best addressed through both active and passive rainwater harvesting systems that reduce the rate of flow and encourage water to soak into the ground. Such techniques have multiple benefits for the overall health of the watershed including the recharge of groundwater supplies, the natural filtration and purification of water, the increase of soil moisture to support stabilizing vegetation, a reduction in soil loss and arroyo/river degradation, and a reduction in the amount of potable water used for outdoor irrigation.
Current efforts are underway to increase the permeability of some pavement and to direct stormwater flows to infiltration basins where it can slowly soak into the ground and irrigate nearby vegetation. Such strategies reduce the overall storm water flows that rush into arroyos and riverbeds and cause excessive erosion. Simultaneously, these basins irrigate road-side vegetation and filter contaminants from stormwater, thereby reducing the irrigation needs and improving stormwater quality.
Arroyos - Arroyos are one of the most important (and typically overlooked) landscapes in the Santa Fe Watershed. These tributaries hold an important key to a future of water security as storm water harvesting and infiltration areas. Typically dry except during rain events, they are subject to flooding and erosion during intense rainfall. The potential for slowing down this rain water, spreading it out across the arroyo landscape, and encouraging infiltration for recharge of the more surface aquifers, is a recent area of development toward progressive water management.
In 2012, the Santa Fe Watershed Association conducted an assessment of the ten major arroyo systems to determine their health and where immediate action is needed. Many high-priority reaches require well-designed restorative actions to help stabilize, protect, and secure the infrastructure that runs through them. In 2012, a general obligation (GO) bond was passed to fund a $2 Million arroyo restoration project. While this project will help build a few demonstration sites that showcase the potential for green infrastructure, it is the small tip of a very large iceberg. We have hundreds of miles of arroyos in the Watershed, thus, the scope of restoration needed is much greater and will likely require millions of dollars and a long-term maintenance strategy to fully remedy. Below is a map of the areas to be addressed with the GO Bond Arroyo Maintenance Project. While the GO Bond will fund this initial pilot project, a long-term financing system is needed to restore and maintain these fragile ecosystems.
Wetlands- Within the Santa Fe Watershed, there are three wetlands that provide critical ecosystem services and habitat for the area. Numerous bird, amphibian and mammal species dependent upon wetland vegetation will be negatively impacted unless they are maintained, improved and re-established, where possible. Generally, wetlands comprise approximately 3%-7% of a given watershed. However, in dryland areas, such as the Santa Fe Watershed, this percentage is at the lower end of, or below, this range. Both the wetlands and the arroyos would benefit greatly from increased infiltration.
MONITORING AND PRESERVING AIR QUALITY
Air pollutants are particles or gases that can negatively impact health (e.g., through direct inhalation, acid rain, or climate change). The direct impact of air pollutants on living organisms is often a function of the quantity of pollutant that is breathed in and the length of time over which they are inhaled. Common air pollutants include fine particles from dust, pollen, and incomplete fuel combustion, and common gas pollutants are NOx and SOx and ozone which typically come from fuel combustion emitted by industry and transportation. The City of Santa Fe currently has a single air quality monitor that measures particulate matter of size 2.5 microns (PM 2.5), located at the Santa Fe Municipal Airport, which is used for annual rankings. However, to better understand the quality of air in Santa Fe and it’s impacts on people, it is best to have a series of mobile monitors that can be used to measure air quality in various locations (e.g., places where there is high pedestrian/cyclying as well as automobile traffic, such as schools along traffic corridors). It can also be used to better evaluate the impact that strategically planted vegetation and trees are having on filtering out pollutants.