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Las Vegas, New Mexico, Takes a Stand Against
g n Fracki 54 ecotrendsource.
Don Hamilton (2)
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By Lee Einer
hen residents found out that “big oil” companies were scouting locations to engage in fracking in both San Miguel and Mora counties, they knew they had to stop it. But residents-turned-activists found themselves stuck behind the proverbial eight-ball when they were told that they couldn’t ban hydraulic fracturing under the existing legal system. Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” as it is commonly known, is the process used by oil companies to extract shale oil, natural gas, and coalbed gas from deep underground. Most Americans likely assume that communities can ban practices that are harmful to their residences or their environment. It would seem like a given in a democratic society. So when local anti-fracking activists Miguel Pacheco and Kathleen Dudley were told by environmental law firms that they simply could not say no to fracking in the form of an outright ban on the practice in Las Vegas, NM, they Kathleen Dudley and Miguel Pacheco knew they had to change that answer. “We were indoctrinated into the system that regulation was all that communities could do,” says Dudley, tainable communities by assisting people to assert their director of Drilling Mora County, a grassroots organization right to local self-government and the rights of nature.” dedicated to protecting the natural resources of Northern Thomas Linzey, Esq., is cofounder, executive director, and New Mexico. “I just kept looking at that and began to see chief legal counsel for the CELDF. Linzey explained the that we had no power and that was really uncomfortable.” conventional regulatory approach as follows: Dudley and Pacheco refused to accept “no” for an answer Although a lot of people see the regulatory approach as reguand began looking for other options. lations put into place to protect health, safety, and welfare, They found an option in the form of a Community the history of the regulatory system is that regulations have Rights Ordinance (CRO). CROs effectively give “power to been used by those in power, most recently corporate interthe people” who are affected by such unfriendly practices as ests, to actually legalize certain harms that couldn’t occur fracking. without the permit being in place. If you want to dump With much groundwork, and with the sponsorformaldehyde from a textile bleaching plant into a stream ship of city councilor Andrew Feldman, a CRO banor river and there was no regulatory process issuing you a ning fracking was passed by a 3-to-1 vote of the Las permit to do so, and you did it anyway, you could be liable Vegas City Council in April 2012, making Las Vegas the to riparian landowners and folks downstream who use the first city in the western U.S. to enact such legislation. waterway for payment of damages done to their property or CROs are the brainchild of the Community Environmental to their interests. Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), an organization that, accord“If you have a permit to do so, in other words, if there’s a ing to their mission statement, focuses on “building susecotrendsource.com 55