Time for Taos County to withdraw from regional coalition

The Regional Coalition of LANL Communities , to which Taos town and county are members since 2012, has not received any responses to the recent executive director position. Now is the time for the town of Taos to withdraw from the RCLC and the coalition must be disbanded. The regional coalition was ostensibly created so that surrounding communities could have a voice in the goings-on at Los Alamos National Lab. The website even states the “RCLC is our voice” regarding LANL.

Instead, the coalition has acted as a lobbying agency for the continued production of weapons of mass destruction. The coalition has ignored every attempt by citizens to demand justification for RCLC’s existence in the pursuit of justice for New Mexicans in regard to LANL. Taoseños have, since the beginning of the coalition, opposed the statement Taos signed onto in the Joint Powers

Agreement of undying support for the production of plutonium pits for nuclear weapons. Even Santa Fe County Commissioner Anna Hansen has stated “I would like to entertain the idea of deleting ‘advocacy of long-term stable funding of LANL missions’ since LANL’s mission is 70 percent weapons-related”… “It seems to me that that would be possibly a point that we are supporting weapons production.”

The “advocacy” statement in the joint powers agreement does not represent the citizens of New Mexico. It may represent the very few Taos employees at LANL, but not our communities who are exposed to radioactive toxins unknowingly as well as the severe economic drain on our communities by the lab. (Los Alamos County median income being near the highest in the nation while child poverty in New Mexico is the second highest in the nation.) What Taoseños want is protection from the massive nuclear legacy pollution that we must all continue to live with, especially with the continuing fires and smoke in our direction. LANL is not serving our needs, or anyone’s, by producing more nuclear weapons.

It is appalling that the first RCLC meeting of 2021 is to be held on the very day the United Nations Treaty on the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons begins in force. Appalling. Holding a coalition meeting on this day demonstrates blatant, arrogant disregard for New Mexicans and the people of the world. Some 122 nations signed onto the treaty that declares that the countries ratifying it must “never under any circumstance develop, test, produce, manufacture or otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” Meanwhile, LANL is planning for “modernization” of it’s nuclear arsenal to the tune of $3.68 billion in 2021, 79 percent of which goes to nuclear weapons pit production. Commissioners, councilors can’t you see the writing on the wall?

The RCLC has been a sham organization from the beginning, never listening to or answering to the stated objections of local communities who it claims to represent. I, personally, have testified numerous times before this coalition. Never once has anyone addressed a single public question or comment. The public comment period on the meeting agenda is just that … just comments, not to be addressed in any way. The RCLC is a sham organization, originated by the fraudulent Energy Communities Alliance whose mission is to co-opt local communities to support LANL’s nuclear bomb production mission and to cheaply, quickly and ineffectually “clean up” afterwards by disempowering, indeed co-opting, communities who want guarantees of clean air, water and soil. As at Rocky Flats, the alliance facilitated the transfer of contaminated lands to the public with no accountability by the corporations that made billions off the people’s backs and permanently polluted the landscape. Please name one thing that LANL has done for the public good. Nuclear weapons can never be used. Instead, the local population is being used, sickened and discarded. With 23,000 U.S. nuclear weapons (over 20,000 in Amarillo, 2500 underground in Albuquerque and 900 on hair-trigger alert), how can Taos representatives continue to participate in this travesty?

RCLC’s executive director reported, “we have received information that an (Inspector General) investigation into the internal handling of the grant process is underway.” The ‘grant process’ refers to the $100,000 that the Department of Engery grants the RCLC annually to lobby Congress for more funding for Los Alamos, which is a Department of Energy site. This is illegal. DOE cannot use taxpayer money to lobby congress for monies for their own operations. Taos Counselors/Commissioners are complicit in this. The coalition has also received about $197,000 a year in taxpayers’ money. That’s $1,773,000 over the past 9 years. It’s time for Taos to withdraw from the RCLC. Disband the RCLC.