ILLEGAL DUMPING TARGETED
Six miles of fencing will be installed on state trust land
State Land Office and Zia Pueblo announce an initiative to protect site with panoramic views from being used as a landfill.
The breathtaking panoramic vista of mesas and mountains off in the distance is somehow diminished when attention is focused on the ground immediately in front, which is carpeted with spent shotgun shells and bullet casings.
The carpet ends at an escarpment, where 100 feet down at the bottom of a ravine an illegal dump is lined with smashed and rusted vehicles, household appliances and furniture, and various types of garbage and hazardous waste.
The illegal dump site at the far northern end of Rainbow Boulevard, just north of Rio Rancho, sits on a parcel of state trust land that borders the Zia Pueblo.
On Monday, state Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn and Zia Pueblo Lt. Governor Jerome Lucero announced an initiative to install six miles of fencing to limit trespassing and access to the 3,526-acre site. Running mostly in an east-west direction, the barbed-wire fence will be about 5 feet tall and have wood and steel vertical supports, Lucero said.
Under a joint agreement, the Land Office is paying the $21,000 cost of the fencing material, while the pueblo will provide a labor force of seven workers at an estimated cost of $45,000 to install the fence and remove much of the trash. A memorandum of understanding will give pueblo law enforcement the jurisdiction to monitor and police the area.
The site has apparently been used for years as an illegal dump and shooting range, Dunn said. The recent decision to clean and control the area was triggered by citizen complaints and a request from Zia Pueblo offering to clean the property, he said.
“Illegal dumping poses a health and safety risk to nearby communities and has a direct impact on the revenue we are able to pass on to schools,” said Dunn. “The money spent cleaning up other people’s messes is money we can’t distribute to the school kids.”
The Land Office, which manages 9 million acres, is expected to generate about $550 million this year, Dunn explained. Of that, $100million goes into the Land Office’s operating budget, and $450 million goes into the state’s permanent fund. Public schools get 84 percent of that $450 million allocation.
Since 2015, when Dunn was elected as land commissioner, his office has spent $2.7 million on projects across 22,000 acres for the maintenance and improvement of rangeland and wildlife habitat, the remediation of forest and watershed, and the cleaning of illegal dump sites. That includes several hundred acres in southeast New Mexico, where mined-out caliche pits became illegal dumps.
“But it happens everywhere in New Mexico,” Dunn said. “Where there are big tracts of open spaces, and it is unregulated, illegal dumping occurs.”
The land north of Rio Rancho did not have “no trespassing” or “no dumping” signs posted, but it is restricted. “State trust lands are not public lands,” Dunn said. People can, however, get access to some state trust lands by purchasing a recreational permit for $35 through the Land Office.