Valle de Oro National Urban Wildlife Refuge
Hispanic and low-income neighborhoods in Albuquerque's South Valley have suffered greatly from environmental justice, over the years. Last summer, conceptual designs and preliminary drawings - created from the imaginings of members of the community and the skills of landscape architects - were unveiled for the first national urban wildlife refuge in the southwest. Members of the community worked hard to raise support for the Refuge, located where an old dairy farm once existed. Purchase of the 570 acre site was made by the US Fish and Wild Life Service (USFWS), now managing the Refuge. In concert with the community's exciting vision, Amigos Bravos was granted the opportunity, through an EPA Urban Waters Grant, to work with schools and community members to monitor water quality in the Rio Grande, which flows alongside the Refuge.
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Valle de Oro Wetland
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In mid-October, Brian Shields, Executive Director of Amigos Bravos, along with past Amigos Bravos Middle Rio Grande Projects Director, Michael Jensen, and new Amigos Bravos Urban Waters Coordinator, Christian LeJeune, met with USFWS and Talking Talons to strategize for how best to approach working with schools on water quality monitoring. (Talking Talons works "to elevate youth and the community to become effective advocates and ethical stewards of themselves, wildlife, habitats, and the environment.") Locations for monitoring ,along the Rio Grande and at riverside drains, were determined. Amigos Bravos will also be working with Earth Force. (EF "works with communities to support young people in finding their voice while assuming leadership roles in solving local environmental problems.") Twelve to fifteen classes of elementary through high school students in the South Valley will receive training and perform water quality monitoring. We expect 25-140 students per training/monitoring trip and 20-25 trips. Amigos Bravos' aim is to gain a better understanding of impacts to water quality in the South Valley from stormwater events. We are particularly concerned about PCBs.
Amigos Bravos is looking for additional volunteers in the Albuquerque area for our water quality monitoring efforts at Valle de Oro. Interested community members will be trained to take water quality samples on a routine basis, as well as immediately following stormevents. For more information, contact Christian LeJeune: [email protected]. Please put "Volunteer, Valle de Oro" in the subject heading.
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Amigos Bravos & Communities for Clean Water
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Holding Los Alamos National Laboratory Accountable
A large part of Amigos Bravos' work over the past year has involve continued focus on stopping water contamination at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). One way we do that is through the permitting process. Permits, which both restrict and allow pollution, determine just how much pollution is acceptable. Currently, LANL is claiming that the reason they are failing to meet water quality standards at many of the 400 sites regulated under their Individual Industrial Storm Water Permit is due to pollution runoff from urban sources. In response to LANL's claim, Amigos Bravos filed a petition with EPA to require that LANL's storm water discharges be fully controlled through the issuance of a Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) permit. The MS4 permit will address more generalized pollution of urban runoff at LANL and will stop contaminants like copper, PCBs, and zinc from discharging into canyons on the Parajito Plateau and ultimately into the Rio Grande. We used LANL's own data, data they collected, to argue that a new storm water permit is required to stop polluted runoff.
Amigos Bravos, along with our partners from CCW, have been meeting with LANL, NMED, and DOE about a new Individual Industrialized Storm Water Permit. LANL needs a renewal of their permit and we are utilizing the knowledge and expertise we have developed in watchdogging the first permit to advocate for a more effective permit during this renewal process.
Meanwhile, Amigos Bravos, along with our partners from CCW (Citizens for Clean Water), has been renegotiating a groundwater discharge permit for LANL's Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facility. The permit has been in the making for over 20 years. Amigos Bravos is concerned about a number of issues, including adequate monitoring, the process by which the facility will be eventually closed down and cleaned up, and financial assurance that closure will be done correctly and the tax payer will not be left having to pay the bill. Through our negotiations, we've been able to establish the need to drill new, scientifically sound, monitoring wells - and, we've been able to secure the right for citizen participation in how the wells will be drilled, with the aim of ensuring that resulting data will be valid.
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Kachina Peak, by Brian Shields
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT
OF AMIGOS BRAVOS: BECAUSE WATER MATTERS,
PROTECTING & RESTORING NEW MEXICO'S WATERS FOR THE PAST 26 YEARS
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PLEASE CONSIDER MAKING A DONATION IN ORDER TO HELP KEEP AMIGOS BRAVOS STRONG FOR THE NEXT 26 YEARS!!!
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