Say goodbye to Taos Valley as we know it

If Taos allows expansion of the airport, you can kiss goodbye the serenity, the water, the peaceful skies and the dark skies. Forever.

Have you been paying attention to the reality of our water situation? As an acequia parciente struggling to sustain native grasses on my land, I am extremely concerned.

To even think about proceeding without a new or supplemental environmental impact statement illustrates a telltale lack of forethought and concern. Historic precedent instructs time and again the dangers of overuse of a fragile entity, a delicate economy, or ecosystem — like a high desert plain. Perhaps you’ve heard of The Dusters who plowed up the prairie year after year, ignoring calls for restraint, ignoring the sound science of sustainable land management. And yes, they did know about it. They had explicit information from FDR’s agronomist Hugh Hammond Bennett, yet failed to heed the warnings.

The question is, what is in the best interest of Taos Valley and Taoseños?

Perhaps in the recent past, you, like me, have spoken to a neighbor whose well has run dry, or whose house was foreclosed on when the system collapsed at the end of the 2000s. Speculators, capitalizing on their pain, subsequently eliminated affordable housing in the valley.

Perhaps you are a descendent of the original residents of this place upon whose bodies and minds genocide was perpetrated — and/or whose land was pillaged with ongoing state-enforced and public-sanctioned impunity. How does airport expansion serve people whose lives don’t depend on gallery openings or ski valley wine festivals, or the majority who live here?

Just as Taos Ski Valley Inc.’s renovation has fueled an influx of newcomers, the airport expansion will further burden limited and diminishing resources by drawing greater numbers of people who like the ease of getting here — but who have no concept of what it takes to maintain the integrity of the natural resources, the land and the heritage of the place. Taos Air, Bacon, Norden, et al. don’t care a whit that desertification is a creeping certainty. They’re here now, ready to exploit the land and the people. When they’re done, they’ll take the money and run — what George Monbiat calls the “boom-bust-quit cycle” of capitalism.

Its playbook calls for the wooing (bedazzling) of local politicos. It calls for ensuring a vote against one’s own interest by way of chimerical promises amounting to 21st century snake oil: Cheap kiddie lift passes (the Blakes let local kids ski free or cheap since TSV’s inception). “B” is still a corporation with a single raison d’etre. The perennial prevarications of “jobs/growth” are spouted as if synonymous with “sustainable jobs/desirable growth” but ring hollow, in my opinion.

We know what is needed for sustainable job creation — and it’s not wooing more rich part-time residents, who artificially jacking up property values to further limit affordability for the majority.

Press releases to the local newspaper with fanciful stories of ‘flying lessons’ and ‘ski extreme’ events (as if all kids could afford the equipment to attend them or parents the luxury of time off subsistence jobs) to fly around in private planes, shred the mountain like little pros? Get real! History is replete with victims of such charlatanism.

Taos has always been exceptional. If we fail to heed the lessons of history, if we fail to stop airport expansion, if we allow the few to compromise the wellbeing of the many, we might as well kiss Taos Valley as we know it goodbye. Maybe we’ll do it from the back seat of a 2022 “Compact SUV” Volkswagen Taos. Nothing says we care about the land and the people more, right?