Plume releases “complex and dynamic” array of chemicals
On Sunday afternoon around 4 p.m., the light suddenly changed in northern New Mexico. I was looking down, tying my shoe, when I noticed. The play of light and shadow had that thick quality most of us recognize from when smoke spreads in front of the sun.
Sure enough, smoke was starting to pour over the Jemez Mountains. With only one bar of cell service, I tried to find out what was happening. There was nothing on InciWeb nor NM Fire Info. Nothing yet on the Santa Fe National Forest website either.
We kept an eye to the sky but carried on with the day. Later, driving toward Española in a zone with more reliable cell service, my phone started blowing up. One friend had sent photos and a video of the fire from near Coyote and Gallina. The Black Feather Fire was burning in the San Pedro Parks Wilderness, and she was worried about how “tinderbox” dry it is up there. As the road turned, a thick band of smoke from the American Mesa Fire in the Carson National Forest near Dulce obscured our view of the northern expanse of the Sangre de Cristos.
I scrolled further back through new messages: In Albuquerque, thick, black smoke was billowing from what reports were calling a “plastics recycling facility.” When I looked on social media and news websites, photos and videos of the fire on the southeast edge of Albuquerque were everywhere. People seemed mesmerized by the scene, dashing outside or moving closer to that area of town to add their photos and videos to the onslaught of spot coverage from anyone with a phone.
An email alert from the City of Albuquerque warned that “Plastics are burning and the smoke contains hazardous air pollutants” and “This smoke is unhealthy for everyone and people should limit outdoor activity tonight in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County.”
Often, those health alerts are for people with existing conditions like asthma or other respiratory diseases. This one noted the smoke was unhealthy for everyone. (By the way, if you live in Albuquerque, you should absolutely sign up for these air quality alerts, either via email or text. Go ahead, do it right now!)
We know that wildfire smoke is bad* for people. So, what about when High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) pipes and conduits burn, like during Sunday’s fire at the Atkore facility?
Angel Martinez, Jr., Environmental Health Director with the City of Albuquerque, explained to me this was a “serious” plume. When polyethylene burns, he said, it releases a “complex and dynamic” array of chemicals. The main group to worry about is polyaromatic hydrocarbons, which includes things like benzo[a]pyrene, pyrene, and naphthalene. Those can be carcinogenic and very toxic, he said. I cringed, thinking of Sunday’s photos with bare-faced firefighters and emergency response workers, guessing all the photographers and video-snappers probably didn’t wear protective gear either.
The city was monitoring the plume and the weather, and luckily, Martinez said, the prevailing winds pushed the plume to the south and southwest—toward Kirtland Air Force base instead of across populated areas of the city. The city was in contact with the Isotopes, for example, and if the wind had shifted, Martinez said they would have stopped the game and moved people out of the stadium.
I still have calls out for answers to lots of questions about the business (it was not, by the way, a plastics recycling facility as initially and widely reported), the plume, firefighter safety, the effects of the smoke on public health, the long-term impacts from the air pollution, what kind of foam was used to extinguish the fire, and more.
Our distracted brains can’t analyze all the emergencies—heat waves, fires, floods, crop failures, wars—while our fingers keep scrolling on to the next disaster and the next one and the next one. We stop thinking very deeply about what is happening, why, or what it means in the short-term, never mind the long-term. That seems to be true whether it’s a roiling black plume of hydrocarbons over the state’s largest city, wildfires raging in August (when in the past, monsoons would bring ample rain, not just lightning), or the Rio Grande expected to run dry again in the Albuquerque reach.
Friends: Take care of yourselves. Sign up for the air quality alerts. If your city or county has a reverse 911 service, take advantage of that. (You can Google that for yourself…) And don’t stop asking questions, including of the media. When you see an emergency unfolding, don’t just watch videos or scroll through social media. Seek accurate answers to what’s happening and why, consider the impacts—and resist the easy temptation to become dulled to the real world around you.
On the show last week, there was a lot of talk about water.
After the relatively wet years of the 1980s and ‘90s, New Mexico’s reservoirs started dropping in the 2000s. In cooperation with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, two water districts—one in New Mexico and another in Texas—agreed in 2008 on new ways to share water stored in Elephant Butte Reservoir.
But New Mexico’s then-Attorney General Gary King sued the federal government, saying too much of New Mexico’s water was going to Texas. Texas disagreed and then sued New Mexico and Colorado, alleging that by allowing to farmers to pump groundwater connected to the river, New Mexico wasn’t sending its fair share downstream.
That landed all three states in the U.S. Supreme Court, where the federal government also weighed in on the issue. Now, the three states say they’ve come up with a plan to move forward, and although the federal government hasn’t agreed on the plan, federal Judge Michael Melloy, the case’s Special Master, has recommended the Supreme Court approve a settlement.
To help us understand what’s going on, Adrian Oglesby came onto the show. He’s the director of the Utton Transboundary Resources Center at the University of New Mexico’s School of Law.
Last week, The Line’s Gene Grant also hosted UNM’s John Fleck, the New Mexico Acequia Association’s Paula Garcia, and reporter Elizabeth Miller in conversation about farming and water use in New Mexico as well as prescribed fire and the U.S. Forest Service. You can watch the full episode of the show on the NMiF website.
Some of the news:
• “Nearby residents, officials prepare for the worst as Black Feather Fire grows to more than 2,500 acres” (Nicholas Gilmore, Santa Fe New Mexican)
• “New Mexico Department of Health issues wildfire smoke guidelines” (Marianne Todd, Santa Fe New Mexican)
• “FEMA pushes out more disaster relief funds for people harmed by northern NM fire” (Megan Gleason, Source NM)
• “The Delayed Return of Native Remains: A Scientist Said Her Research Could Help With Repatriation. Instead, It Destroyed Native Remains.” (Mary Hudetz, ProPublica. Story reprinted in the Santa Fe Reporter)
• “Protected cultural sites in Los Alamos vandalized” (Annalisa Pardo, KRQE)
• “Albuquerque city councilor wants more money focused on open space land” (Marilyn Upchurch, KRQE)
• “After helping prevent extinctions for 50 years, the Endangered Species Act itself may be in peril” (John Flesher, Associated Press)
• “The terrible emptiness of ‘Oppenheimer’” (Alicia Inez Guzmán, Searchlight New Mexico)
Among all the news about hot oceans, heat waves, fires, and more climate impacts, there was one story last week even more disturbing than most. In “A Republican 2024 Climate Strategy: More Drilling, Less Clean Energy,” Lisa Friedman of The New York Times, writes:
During a summer of scorching heat that has broken records and forced Americans to confront the reality of climate change, conservatives are laying the groundwork for a 2024 Republican administration that would dismantle efforts to slow global warming.
The move is part of a sweeping strategy dubbed Project 2025 that Paul Dans of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank organizing the effort, has called a “battle plan” for the first 180 days of a future Republican presidency.
Not only is it ridiculous for anyone billing themselves as a leader to not address climate change’s causes and impacts head-on, but the language throughout the article also makes it clear that the people involved in this planning—from places like the Heritage Foundation, the Heartland Institute, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute—are resurrecting the strategy of sowing doubt about climate change, even as billions of people across the planet are feeling the impacts of it this summer.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about watching the Covering Climate Now webinar, “The Ever-Shifting Landscape Of Climate Misinformation.” Now would be a great time to check that out if you haven’t already, or at the least, to familiarize yourself with how climate disinformation is deliberately perpetuated.
Lastly, my friend—and one of my favorite western water writers—Daniel Rothberg is now writing a newsletter, and you should subscribe. Oh, and definitely check out Dara Yen Elerath’s poem, “Things We Were Told About the Moon in School” in High Country News.
Thanks for reading!
*Just a few studies about the harms of wildfire smoke:
• “The changing risk and burden of wildfire in the United States” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021)
• “Health effects of wildfire smoke in children and public health tools: a narrative review” (Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, 2021)
• “Daily Local-Level Estimates of Ambient Wildfire Smoke PM2.5 for the Contiguous US” (Environmental Science & Technology, 2022)
• “Wildfire smoke impacts respiratory health more than fine particles from other sources: observational evidence from Southern California” (Nature Communications, 2022)
• Why Wildfire Smoke is a Health Concern, from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
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