The Ant Under the Magnifying Glass

As the Trump administration rolls back regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency, we’re taking time on the show to understand what that means for our state and its ecosystems.  

“What we see in New Mexico is a real magnifying glass,” Camilla Feibelman from the Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter tells NMiF Host Nash Jones in a segment airing this week. “Pretend New Mexico is the ant, and pretend President Trump is holding that magnifying glass over the ant. New Mexico feels the impacts of climate change much more strongly than the rest of the country.” 

Joining Feibelman at the table is Ben Shelton, Deputy Director of the state’s Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department. Nash asks Shelton for a response to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s justification for rolling back regulations: That he’s looking after the economic interests of the American people.  

“I think about the economic impacts to the village of Ruidoso as they deal with rounds of flooding and fire,” Shelton explains. “I think about the economic impacts to communities like Elephant Butte, who are seeing…reservoir levels dropping precipitously in a way that potentially may cut off access to recreational opportunities that drive the economy.”  

As we wait to see exactly how these EPA rollbacks will affect our state, the impacts of industrial pollution are undeniable in places like Alamogordo. Last year, researchers found unprecedented levels of contamination across 23 species of birds and mammals in the area. They attribute the contamination to runoff from toxic firefighting foam used at nearby Holloman Air Force Base — a phenomenon our former colleague Laura Paskus wrote about extensively in her series, Groundwater War. That foam has since been discontinued at Holloman, but the chemicals responsible for the pollution, PFAS, are still being used in a wide range of other products.  

Author and Investigative Journalist Mariah Blake has reported on PFAS and other so-called forever chemicals for years. She’s conducted hundreds of interviews and dug up tens of thousands of documents. This week on the show, she joins me in studio to talk about her new book: “They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals”.   

Blake explains the origins of PFAS, which have been in production for about 70 years. She also explains that the companies that make them, along with the U.S. government, have known for more than a half century that they’re poisonous to all living things, and that they don’t break down over time.  

She clarifies the daunting task of cleaning up man-made pollution that could have been avoided, a task we may be doomed to revisit in the near future.  

-Lou DiVizio, Senior Producer