La Jicarita News - Community Advocacy for Northern New Mexico

After many months of negotiations and delays, the City of Santa Fe finally gave the go ahead to La Montaña de Truchas, the community forestry group that was awarded the Santa Fe Watershed restoration contract, to begin the thinning and removal of trees on 50 watershed acres. In the wake of last year's catastrophic fires, the city watershed has been designated by the Forest Service as one of the top priority wildland/urban interface sites in the country.

Steep canyon slopes above McClure Reservoir

La Jicarita News recently accompanied Max Córdova, of La Montaña, and Dave Henderson, of the Audubon Society, on a tour of the restoration site. The watershed is at the top of Canyon Road, where Santa Fe's two supply reservoirs, Nichols and McClure, collect water from the surrounding steep mountain slopes. The restoration site owned by the city consists of lands immediately adjacent to the reservoirs, surrounded by national forest.

The watershed has been closed to public access, resource extraction, and all natural and man-made fires have been suppressed since 1932. As a result, the area is badly overgrown with densely stocked, thin-diameter trees and doghair thickets. Córdova estimates that in the area where they are working there are 550 to 750 trees per acre, which they hope to reduce to around 220 trees per acre. He pointed out that the build-up of understory forest fuels (ladder fuels) could lead to a crown fire like the one that devastated Los Alamos. The area, which is approximately 8,000 feet in elevation, is covered with stands of ponderosa pine and mixed conifer. The La Montaña crew of six people has been thinning the area with chainsaws and snaking the trees down to the road with four-wheel all terrain vehicles. The contract stipulates that no trees larger than eight inches in diameter be cut, but allows the consulting professional forester to determine the prescription. Córdova pointed out that the cutting prescription has to be flexible in order to address site specific needs: "One formulaic prescription can't fit all."

An area thinned by La Montaña

A pile of posts ready for sale

The La Montaña crew certainly seemed to be earning its money on the difficult canyon terrain. Because of the steep canyon slopes the city reduced the original contract from 400 acres to the current 50 until it can determine a safe and effective way of treating slopes over 40% in grade (which includes most of the watershed acreage). The crew is working on slopes primarily 30 to 40% in grade, which makes the work slower and more difficult than a normal thinning operation. The city is paying $835 an acre for thinning and removal of the trees. There has been some controversy about the cost of this project, but Córdova points out that Forest Service projected estimates of $560 per acre cover only felling the trees and not their removal. He estimates that La Montaña's costs are $390 per acre for the thinning, and the remainder of the cost covers removal - chipping or removing the trees from the site. He also points out that the cost of the restoration work should be weighed against the potential costs of a catastrophic fire in the area.

La Montaña is removing all usable resources for sale as latillas, posts, and firewood. The ponderosa provides the firewood while the fir will provide the value-added latillas and posts. The contract stipulates that the Santa Fe based non-profit Open Hands receives 25% of the firewood. Because access on the narrow, winding road into the canyon is limited and safety is a key factor, La Montaña has agreed to haul only two or three truckloads of wood per day from the canyon. They are storing much of the resource on site, which they hope to sell directly to contractors and the general public. Córdova says they have already sold 400 latillas to a local contractor. All the remaining slash will be chipped or hauled to the dump.

Last summer the Forest Service, using prison labor, thinned 10 acres of federal land in the watershed as a pilot project. La Jicarita observed that in the burned area there was not good consumption of fuels on the ground and that many of the leave trees were severely scorched. Córdova suggested that if prescribed burning was going to be effective, communities should have access to the wood products and only the slash should be burned. In a subsequent conversation with Española District Ranger John Miera, he agreed with Córdova but said that the Forest Service was under constraints regarding access into the watershed to remove the wood.

The Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the approximately 17,000 federal watershed acres is due out in September. Comments submitted during the scoping process ranged from those of John Buchser, who suggested that mechanized cutting "would more quickly alleviate the threat of flooding in downtown Santa Fe by preventing a fire that strips the upper canyon of vegetation", to those of Sam Hitt, who suggested that vegetable oil-lubricated, photovoltaic-powered electric chainsaws should be used to reduce noise and petroleum pollution.

While Hitt's public comments reflect the reticence of some environmental groups to support restroration projects both in the watershed and throughout northern New Mexico, Dave Henderson, Executive Director of the Audubon Society, told La Jicarta that his group fully supports La Montaña's efforts to restore the Santa Fe Watershed to a healthier, more fire-resistent environment.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Ecoversity: On-Line Campus/

Land-Based Learning

EcoVersity recently opened its doors in Santa Fe. The 13-acre campus on Agua Fria is "designed as a seed bed for learning, researching, and modeling the full range of sustainable systems - systems which students can themselves transfer to other lands and communities." The curriculum focuses on cultural and biological diversity, providing hands-on learning for the revitalization of the Upper Rio Grande Bioregion and beyond. Fields of Inquiry are Agriculture; Ecology/Natural Systems; Appropriate Technology; Environmental/Outdoor Education; Leadership Skills; Earth Wisdom Studies; and Environmental Policy.

Non-credit courses offered this fall include: Passive Solar Design; Ecological Design; Writing the World Inside Out; Coming From Somewhere: Reinhabiting Place; Preserving Your Harvest; Building Multicultural Relationships; Community Collaboration for Environmental Change; and Art as Catalyst for Social Change. A degree program is proposed for June. Instructors include: Fiz Harwood, Merida Blanco, Cathy Sanchez, Antonio López, Paige Grant, Suzanne Richmond, and others.

For a catalog or more information you may contact EcoVersity by phone: 505 424-9797; by e-mail: dean@ecoversity.org; by mail: EcoVersity, 2639 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, NM 87505; or on the internet: www.ecoversity.org.

Editorial: Adding Insult to Injury

By Mark Schiller

By now most of us who live in rural New Mexico are painfully aware of Forest Guardians' (FG) bottom line agenda for public lands: no tree cutting, no grazing and now no people except those anointed by Sam Hitt. But what really continues to amaze me about these guys is the spin they try to put on their actions in the hope of making them acceptable to the general public. Despite the enormous negative effects their lawsuits and appeals have had upon some of the poorest, most disenfranchised people in the country they continue to try to promote themselves as the heirs to the civil rights movement and the beleaguered and lonely inhabitants of the "high moral ground."

Recently Susan Tixier, the latest executive director of FG, wrote an op-ed piece in one of our daily newspapers claiming that "We [FG] speak for those who cannot speak for themselves." While this kind of ridiculous posturing is reminiscent of Nixon's "Silent Majority", what I found even more disturbing was her dismissal of "local folks" as "minor players in the big public lands picture [who] do not speak on behalf of the land." She went on to say "it's a national issue and the American public, who exist today and those unborn, are [the] key players."

How did she arrive at these conclusions? First, FG takes the position that all resource extraction, regardless of scale, sustainability, or how it might contribute to the overall health of the land and adjacent communities, negatively impacts public lands and wildlife habitat. Therefore "local people" are just another"special interest" group who only want to selfishly exploit the land for short term gain and have no sense of stewardship. Second, FG uses hollow plebiscites such as the Sierra Club's no logging referendum which represents less than 10% of the club's 700,000 total membership (most of whom have no idea what's actually happening on the ground in New Mexico), which in turn represents less than .025 % of the general population, to claim that they speak for the American public, the land itself, and yes, even the unborn.

This kind of presumption and arrogance is bad enough, but she goes on to add insult to injury by saying "Forest Guardians modestly (emphasis mine) recommends on their behalf " (those who cannot speak for themselves) "that no harm be done when making decisions regarding our public lands." FG has never demonstrated the slightest bit of "modesty" in filing one appeal and lawsuit after another without seriously considering the irreparable "harm" their actions are having on the economies and social fabric of our rural communities or on the vast tracts of public lands which are completely overgrown and pose a catastrophic fire hazard. Nor have they made an attempt to include rural communities at the negotiating table when decisions, which unquestionably affect them to a much greater extent than the American public at large, are being made. The only FG's lawsuit, to my knowledge, in which a rural community was able to intervene on its own behalf (and then only because of the generosity of a prominent Santa Fe civil rights lawyer), the La Manga timber sale, resulted in a decision which denied FG's appeal and supported the community's right to 75% of the sale. Moreover, the Indo-Hispano and Native American people of New Mexico have a history of stewardship that predates FG by a few centuries. They are economically, socially, and spiritually dependent on the sustainable use of natural resources and know the land intimately. Why on earth would they exploit resources they hold sacred and want their unborn children to inherit and continue to use sustainably?

Ironically, at the same time that Tixier is trying to minimize the importance of input from local farmers, ranchers, and foresters on public lands decision-making, Sam Hitt, former executive director of FG and current board member, is trying to organize Santa Fe recreationists into an exclusive 500 member club to do volunteer work, hike, view wildlife, and cross country ski in the Santa Fe Watershed. The watershed has been closed to public entry since 1932, but Hitt claims through this program "citizens would gain a sense of ownership and appreciation of these unique wildlands in our backyard." So on the one hand FG is encouraging a sense of public lands ownership from primarily white, upwardly mobile urban recreationists, while on the other hand they're trying to minimize a sense of public lands ownership from primarily poor, rural farmers, ranchers and foresters, of color. You do the math.

Finally, I want to point out that it's been my experience living and working in northern New Mexico that the people of the traditional communities are fully aware that because of previous mismanagement by the public lands bureaucracy, more stringent environmental standards must now be met. To their credit they have repeatedly voiced their willingness to merge their traditional knowledge of the land with cutting edge science to produce innovative methods that will keep all forest dependent communities - human, plant and wildlife - sustainable for the "unborn" generations to come.

Interview with Daniel Shreck, Board Member of the Abelard Foundation and Resident of Chimayó

La Jicarita: What kinds of organizations does Abelard fund?

Shreck: Abelard West, of which I'm a board member, primarily funds native communities, farm and labor organizations particularly along the border, economic infrastructure, and youth organizing. Some of the groups we've funded in the southwest include: Southwest Organizing Project, Diné Care, Tierra Wools, Tewa Women United, Malquiadora Organizing Project, the New Mexico Acequia Association, Madera Forest Products, and Youth Action.

La Jicarita: Several years ago an article in The Nation caused quite a stir in the foundation world when it compared the way "conservative" and "progressive" foundations fund their grantees. It seems that foundations that support conservative foundations provide long-term funding that essentially gives them carte blanche to do whatever is necessary to promote their projects and agendas. Whereas progressive foundations tend to micromanage by giving short-term funding for special projects rather than long-term general support.

Shreck: Foundations want to fund what's sexy and trendy at the time. For example, in 1992 when we were going through the Bicentennial, everyone wanted to fund native groups. Then in 1993 we came back with another slate of native funding and everyone said, hey, we did that in '92. Well what, the Bicentennial is over? So here in New Mexico we tried to educate the funding world, particularly the National Network of Grantmakers (NNG), by putting on a conference in 1995 to demonstrate the diversity and economic need for native funding. But what tends to happen in the funding world is that you put together a good team of people for a conference and you never hear from anybody again. That's not totally fair, I may have gotten one or two phone calls on funding in the southwest after the conference.

La Jicarita: What would you like to see these foundations do to better address the needs of native communities?

Shreck: There is a need for us to remain flexible in our funding criteria. This three year funding limit, I don't know why that's such a cast in cement type of rule among the progressive foundations. Some groups need a much longer incubation process as far as organizational development. We might need to stay with them for a period of 10 years. I had proposed to the NNG Committee on Philanthropic Reform that it would be nice for us to be able to look at each other's budgets to see when various groups were being funded so that they didn't have to go through a boom and bust cycle. Then I could say, OK, if a certain foundation is funding a group through its current cycle, we could jog our schedule to fund them the next cycle so we could get a more continuous funding program. It would almost be like a non-profit banking type system, where groups could go get interim funding between grant cycles. As to whether progressive foundations micro-manage organizations, I don't think Abelard does, but I think what happens is that foundations start relying on what I call "gurus" who are always consulted about what's going on whether they really know or not. But my biggest criticism of progressive foundations is that they are ideologically based, which means they are issue based rather than experientially based. Foundation staff need to make a series of site visits to see what the problem is and how the group is addressing it - without the gurus steering what the funders are seeing.

La Jicarita: How do you steer the foundations away from these gurus?

Shreck: One of the toughest problems is that internally everyone is at each others' throats. It's hard to build any unity. The foundations are saying, how are we supposed to fund anybody when we talk to different people and one person is saying don't trust that guy and another person says don't trust someone else and we end up not knowing who to fund. This is one of the reasons that they founded the Southwest Assessment Project to analyze what could be funded effectively in New Mexico. It was funded by some of the NNG groups who attended the conference in 1995 and was run out of the Tides Center. But Tides Foundation, although they have a pretty good staff, is an example of a foundation that likes to fund groups that they consider safe, like Forest Trust. I think they need to get off what I call Santa Fe Island and get into the communities. It seems like it's easier for them to rely on an intelligence source to tell them what's going on so they don't have to do all the legwork to go find out. But unless you can rely on someone who lives in the community, it's hard to know if you're getting good information. I know that not everyone has the opportunity, like I've had, to move to a community like Chimayó and spend 20 years learning about what's going on.

La Jicarita: Are local foundations more knowledgeable about and responsive to what's going on in New Mexico?

Shreck: I did find it very difficult to work with the Northern New Mexico Grantmakers Association, based in Santa Fe. They were focused on the educaional system in Santa Fe, and that's important, but they weren't particularly interested in what was going on outside of Santa Fe. There are a couple of people with these foundations who have shown interest in the land-based communities of northern New Mexico, but I wish they would make a better effort at listening to what the communities have to say rather than telling them what they think. For instance, I was present when one foundation staff person was complaining to the progressive leaders of Rio Arriba County like Lorenzo Valdez and Moises Morales about how much trouble he was having working with the corrupt regime on educational issues without actually realizing who he was talking to. These are the guys who have worked so hard to diffuse all the administrative time bombs left by the previous administration. I think another problem getting things done on the ground in New Mexico is that everybody is arguing over who's going to get the credit for an initiative. In doing so you lose the idea of the objective. That, on a microcosmic level, relates to what's happening in the foundation world on a macrocosmic level. Rather than arguing about who's going to be the political big cheese and be seen by the foundations as the one who has the final word about what's going on in New Mexico, we need to build something cooperatively. This seems to plague almost every movement or organization I've been involved with, when they get a leader who doesn't brook any opposition and is always calling the shots, not allowing the democratic process to occur. For example, some of these groups are being held hostage to a legislative agenda at the expense of community organizing. Go back and organize in the communities and raise money from the membership rather than be dependent on funders, who can micromanage with the implicit threat, if we give you money you have to follow our ideological agenda or we won't fund you anymore. A lot of these groups are putting the cart before the horse. You need to have the organizational structure, like a council or congreso, to ensure the democratic process where the council, instead of a board, is elected by the membership. Then you can create a fund-raising arm and get a 501c3.

La Jicarita: How do you think foundation funding could be used more effectively?

set up cooperativas in the villages, to build up the land-based economy. This has come up in the Land Grant Forum where we've discussed the idea of joint use administration, which stops the argument for a moment over who owns the land and talks about how we can jointly administer it so that land grant management can start to be in place. We could then share the federal tax payments that currently go to the counties. I think we need to go back to the drawing board and raise the money ourselves to study the land claims. While I think it's OK for the Lands Claims Commission study to proceed, we don't need a land claims compensation package to re-deed the land back to the land grants, which means we would be recognizing US sovereignty over those lands. It means, in a sense, accepting US title company deeding back those lands to the land grants. The report would prove that the land grants already own the land and we could start to manage it. Land grant activist Pedro Archuleta's main point is that land grant sovereignty is based on use right. We own it because we're the ones who have been exercising traditional use of it, which is 90% of the law. That's the basis upon which common lands are established. Robin Hood was right. He himself was landed gentry who recognized the legitimacy of the land based cause and went into Sherwood Forest to defend the commons.

La Jicarita: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Shreck: Basically, foundations want to fund whatever they don't get in trouble for. Let me give you my stock line on what foundations are really up to. They are basically taking the unpaid wages of labor for a tax break and getting the social prestige for giving that money away. Everyone knows that the great fortunes were built on the backs of labor and land-based communities. It's hard for me to see why the environmentalists can't understand that the public land treasury was built up through the condemnation of the native commons. We need to have an active commons in this country to protect the environment. You have to have some kind of dynamic interchange with nature. You can't just go out into a retreat and recreate your urban pressure away on the backs of native and traditional people who need to use that land for their livelihood. Every time I see a golf course, I say, that's where we used to live. Again, I think it just gets back to the issue of who is going to control the process. I think even the zero cut people realize that something has to be done or the whole forest is going to burn down. But it's only going to be done on their say so. You see that in the movement, too, with the gurus of New Mexico calling the shots, saying how the foundation money is going to be spent and unless it goes through us it's not going to happen. And foundations say, unless we're going to authorize the money to the people who are going to cover our back, it's not going to happen. Which gets me to my overall strategy. The best way to get through to the foundation world is what I call the Trojan Horse social strategy, which is to get invited to one of their parties. We don't even have to talk movement agenda to them, just getting invited is enough so that they're tacitly acknowledging the work that we're doing. So once they know you it's a lot harder for them to repudiate you because then they'd have to admit that they'd made a social mistake. And that is what they are most loathe to do.

Interview with Daniel Shreck, Board Member of the Abelard Foundation and Resident of Chimayó

La Jicarita: What kinds of organizations does Abelard fund?

La Jicarita: What would you like to see these foundations do to better address the needs of native communities?

La Jicarita: How do you steer the foundations away from these gurus?

La Jicarita: Are local foundations more knowledgeable about and responsive to what's going on in New Mexico?

La Jicarita: How do you think foundation funding could be used more effectively?

Shreck: Abelard did do some seed funding in the form of a capital grant for a community group in California to help them set aside capital either for their own trust fund or economic development project. The goal is to help them become autonomous by being able to establish their own development programs and associated businesses. Start building up an equity kitty to set up cooperativas in the villages, to build up the land-based economy. This has come up in the Land Grant Forum where we've discussed the idea of joint use administration, which stops the argument for a moment over who owns the land and talks about how we can jointly administer it so that land grant management can start to be in place. We could then share the federal tax payments that currently go to the counties. I think we need to go back to the drawing board and raise the money ourselves to study the land claims. While I think it's OK for the Lands Claims Commission study to proceed, we don't need a land claims compensation package to re-deed the land back to the land grants, which means we would be recognizing US sovereignty over those lands. It means, in a sense, accepting US title company deeding back those lands to the land grants. The report would prove that the land grants already own the land and we could start to manage it. Land grant activist Pedro Archuleta's main point is that land grant sovereignty is based on use right. We own it because we're the ones who have been exercising traditional use of it, which is 90% of the law. That's the basis upon which common lands are established. Robin Hood was right. He himself was landed gentry who recognized the legitimacy of the land based cause and went into Sherwood Forest to defend the commons.

La Jicarita: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Editorial: Do We Really Need the 69K Transmission Line from Talpa to Peñasco?

By Kay Matthews

Since 1999 the Forest Service has been developing a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for Kit Carson Electric Cooperative's (KCEC) proposed 69K (kilovolt) and fiber optic system transmission line from Talpa to Peñasco. The Forest Service is responsible for how and where the transmission line will be constructed on national forest lands, while KCEC will negotiate with private landowners and Picuris Pueblo over the construction of the line on these lands.

The recently released DEIS proposes 6 alternatives. Alternative A is the No Action Alternative required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process, meaning the line would be left as is at 25K. Alternative B is the "Proposed Action," which routes the line through Miranda Canyon to Telephone Canyon Ridge, the shortest distance between the Talpa substation and the delivery point in Peñasco on the least amount of private land. Alternative C is the Forest Service Preferred Alternative, which for the most part leaves the proposed line within the existing corridor. Alternatives D, E, and F are variations of Alternatives B and C.

During the scoping process many citizens were opposed to establishing any new transmission line corridors to avoid disturbance of soils, water resources, and wildlife. Of particular concern is the Miranda Canyon area, where a goshawk nesting site was discovered during the scoping process. The Forest Service Preferred Alternative C is in response to these concerns. The line does, however, leave the existing route to avoid some wetlands and to satisfy requests from Picuris and Taos Pueblos that the line be placed on the west side of SH 518 to avoid archeological and cultural sites at Pot Creek. But there are some unhappy homeowners on this west side of the highway where the proposed line - carrying almost three times the present amount of electricity - would pass directly in front of their houses. The poles would rise to a height of approximately 45 feet. After a meeting with area residents who expressed their outrage that "[the Forest Service] would rather disturb living, breathing human beings that pay taxes than some dirt owned by the government", representatives of KCEC said they would meet with the Pueblos to discuss the residents' concerns.

But there are some folks who think the discussions over various routes are academic at best, as they don't buy into the argument that an increase in voltage is necessary. They question the claim by both KCEC and the Forest Service that current power demands exceed capacity of the line. In a letter mailed to KCEC members in August, the executive officer states that recent outages were due to "some minor glitches" in the new electronics that have been installed, and are currently being corrected as the system is upgraded. The Forest Service DEIS does not include any information that verifies which of the cited 26 outages that occurred over the past two years are due to inadequate line capacity and which are due to these "glitches." The inadequate line capacity claim is given short shrift under the heading Need for Project: "A number of Peñasco-Vadito area residents commented that the power fluctuations and outages negatively impact their lives and the project should be implemented as soon as possible." That hardly seems justification for a project of this magnitude.

Perhaps the real issue behind the proposed line is the claim that it will "meet future needs" of the area. Just what those "future needs" might be deserves some scrutiny. Are we talking about an almost threefold increase in power to meet the demands of normal residential growth of extended family infill, or are we talking about the needs of interests that have a financial stake in growth dependent upon electricity: developed recreation, industrial development, and tourism? The Forest Service doesn't ask that question in the DEIS, but when has a federal agency ever addressed the issue that creating infrastructure to anticipate growth contributes to and determines the extent of that growth. Neither does our Congressional delegation ask this question. When Pete Domenici talks of turning rural northern New Mexico into cyber space, with sophisticated fiber optics and expanded internet service, he doesn't talk about the kinds or amount of growth this kind of infrastructure stimulates.

With no land-use plan in place, Taos County certainly has no say in what kind of growth we will see in any part of the county. Before the current commission (excluding Gabe Romero, who replaced Manuel Trujillo) took over, when Dave DiCicco headed the planning department, communities were actively engaged in developing site-specific land use plans that would define appropriate growth, allow for family lot splits, and maintain the traditional character of their neighborhoods. The current commission emasculated the planning department and scuttled the community plans, essentially disenfranchising county communities.

So who does determine "future needs?" In the recent article "Prodigal Trustees" in the Taos newspaper Horse Fly, Fabi Romero refers to the recent battle over control of the KCEC board of trustees as the "businessmen" versus the "politicians", who apparently sit on the board to collect Coop money for attending conferences. Unfortunately, some of these "politicians", both past and present board members, have pretty much controlled the Republican and Democratic party machines throughout Taos County. Some of that power was diminished after last year's successful challenge by the Democratic progressives who ousted Skit Trujillo, the long-time party chair and voice of the machine. It remains to be seen if that movement will carry over into making the soon-to-be-five county voting districts more equitable and democratic or just provide the opportunity for the old political machine to tighten its stranglehold. In which case, I imagine, a 69K transmission line will soon be in place - via one corridor or another - to facilitate the kind of growth that underwrites machine power.