An incredible ancient landscape is at risk

Chaco Canyon is an amazing place for hiking, stargazing, and exploring ancient pueblos that are more than a thousand years old. In fact, the pueblos in Chaco Canyon are so important they have been designated a World Heritage site. Unfortunately, oil and gas companies want to frack right outside the national park, which would threaten its sensitive environment with toxic pollution.

A cultural center could become an industrial zone

With well pads, compressors, pipelines, and hundreds of truck trips, allowing the oil and gas industry to set up shop on the doorstep of Chaco Canyon would mean turning this priceless place into an industrial zone. In 2013, the oil and gas industry proposed drilling on more than 19,000 acres near Chaco Culture National Historical Park, including plans to drill less than a quarter-mile from the park. 

We can protect Chaco Canyon, but time is running out

Chaco Canyon should be protected, not threatened by this dirty and dangerous drilling process. That’s why Environment New Mexico is calling on our decision-makers to act. Our federal officials have the opportunity to step up and keep Chaco Canyon safe from fracking. But the oil and gas industry is working to block any action.

Your activism and our advocacy are a powerful combination. Our staff have been knocking on doors across the state to educate New Mexicans about what’s at stake. We’re also lobbying in Santa Fe and Washington, D.C., educating lawmakers, and shining a spotlight in the media on the need to protect Chaco Canyon.

The real key to winning this fight is you

With your support, we can stand up to the oil and gas industry and protect this incredible place for generations to come. Sign our petition today. 

 

Fracking updates

Blog Post

Our decades-long campaign to defend the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is not over | Steve Blackledge

The Trump administration announced Monday that it will begin oil leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We've been working for decades to protect this 19 million acre wilderness, and we're not giving up now.

> Keep Reading
News Release | Environment America

Statement: House advances greenest budget in recent memory

The House Appropriations Committee approved funding for a number of important environmental programs Friday as part of the FY21 funding bill for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of the Interior (DOI). Most notably, the budget dedicates emergency funding for many of the infrastructure proposals in the Moving Forward Act (H.R.2), including $10.2 billion for the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds. Additionally, the bill blocks the administration’s attempts to: open the Tongass National Forest to logging; drill for oil in the Arctic Refuge; expand offshore drilling; weaken protections on toxic mercury and arsenic emissions; and open the Boundary Waters to toxic pollution from sulfide mining.

> Keep Reading
Report | Environment New Mexico Research and Policy Center

Dangerous and Close

Oil and gas companies are fracking near our communities, polluting our air and water, and risking the health of our children and other vulnerable populations. Fracking often is done very close to vulnerable people – infants, school children, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems – even though communities typically seek to keep industrial activities far away from facilities serving these populations, such as schools, hospitals, nursing homes and day care centers. 

> Keep Reading
Report | Environment New Mexico Research & Policy Center

Fracking by the Numbers

The combination of two technologies – hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling – has enabled the oil and gas industry to engage in an effort to unlock oil and gas in underground rock formations across the United States. “Fracking,” however, has also led to tremendous environmental harm and put the health and safety of communities across the country at risk.

> Keep Reading
News Release | Environment New Mexico Research & Policy Center

Report quantifies harm to water, land and climate from decade of dirty drilling

n a single year, fracking wells across the country released at least 5.3 billion pounds of the potent greenhouse gas methane, as much global warming pollution as 22 coal-fired power plants.

The statistic is one of many in a new study by Environment New Mexico Research & Policy Center that quantifies the environmental harm caused by more 137,000 fracking wells permitted since 2005.

> Keep Reading

Pages

View AllRSS Feed