Need Help with Saving CID Farms.

Woods, would you send out this information on your blog. If you want to add or edit feel free to do so. Thanks, James Walterscheid Call to Action The NM legislature has a House Energy, Environment, Natural Resources committee which is scheduled to hold a hearing on 4 bills dealing with funding for remediation of the South Y Brinewell. Rep. Cathrynn Brown is carrying all 4 bills. This hearing is scheduled for Jan. 30 at 1 pm, Tues. Last Thursday Sen. Carroll Leavell carried 5 bills in a Senate Conservation Committee hearing relating to funding for remediation of the South Y Brinewell and 4 of his bills were tabled. One was withdrawn. It appears that many legislators do not realize what the impact would be if the South Y Brinewell collapsed and resulted in a very large sinkhole causing a lot of terrific damage to the infrastructure in the area surrounding the South Y Brinewell: The farms downstream of the South Y Brinewell would not receive any irrigation water through the Carlsbad Irrigation District Main Canal for possibly up to 3 years. This would affect about 80% of the CID total district acreage. Furthermore, it could impact the underground aquifer which supplies water to underground water wells in the area. There would be quite a lot of economic losses as a result of an uncontrolled collapse. Assuming that US 285 would be shut down completely (very likely), the US 285 highway traffic would have to be rerouted for a very long time. Most of the possible detour routes are 2 lane, somewhat narrow, roads especially NM 216 (Grandi Rd. & Wood Ave.). Traffic congestion would increase astronomically. At the present traffic on US 285 (split 4 lane) is heavy at early morning hours and late in the afternoon. No one can really predict the effect of subsidence in the immediate area surrounding a resulting sinkhole in the years to come. I am asking you to call, email, or if you have the inclination, to show up at the hearings at the legislature in Santa Fe. It appears that many legislators don’t believe we have an emergency. Like Edward Rodriguez, Carlsbad City councilman, said at the Eddy County ( Emergency) Commission meeting last Saturday afternoon: “We have no control over 2 things: time and gravity. It is up to us, to educate the legislators about the Brinewell”. James Walterscheid Eddy County Commissioner – District 1 Farmer and CID member Cell #575-200-6294 County email: jwalterscheid@co.eddy.nm.us WOODS NOTES: There is a probability that if this collapses not only will it remove water supply to 80+% of CID, but it could push brine water into the shallow aquifer which would have a detrimental effect on a number of primary water wells and supplemental water wells. There is a large about of tonnage in the warehouse of various chemical compounds including KCl as well as under ground fuel tanks which would also contaminate this aquifer. The cleanup would be expensive.