LAS CRUCES - The city is contesting millions of dollars in penalties and higher gas bills, costs incurred during a winter storm in February that caused freezing temperatures and snow the same storm which crippled the Texas power grid.
On Valentine s Day weekend, a winter storm brought snow and cold temperatures to the Mesilla Valley. The snow, icy conditions and freezing temperatures also brought loss of heat and power outages to Texas for days and left more than 110 dead.
Residents in Las Cruces did not experience similar outages. But on Tuesday, the city-owned Las Cruces Utilities announced customers will begin to pay more on their monthly gas bills, beginning this month, to recover the cost of service for that single storm.
Third Judicial District court Judge Manuel Arrieta determined probable cause existed to proceed with a recall lawsuit filed against Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin, initiating procedures to remove Griffin from public office. On the decision, I am obviously very pleased, Sanchez said. The Committee to Recall Couy Griffin is very pleased that we have been found with probable cause, no less for all five of the allegations we presented.
The hearing was only to establish probable cause, in other words to determine if there was evidence of truth to the charges alleged.
Representatives from the Otero County Clerk s Office were at the hearing, including attorney Daniel Ivey-Soto who was appearing on behalf of the County Clerk Office.
Hannah Grover/NM Political Report
At the end of their useful life, every oil and gas well must be plugged to prevent future contamination as the infrastructure ages and to return the site back to its original state. For the most part, this is done by the operator. However, sometimes bankruptcies lead to wells becoming orphaned, meaning there is no operator to plug them.
Officials say these wells tend to not have had great maintenance and cleaning them up is important to protect both the environment and the health of nearby communities.
Democratic Senator Ben Ray Luján says he plans to introduce legislation to clean up orphaned oil and gas wells. This comes as President Joe Biden’s American Jobs Plan calls for spending $16 billion to plug abandoned wells and mines.
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A survivor of alleged sexual abuse when he was a child is suing the New Mexico Attorney General s Office for allegedly withholding public records related to credibly accused Catholic priests within the Diocese of Las Cruces.
“For decades the national Catholic Church used New Mexico as a destination to hide pedophile priests, taking advantage of the unique cultural makeup of our communities, including their devoutness, attorney Paul Linnenburger said in a news release. The perpetrators and those that sheltered them relied on a vast network of secrecy for too long, and survivors have suffered the consequences. New Mexico was unwillingly made the front line in the sex abuse crisis by the Catholic Church and thus far our civic leaders have thus far failed to provide the support countless survivors here need. It is long since past time for transparency and accountability, and it is sad that a lawsuit was necessary to get it.”