WildEarth Guardians

Wednesday, October 25, 2006
First Petition to Nominate Roadless Forest Streams As Outstanding National Resource Waters Submitted

WildEarth Guardians and partners filed a formal petition asking the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission to protect some of the state's cleanest waters that flow from its roadless national forests
Contact: WildEarth Guardians

The Clean Water Act designation would permanently protect the critical source of drinking water for the City of Las Vegas, provide a measure of protection for the roadless forests in which these waters are found, and protect healthy landscapes for future generations of humans and wildlife. The groups filing the petition are WildEarth Guardians, New Mexico Wildlife Federation, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, and the Sierra Club.

The coalition argue that the ecological, recreational, and economic values of these waters and the roadless forests that act as a reservoir and filter deserve long-term protection. The roadless forests in San Miguel County alone generate approximately 17 individual jobs and $424,000 in personal income annually. The New Mexico state fish, the Rio Grande cutthroat trout, occupies a number of the waters and genetically pure populations are only found in limited locations in five New Mexico drainages.

The petition is a part of an innovative strategy that responds to the Bush administration’s repeal of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule of 2001. Though a California judge ruled last month that Bush’s replacement policy for managing roadless areas violates the National Environmental Policy Act, the Bush administration has made it clear that it does not intend to reinstate the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. This leaves 58.5 million acres of roadless areas across the country and 1.6 million in New Mexico unprotected from logging, mining, oil and gas development and other damaging activities. Rather than wait for this legal limbo to be worked out in the courts, the coalition pursuing this alternative and complementary approach. By asking the State to designate waters inside Inventoried Roadless Areas as ONRWs, the coalition hopes to protect both the roadless forests threatened by Bush’s policy and keep the clean waters these forests naturally provide forever clean.

Read the nomination (PDF)