20 Years | 20 Stories

- Case Turns Law Center into Community Advocate

- Picuris Pueblo: Triumph Over the Odds

- Jeanie Cragin: Enviro Superwoman

- The Law Center's Secret Weapons

- Cathie Sullivan Leaving Her Mark on the Law Center

 

 

LAW CENTER CELEBRATES 20 YEAR ANNIVERSARY!

This issue marks the first of four Green Fire Reports that will celebrate the Law Center's twentieth anniversary over the next year. As part of that celebration, we are happy to share Twenty Years | Twenty Stories, which will focus on the clients, volunteers, staff members, donors, and victories that have seen the Law Center from its earliest days to the present.

Celebrating 20 Years

“Three former state officials have founded a Santa Fe-based law firm to protect the haunting landscapes, precious streams, and splendid wildlife that have made New Mexico the land of enchantment.” So began a back-page story in the first Green Fire Report that was plainly titled “Environmental Law Center Opens,” in December, 1987.

Even in its nascent stages, we recognized that the New Mexico Environmental Law Center had a big job ahead of it – no less than the protection of everything that makes New Mexico such a special and beautiful place. The Center's founding was spurred by a statewide election, after which me and my co-founders, Susan Tixier and Sharon Murray, felt that we had to protect our natural environment from an administration that was not living up to its responsibility to protect these special places.

Soon it became apparent that the government was not doing an adequate job to protect the people of New Mexico either, causing us to shift our primary focus from the protection of public lands to the protection of communities that are fighting to safeguard their environments, their health, and their cultures. With these goals, I am proud to say that Law Center staff have been key to some of the most important environmental victories that New Mexico has seen in the past two decades, including the passage of critical laws that protect people and the environment from pollution and victories in landmark cases.

Through the generosity of donors, foundations and volunteers, we have grown from two part-time, unpaid attorneys to include four lawyers and four support staff who work everyday to ensure that water is safe for all New Mexicans to drink, the air is safe for all to breathe, and that our unique cultures are preserved for the future.

We thank you for your support of our work, and hope that you will be with us for the next twenty years as we continue our work.

Yours truly,

Douglas Meiklejohn, Executive Director . | top

Waste Case Turns Law Center Into Community Advocate

While the residents of Sunland Park were busy organizing to fight what would become the Nu-Mex landfill, the Nu-Mex medical waste incinerator opened, belching black smoke a short distance away from two elementary schools.

But Nu-Mex would soon find out that citizens of Sunland Park were the wrong people with whom to tangle.

Sunland Park is a small town located near the southern border of New Mexico , close to Texas and Mexico . In the late 1980s, the municipality was home to approximately 8,000 residents, nearly all of whom were Hispanic and low-income. During that time, neighbors banded together to form Concerned Citizens of Sunland Park to fight a landfill that would be used primarily for El Paso's trash; the lack of laws on the books at the time meant that there would be few, if any, conditions attached to the landfill's permit.

“The townspeople had already organized themselves, passing petitions to prevent the landfill. Then the incinerator opened and was completely unregulated…there were hypodermic needles laying around, there were no pollution controls, and the place would burn at night,” remembers Antonio Lujan, a community organizer who worked for the Diocese of Las Cruces at the time. Residents developed allergies and rashes, and children at nearby schools became sick from the odors emanating from the facility. “The Bishop heard about the landfill and incinerator and asked me to check things out; it turned into a two-and-a-half year long project.”

Just as the Concerned Citizens of Sunland Park were battling these facilities, the State of New Mexico passed the Solid Waste Act in 1990, with strong advocacy from the Law Center and several other environmental organizations. Soon afterward, at a hearing concerning the regulation of biomedical waste incinerators, the Concerned Citizens met Doug Meiklejohn, who was advocating for more stringent conditions.

“This was a true David-and-Goliath type battle,” recounts Lujan. “The community sold enchiladas and gorditas as a way to raise funds to hire expert witnesses.” The State held a hearing that began with the premise that the landfill would be granted a ten-year permit without conditions; Concerned Citizens fought for the permit to be denied outright. The Law Center and its client also had to persuade the State to reverse its position that it did not have to take into account the air emissions emanating from the smokestack. For residents, an egregious hurdle entailed dealing with a political system that seemed to have gone horribly wrong: Nu-Mex hired Sunland Park 's mayor and city attorney as lobbyists, and the town's state senator as its attorney. (The mayor and the senator would soon be voted out of office.)

Lujan goes on to explain that this was the first time in New Mexico that a grassroots Hispanic community formed an alliance with environmental groups. “In addition to the SouthWest Organizing Project and the Diocese, we worked with environmentalists like Lynda Taylor at the Southwest Research and Information Center and Doug Meiklejohn at the Law Center – that had never been done before. For me, the significance was the effectiveness of a passionate grassroots organization that had technical expertise within its reach.”

In true David-and-Goliath fashion, Concerned Citizens of Sunland Park won significant victories. The State shut down the incinerator, and issued a five-year permit for the landfill that had several stringent conditions, including a requirement for a liner and air and water quality monitoring – conditions which two years earlier would never have seen the light of day. This case helped the Law Center to successfully lobby for stringent regulations concerning incinerators, including buffer zones that put at least one mile between people and the waste-burning facilities. Since those regulations were passed, no incinerators have been constructed in New Mexico .

Lujan, who is now a state representative from Las Cruces , served on the Law Center 's Board of Directors for ten years, including a stint as its president. He is proud of how the organization has grown during the past twenty years. “The Law Center is the most important environmental organization in New Mexico today,” he states. “It has credibility in the legislature, credibility with communities, and it always takes on the right issues.”

Isabel Santos, who led Concerned Citizens for Sunland Park in a subsequent fight against the re-permitting of the Sunland Park landfill added, “The Environmental Law Center is important because it helps to resolve environmental problems in poor communities. There was no one else to help us except for the Environmental Law Center .”

Due in large part to our work in the Sunland Park cases, the Law Center is now the only not-for-profit law firm that specializes in environmental justice issues in New Mexico, filling a critical unmet need for New Mexico's communities and environment. Doug's passion for solid waste reform has remained unquenched as well – working with communities throughout New Mexico , he has helped usher New Mexico from being a place with few protections to being a state with some of the most protective laws and regulations in the country, especially with regard to protecting vulnerable communities.

-- Shelbie Knox, Development Associate | top

Picuris Pueblo: Triumph Over The Odds

“Stop! You are Breaking our Hearts! Don’t Mine Indian Clay.” The sign held by the woman at the entrance to the Oglebay Norton mica mine echoed the sentiments of the Picuris People who stood shoulder to shoulder with her, blocking trucks from entering the mine in November, 2002. Despite the show of public opposition to both the mine and the Velarde-based mill, however, things looked bleak. The facility had grown into the largest mica mine west of the Mississippi River, and the company was seeking a permit to expand the site. While the Law Center was fighting hard to ensure that the permit included some provisions to protect the environment and mitigate cultural impacts, there was little doubt that the mine would continue to grow.

In any other place, this mine would have been an environmental nuisance. But here at Picuris, the mine was eating away at a culture that had depended upon the micaceous clay that had been found at the site since time immemorial, according to the tribe’s elder potters. “The clay is not only a pot,” describes former Picuris Governor Gerald Nailor, recounting the importance of the earth to his People. “It teaches you how to live. It guides you. It gives you strength.”

The Law Center began its representation of Picuris Pueblo in 1998. The Pueblo had approached Law Center attorneys a year earlier to help it defeat a proposed copper mine, but had been successful in working with neighbors to rally enough community opposition to scuttle the project. Their success gave them hope that they could stop the grievous mica mine. Unfortunately for the tribe, “It was easier to stop a mine that didn’t exist,” recounts Richard Mermejo, former Mine Reclamation Liaison and Picuris Governor, “than to stop a mine that was already in the ground, growing every year.” Six years after their copper mine victory, they would be holding their second protest at the mine, wondering if the destruction would ever stop.

“We are a small community going up against a giant corporation, with its fleet of lawyers and vice-presidents; we can use all of the help that we can get. This is why we work so closely with the Law Center. While our People picket the mine in protest, the Law Center is working to stop the mine in the courts.”

Unbeknownst to the public or the mining company, the Pueblo adopted a new legal strategy in 2001. While Law Center attorneys still worked to limit the company's permits, the tribal government decided to pursue a long-shot. The Law Center allied itself with Indian law experts Richard Hughes and Curtis Berkey along with the Western Environmental Law Center to pursue an aboriginal title claim for the land on which the mine was sited. The premise? That Picuris Pueblo had never given up the land, which had been bought by mining companies for $5.00/acre from the U.S. government under the federal 1872 Mining Law.

The world's foremost academic experts on Tiwa culture worked with Pueblo members to document the oral history pertaining to the site, while pottery experts used a nuclear reactor to prove that ancient pottery sherds originated in the clay pits at the site. In the end, the case was strong enough that the Pueblo was able to negotiate with the mining companies that had operated the mine, achieving the unimaginable: the return of the land to the Picuris People.

The day that the land was returned to the Pueblo was bittersweet for its people. Tribal members were relieved that the destruction had finally ended, but many could not staunch their tears when they saw immensity of the damage at the site, feeling that they would never be able to heal such a wound. Yet in the same spirit of its fight to stop the mining, Picuris Pueblo is working to reclaim the site. Joe Quanchello, a religious leader at the Pueblo, rallied potters in 2005, enjoining “Maybe we have been challenged by Mother Earth to heal her in these circumstances, whether there is clay or not. We must do what we can do.”

And the Pueblo has responded. Already, it has obliterated one of the two open pits, and vegetation is poking up through the topsoil that serves as a healing scab over the wound. Dodging bulldozers and backhoes, potters have been heartened to find clay deposits that survived the mining process. The Law Center continues to represent the the tribe as it works to reclaim the site.

-- Shelbie Knox, Development Associate | top

Jeanie Craigin: Environmental Superwoman

“The average individuals can no longer expect to change the course of a hearing with persuasive emotional statements. Decision makers listen to attorneys and experts. The mining company comes armed with multiple attorneys, numbers of credentialed experts, lobbyists in the hallways – all designed to intimidate, overpower and exhaust the citizens who dare mount any opposition.”

These words are spoken by a woman who has become intimately acquainted with the realities of trying to protect a place she loves from pollution. Beginning in 1991, she and her neighbors worked to stop the proposed Placer Dome gold mine near Cerrillos. Once they won that fight, they moved onto a bigger problem: the existing Cunningham Hill cyanide heap-leach gold mine in the Ortiz Mountains , which had become contaminated during the 1970s and 1980s. (Those familiar with Santa Fe will recognize the “V”-shaped white scar in the Ortiz Mountains south of the city that marks the mine's waste rock pile.)

“Back before the Internet, it was very difficult to get information in or out,” remembers Jeanie. “It was tough to find out information on the polluters, and tough to get information out to my neighbors. I spent a lot of time running fliers off of my home printer and leaving them on doorsteps of homes in the Galisteo basin.”

That task must have seemed easy compared to the struggle she faced when she showed up at New Mexico Environment Department hearings, however. “I remember that we – the Friends of Santa Fe County – had to find a lawyer after we showed up at a discharge permit hearing and the hearing officer wouldn't recognize us,” she recalls. “Even though hydrologist Art Montana was an integral member of Friends of Santa Fe County, the State didn't allow us to fully participate until we were represented by counsel. That is when we got the Law Center involved. Attorneys Doug Meiklejohn and Doug Wolf not only knew the law, but they were respected by the regulators, and that respect was transferred to us during those proceedings.”

Over the next several years, Friends of Santa Fe County worked on several tracks to force the cleanup of the Cunningham Hill minesite, including a major lawsuit filed under the federal Clean Water Act. These efforts eventually brought LAC Minerals, Inc. and previous mine operators to the table for settlement negotiations. Represented by former Law Center attorney Doug Wolf, Friends reached an agreement that led to the creation of the 1,350 acre Ortiz Mountain Educational Preserve and the reclamation of the site, including two plumes of contaminated groundwater beneath the mine.

“Watching Doug Wolf in action was like watching Jack the Giant Killer. Here was one guy working all nighters, without any office help, up against a battery of attorneys on the other side,” says Jeanie. While Friends of Santa Fe County was fortunate to get pro bono assistance from other attorneys during the fight, “it hit home that you can't just have any attorney representing you in a case like this…you need someone remarkable, and the Law Center has always been home to remarkable attorneys.”

Jeanie also worked closely with Law Center staff to pass the New Mexico Mining Act of 1993. This law, precipitated in part by the Cunningham Hill mine reclamation fight, became the most stringent hardrock mining law in the U.S. Under the leadership of N.M. Representative Gary King (now Attorney General of New Mexico), it took three years to get the legislation passed. “Doug Meiklejohn's influence was tremendous in the passage of that law,” she remembers. “Without him, the law and regulations would likely not have been so strong – and New Mexico 's land and water would not be so well protected.”

In addition to her work as citizen activist and client, Jeanie joined our Board of Directors in 1996, and has served several stints as President. Her work on our behalf has helped to ensure that the Law Center has become such a vibrant organization.

-- Shelbie Knox, Development Associate | top

Image courtesy of Jeanie Cragin

The Law Center's Secret Weapons

Chatting pleasantly over lemonade and cookies at a local coffee shop, Don and Lorraine Goldman hardly look like the Law Center 's secret weapons. But that is exactly what they are.

Not only have they been long-time financial donors, but Don has been a valued volunteer for the past five years. For the last three of those years, he has spent his winters slogging through the daily list of bills generated by the New Mexico state legislature, ferreting out bills that could potentially wreak environmental havoc – and which our adversaries are hoping will slip past us unnoticed. “Finding needles in a haystack,” Lorraine calls it.

Don was transferred to the National Park Service's regional office in Santa Fe in 1987. In the summer of 1988, he and Lorraine met Doug Meiklejohn when they staff ed a table next to Doug's at a Taos environment fair. Don and Lorraine 's support of the Law Center began when Lorraine brought Doug a popsicle to help him get through the fierce afternoon heat. Sharing strong environmental ethics and the belief that government exists to protect and foster its citizenry, the three began a friendship that has thus far spanned two decades.

Lorraine , a retired educator, marvels at the early days of the Law Center . “I've worked in small non-profits for a long time, and you often get run down by the feeling that problems are just too big to be tackled,” she says. “But there was Doug – and his family – making a real sacrifice for their beliefs. He left a good paying job to tilt at windmills and take on what seemed to be an impossible dream. But he's managed to make that dream very possible,” and do incredible things for New Mexicans and their environment in the process.

Don is quick to add that, “now Doug has been joined by a staff of dedicated individuals, all of whom have forsaken jobs with real paychecks to come here because they believe in the ethic and the work being done by the Law Center .”

In addition to his work as our legislative analyst, Don did an amazing job writing the Law Center 's history for our 15 th anniversary (this comprehensive work can be found on the News page of our website, next to the Green Fire Report links.) While working on that project, he was fascinated to see the shift in our work, where we moved from the public lands arena to primarily representing community groups fighting to protect their communities from environmental degradation. “Without professional help through the legal complexities (that government agencies and private corporations were able to handle),” Don wrote, “citizen and community groups were no better off than had all those changes [allowing for public participation in government proceedings] never occurred.”

“Sometimes it is incredibly difficult to bring disenfranchised people together to take on these fights,” posits Lorraine , but it is the Law Center 's connection with its clients that make it such a powerful force. “It is not the Law Center leading these fights, but these groups, with the help of the Law Center . That makes communities very powerful.”

Asked why they give both their time and their money to the Law Center , Don smiles and shrugs. “We only support the causes we believe in, and your results speak for themselves.”

We thank Don and Lorraine for the long-standing support (including that popsicle), and for their willingness to answer the call for help!

-- Shelbie Knox, Development Associate | top

Image courtesy of Don and Lorraine Goldman

Cathie Sullivan Leaving Her Mark on the Law Center

Over the past twenty years, few things have remained constant about the Law Center . The staff have changed, the offices have changed...even the focus of the organization has shifted during the past two decades. But also celebrating a twentieth anniversary this year is our logo.

The logo was the brainchild of designer Cathie Sullivan, who was tasked with developing the mark for the organization shortly after it opened its doors.

“When I thought about defending the environment, I immediately thought of Mimbres pottery. It is extremely rich in natural imagery, yet has a linear geometry,” she recalls, referring to the black and white pottery crafted by the people who inhabited the Gila Mountains 1,000 years ago. From that inspiration the Law Center 's iconic bird-and-tree logo was born, and has stayed with the Law Center ever since. From the same place, she drew inspiration for the design of the newsletter's masthead, creating a natural tableau that represented the Law Center 's focus on protecting public lands.

“Before I became a professional screenprinter, my background was in biology and ecology,” says Cathie, “so I was naturally drawn to the environmental focus of the Law Center when they asked me to volunteer.” As a citizen activist who has focused for years on the health impacts of low-level ionizing radiation, especially with regard to Los Alamos National Laboratory, she understands the value of non-profit law firm that represents citizens in environmental matters. “I mean, how is the game played anymore, without lawyers?” she asks. “They're ubiquitous. So if we are going to defend New Mexico 's environment, we must have talented attorneys working to bring corporations to account.”

For our twentieth anniversary, Cathie is helping us celebrate with a new addition to the Law Center graphical repertoire: in the next issue of the Green Fire Report , her masthead animals will be joined by a human glyph, which will represent our shift towards protecting communities in an environmental context. We thank Cathie for her valuable contribution to the Law Center 's identity, and for her long-standing support of our work.

- Shelbie Knox, Development Associate | top

 

To subscribe or unsubscribe to the Green Fire Report online edition, to receive a text-only version, or to submit comments to the Law Center staff, please email nmelc@nmelc.org. The New Mexico Environmental Law Center is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit law firm. We seek to protect the environment and communities of New Mexico using legal advocacy and public education. All donations are 100% tax-deductible, unless otherwise noted. Thank you.