NM governor, legislature working to protect High Plains Aquifer from nuclear waste

Spurred by Heather Wilson, the Republican former US Representative from New Mexico's First Congressional District, the ex-president of the South Dakota School of Mines, bygone secretary in Donald Trump's Department of the Air Force and now president of the University of Texas El Paso, a Rapid City firm specializing in toxic waste had been floating the idea of a deep borehole in South Dakota where radioactive materials could be dumped. Wilson is an erstwhile Air Force officer and lobbyist linked to double dealing at laboratories with ties to the military/industrial complex. 

Today, Democratic New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham is at odds with the US Department of Energy and Holtec International who seem to believe transporting diluted nuclear waste like plutonium over and over America's railroads and highways is completely harmless.

But Carlsbad's mayor invoked the bad old days when Wilson and a Republican former governor conspired to dump radioactive waste in Lea County. Carlsbad draws water from the High Plains or Ogallala Aquifer. 

Gov. Lujan Grisham’s response comes after the Trump Organization's rollback of protections that allowed Norfolk Southern to hide what chemicals its train was carrying when it derailed in Ohio creating an environmental catastrophe, putting first responders at risk and poisoning an entire population.

“The State of New Mexico remains steadfast in its opposition to the issuance of a license by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the proposed Holtec International facility in Lea County, New Mexico,” Lujan Grisham wrote. “We therefore ask that your agency immediately suspend any further consideration of the Holtec license application.” [Bill in-hand, Lujan Grisham renews fight against nuclear waste site in southeast New Mexico]

A nuclear waste dump would make southeast New Mexico a sacrifice zone that amounts to “nuclear colonialism," according to Leona Morgan, a Diné woman and organizer with the Nuclear Issues Study Group.