New Mexico Environmental Law Center (NMELC)

NMELC has supported a petition opposing the use of emissions free nuclear energy. ³

The NMELC advocates for critical race theory‐aligned notions of equity in its practice of legal advocacy to fight “institutional racism” for “marginaliz[ed] minority communities.” ⁴ Moreover, this group adheres to tenets of activism that calls “to build a national and international movement of all peoples of color to fight the destruction and taking of our lands and communities.” ⁵

Principles

The New Mexico Environmental Law Center adheres to the critical race theory‐aligned principles of equity that were adopted by the People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in 1992. ¹ The preamble states that its purpose is “to begin to build a national and international movement of all peoples of color to fight the destruction and taking of our lands and communities,” ⁵ and one of its goals is “to secure our political, economic and cultural liberation that has been denied for over 500 years of colonization and oppression, resulting in the poisoning of our communities and land and the genocide of our peoples.” ⁵

Legal Campaigns

The New Mexico Environmental Law Center campaigns against mining uranium in New Mexico and calls for the banning of new uranium mines in the state. ⁶ The NMELC received a microgrant from the Indigenous Environmental Network “to hire a Community Liaison for McKinley County, including Navajo Chapters within the County. This Community Liaison will contribute to the Law Center’s efforts to pass a uranium-mining moratorium ordinance in McKinley County.” ⁷

NMELC began a campaign in 2014 to seek review of an inactive uranium mine in Mt. Taylor to begin the process of reclamation. ⁸ In 2019, the Rio Grande Resources, which owns the mine in Mt. Taylor, announced that it would close the mine and begin the process of remediation. ⁸

NMELC began its campaigning against the building of a planned city called Santolina in 2014. ⁹ NMELC claimed that Santolina would be a city of 90,000 people and “[i]t would require nearly 20 million gallons of water per day, at least 20 schools, and two interchanges on I-40.” ⁹ NMELC has filed comments, motions, and petitions against the Bernalillo County Planning Commission at various levels of the planning process. ⁹

NMELC campaigned successfully from 2014 to 2019 against Honstein Oil Co. to register their gasoline storage tank for a permit with the City of Albuquerque Environmental Health Department. ¹⁰ The NMELC represented SouthWest Organizing Project (SWOP) in successfully filing a “complaint against the City of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County under Title VI of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964. ⁴  NMELC and SWOP based their complaint upon critical race theory‐aligned notions of equity, such as “institutional racism,” and claimed that the local politicians “have demonstrated a record of marginalizing minority communities so that they are exposed to an unequal burden of air pollution and the concomitant adverse health effects.” ⁴

Opposition to Nuclear Energy

The  New Mexico Environmental Law Center was one of more than 650 signatories on an August 2022 letter organized by People vs Fossil Fuels and addressed to the “Democratic Leadership” in Congress. The letter was titled: “Opposition to Fossil Fuel Project Approvals and Permitting Reforms Conditioned on the Inflation Reduction Act.” ³

The letter portrayed as “false solutions” carbon sequestration, carbon-free nuclear energy and all sources of energy not approved as “renewable” by the signatories: “Relying only on large scale investments in renewable energy and environmental justice alone will not stave off climate disaster if Congress simultaneously puts its legislative foot on the gas to expand fossil fuel production and false solutions like carbon capture, hydrogen, biomass, biofuels, factory farm gas, and nuclear power.” ³

Nuclear power plants produce no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions, and as of 2021 accounted for 20 percent of American electricity production—the largest source of zero carbon electricity in the United States. ¹¹ An October 2018 proposal from The Nature Conservancy noted that zero-carbon nuclear plants produced 7.8 percent of total world energy output and recommended reducing carbon emissions by increasing nuclear capacity to 33 percent of total world energy output. ¹²

Funders

New Mexico Environmental Law Center received grants from the Ford Foundation in 2008 ¹³ and from the Kindle Foundation from 2008 through 2014 and again in 2017. ¹⁴ In 2022, the NMELC received $150,000 from the Tides Foundation and $150,000 from the Lannan Foundation. ¹⁵

Key People

As of March 2024, the New Mexico Environmental Law Center employed Virginia Necochea as its executive director. Necochea “is the former executive director and a founding board member of the Center for Social Sustainable Systems (CESOSS),” an environmentalist activist group that focuses on the Rio Grande area and South Valley, New Mexico. ¹⁶ She received her Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies from The University of New Mexico in 2015, where the topic and title of her dissertation was The Racial Discourses of Teacher Education Students in the Urban Southwest. ¹⁷

Eric Jantz is the legal director at the NMELC. He leads NMELC’s legal campaigns against uranium mining in New Mexico. ¹⁸ He specializes in public interest law and in critical race theory‐aligned notions of equity in so-called “environmental racism” and “environmental justice.” ¹⁸ He has written a peer-reviewed article advocating for critical race theory‐aligned notions of equity to address “environmental racism” in energy and mining. ¹⁹