A mapping challenge launched nowadays by nonprofit environmental agencies EarthWorks and FracTracker suggests that more than 12.3 million people stay inside a 1/2-mile of an oil and fuel facility in the america — 144,377 of them in New Mexico. And earlier this month, a normally rural county simply south of Albuquerque handed an ordinance that might increase that wide variety further.
In early may additionally, the Valencia County Board of Commissioners surpassed a zoning “overlay” that might allow every body inside the county to use to make the most any herbal sources on assets no longer alongside the Rio Grande greenbelt (which bisects the county) and now not in an incorporated location. in addition they would no longer lose the authentic county zoning type of the property. Proposals might nevertheless need to satisfy county and nation pointers for resource development, but the overlay could dramatically lessen the administrative steps and public hearings required by using the county for zoning changes.
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The trade may want to assist landowners exploit all sorts of sources, says County Commissioner Joseph Bizzell, who backed the bill. “it could be gravel, it could be hydrogen,” he says. He additionally has his own commercial enterprise concept: “I’m looking to cross after the brackish water.” Bizzell says that water deposits in the west of the county will be tapped, desalinated and sold for each easy water and the resulting salt. presently, that might require an commercial zoning change, he says, and if the brine ran out, he’d need to follow again to revert the land to either agricultural or residential use.
but the overlay has uses past rocks or salty water.
