Thursday, October 30, 2014


Draining the San Augustin aquifer will put an end
 to the great hunting in our area - if not immediately,
 then soon enough. Magdalena is the gateway to
 some of the best elk hunting in the American West,
but pumping 54,000 acre feet of water annually
 and piping it to points still unknown is going to
 affect wells, and springs, and wildlife 
 all over the entire region.
So say scientists that have weighed in on the matter,
 and so naturally the New Mexico Department of
Game and Fish is one of the many "protestants"
 in the case against the foreigners.
Currently, the entire mess on their application
is before the state Supreme Court.  But this
case will be going on further - a new application,
new arguments, more New York lawyers, etc.,
 ad infinitum.
 Please "SHOUT OUT" to Governor Martinez
at the bottom of this page, and contact your
state representative and senator.
Please tell them:
Statements from
  Director of the Hydrology Program
New Mexico Tech
Socorro, New Mexico
Conducted early August, 2013
 [Besides pumping water, the foreigners have
another brilliant idea, and that's how they'll
"recharge" the aquifer.]
"The developers there, the San Augustin Ranch,
are proposing to put in wells that are very deep,
 and the number that I heard mentioned in the newspaper
and so on, was 3,000 feet deep, and they claim that
they will pump a confined aquifer that will have
minimum effects on the shallower aquifers,
which is where most of the local residents rely for
domestic water and water for livestock."
"They also claim that they are going to induce  recharge
in some way, and this is not quite clear to me,
I have not seen the specifics on this, so I can't comment
very well on the merits of it,
but I have some inherent doubts about it....
because, the amount of time that's required for water
to reach the depths which they're proposing to pump
are very considerable, and studies haven't been done
on this, but if its typical of other basins in this part
of the country, that water at that depth, probably
recharged during the Pleistocene, during the last
ice age, more than 10,000 years ago, and the idea
that you could induce surface infiltration at the present
 time and resupply that aquifer that is 3,000 feet deep,
is's difficult to envision how
that's going to work."
 Interviewer:  This claim that they can capture
all the rainfall that's being lost to evaporation seems
like an EXTREME concept, to put it mildly.  I googled
and found that the way it's done is to somehow seal the
land - and that this has been done in parts
 of north Africa and the Mideast. 
 What can you tell me here?
"Any water that runs off - the San Augustin Basin
is a closed basin - there's no outlet to the ocean,
so it runs down into the middle of the basin and then
it sinks down into the land.  Whatever runs off
to the central playa, most of that becomes
groundwater recharge.
So, the only way to increase that groundwater
recharge is to reduce the amount that the plants
and the soil are using, and the standard method
for doing that - as you say - is to put some sort
of seal - asphalt, or plastic, or something, over the
 land surface, so you collect all of the precipitation,
all of the rainfall, and you put it
into some central collection area where it then
infiltrates downward....and that's technically
 feasible, but I have doubts as to whether converting
large areas of the landscape around the San Augustin Plains
to asphalt or something similar would be acceptable to
most people that live in the area."
What about the idea that if you seal it off....
well, isn't there a chance that funguses, microbes,
 biological strangeness....that something, some 
problem, could occur beneath the surface?
"Well, I think any 'biological strangeness' that
would be induced by putting a seal over the land
surface would be small in comparison to the
'biological strangeness' of denuding the landscape."
Then, of course, there's no opportunity for wildlife.
"That is correct, yes.  Once you've removed all the vegetation,
 then you've eliminated the ecosystem."
 Note: The above is just a small part of the interview
we conducted with Dr. Phillips.  We have a blog post up
from last summer that has much more - see it here:
The whole area is a "wildlife park" of sorts.
 Nearby US Forest Service lands offer beautiful
ponderosa forests, miles of trout streams, and
 numerous lakes. All over this country one
 can find herds of elk, deer,  and antelope, along
with gangs, rafts, or posses of turkeys
 (that's what ya' call a bunch of 'em).
 The region is also home to mountain lion, bighorn sheep,
 black bear, Mexican wolf, bobcat, fox, coyote, badger,
 bald eagle, golden eagle, ducks, geese, quail, dove,
 and many other species of wildlife.
 This area of New Mexico is famous for having
 the world's largest elk. Elk in the area have scored
 over 400 Boone and Crocket.
 Mule deer also grow large racks in this area,
with Boone and Crocket 200+ bucks killed
 in recent years.
 The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish
is only one in a long list of "protestants" in
the legal proceedings against the foreigners -
Bruno Modena and son Vittorio, from Italy,
and unnamed others who are the foreign
 owners/operators/investors working under the
 corporate name of Augustin Plains Ranch LLC.
These are not ranchers, or a water company
from Europe, or anything like that.
These are big-time hustlers, scammers, schemers.
They refuse to divulge their sources of money;
they refuse to fully divulge corporate ownership,
or show a financial statement of any kind.
They smell like mafia, underworld,
 foreign operators of some kind.
Their Project Director, Michel Jichlinski, a
Norwegian who got his masters degree in Jerusalem,
was the President and CEO of a federal contractor
that got caught stealing millions of taxpayers'
 dollars from contracts in war zones in
 Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bribery was common - they called it "grease money"
the whistleblower testified.  And now Jichlinski
  works here, in what is openly known as one of
 the most corrupt states in the country.
Oh boy.
Luckily, there's a lot of opposition to this idiocy.
   Here's just a few of the outfits signed-up
 against the WATER GRAB, there's a
 much longer full list. 

University of New Mexico, New Mexico Tech,
 USDA, Gila and Cibola National forests,
 the National Radio Astronomy Observatory,
 Phelps-Dodge Mining Company,
Catron County Commission, Pueblo of Isleta,
Middle Rio Grande Water Conservancy,
the Bureau of Land Management, New Mexico
Interstate Stream Commission, U.S. Dept. of
the Interior, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation,
Socorro Soil and Water Conservation District,
Navajo Nation Department of Justice,
Coalition of the Six Middle Rio Grande Pueblos,
Gila Conservation Coalition and Socorro-
Catron Farm Service Agency.

(List from the Socorro El Defensor Chieftain)
Just one question.
With all this opposition how have
these guys gotten this far?
Why wasn't this blown away long ago?
This seems really nuts when one
 looks at the facts. 
Well, that's actually two questions and a
remark....but the same answer applies to all.
It's because New Mexico is so damned corrupt.
The foreigners have a ton of cash, and you
can be sure they've been trolling with it up in
 Santa Fe, and elsewhere.  They've probably
got a mess of fish on the stringer.
It's easy fishin' with Land of Enchantment
 politicos and so-called "professionals" in
state and federal
The ones who take the cash are, of course,
 traitors to their people.  Shameless.  Worthless.
You kind of wonder if their conscience could kill 'em.
But in time, something will, some cancer or
fatal accident, some passage of life.
And then they'll get EXACTLY
 what's coming to them.    
 Carreta de la Muerte, from northern New Mexico
 It's artificial bullshit.
. .

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