Nowhere to go but up for Environment Dept.

We can hope that new chief will enforce laws and retain public-participation rules

Recent publicity about the Martinez administration’s favors to Helena Chemical Co. exposes just how submissive Gov. Susana Martinez and former Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn have been to polluting industries/campaign contributors. But anyone who’s worked with Flynn on developing safeguards for our drinking water or air already knew that.

Now Flynn has found a more appropriate position working at the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association. Almost any new Environment boss would be an improvement; given Flynn’s plundering of air and water protections at the behest of polluting industries and his ability to charm those he wants something from, including too many legislators.

For example, remember the time Flynn discarded his own technical team’s draft of a rule to protect our drinking water from copper mining contamination? What did he submit instead to the Water Quality Control Commission? A list with every single change to the draft requested by copper mining giant Freeport-McMoRan.

The original draft was developed during a monthslong process that included industry representatives, technical experts, community members and environmentalists. The rule Flynn replaced it with expressly allows copper mines to contaminate groundwater — which his own staff told him would violate the Water Quality Act.

Then there’s the time Flynn stopped enforcing the Dairy Rule, which is supposed to protect our drinking water from the thousands of gallons of untreated waste that the average New Mexico industrial dairy produces each day. All that waste — a typical dairy dumps the same amount as a midsize city — was going unregulated and unmonitored because the dairy industry wanted to weaken the rule, and Flynn was facilitating their success.

Flynn’s parting shot is an attempt to destroy public-participation requirements for groundwater proceedings.

Now, Martinez named longtime Environment Department employee Butch Tongate to the post. He is considerably more qualified and has greater knowledge of environmental regulations and safeguards than Flynn. But he chaired the Water Quality Control Commission for the hearings that rubber-stamped Freeport-McMoRan’s Copper Rule, despite a mountain of evidence that it would weaken cleanwater protections in New Mexico. Public-records requests later found that Freeport McMoRan lawyers ghostwrote the Environment Department’s Statement of Reasons!

Tongate has an opportunity to at least enforce the weakened safeguards that are still in place and keep the current public-participation rules.

There’s room for hope, but even more room for skepticism, that our families’ water and air will be less vulnerable under the new Martinez Environment Department than under the old.

I encourage Tongate to use his experience and knowledge to “do the right thing” to protect our families’ health and New Mexico’s environment.