This letter is in response to Nikki Ryan’s Drop by Drop letter [v29 i9].Shame on Albuquerque Housing Authority, (AHA) for putting water restrictions on the poor, elderly and handicapped, housed by AHA when, meantime, our biggest water users in NM are golf courses! That’s right. See below:As per Albuquerque Business First: As of June 23, 2017, the 5 top water users for 2016 were the following:1) Tanoan Golf Course/ABQ using 237,659,048 gallons (2016)2) Arroyo del Oso Golf Course 213,805,328 gallons (2016) 3) Los Altos Golf Course/ABQ using 165,023,012 gallons (2016)4) Dessert Greens Golf Course/ABQ using 86,204,756 gallons (2016)5) Puerto del Sol Golf Course/ABQ 83,606,204 gallons (2016Total gallons of water used by golf courses in 2016: 786,298,348. That’s 786 million gallons!I wish I had more current numbers for you, but doing a search on Google, you can’t get anything more recent. What’s the big picture here? It’s OK for NM to cater to the rich and privileged by continuing to offer golf for their leisure, but the poor, the elderly and the handicapped are now having their daily water use limited.Wake up New Mexico! Also, Alibi’s August March mentioned the number of wells in New Mexico in the same issue: 30,000 government-approved oil and gas wells in NM. The ones used for fracking use 8 to 12 million gallons of water per well! And that is fresh water, not brine. Meanwhile in this month’s Green Fire Times they are talking about the billions of dollars that are coming in from solar and wind: “In 2018: 3 billion in capital investment from wind projects alone!”Why are we still fracking? Why are we still allowing golf courses in New Mexico? Instead of fracking money, why wasn’t marijuana legalized this year? We know it will be responsible for millions of dollars of revenue per year and thousands of new jobs. We don’t have to worry about any of it poisoning our water or wasting our precious water, the way fracking and golf do. As a New Mexican [who] has been living here for 34 years, I demand that we put an end to golf courses and fracking! Even if golf courses are using recycling water, my prediction is that we humans in NM will be using recycled water for our everyday use in the not too distant future. Because of our sensitive water situation, it is impossible to say how long our water will last. Back Rep Sedillo Lopez’s bill for the legislature next session that will put a moratorium on new fracking leases for four years, so we can do research and find out the damage that’s being done by fracking in NM. We are selling our souls for fracking money, waiting for the fracking shoe to drop. Here we are with AHA limiting water use! This is the beginning!Support clean energy and legalizing marijuana to make money here in NM. Write our senators and demand that this good old rich boy, dirty oil, dinosaur mindset changes here in New Mexico. Time to embrace clean energy 100 percent. Let’s take care of our poor, our handicapped and our elderly! Our future in New Mexico depends on it!
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