El Prado Power Brokers Annex Airport/Highway 64 Development
Google: Abeyta Water and Water Rights News at: https://lajicarita.wordpress.com/
Google Taos Airport News at: http://landwaterandculture.org/documents.html
For interested parties, you can see Blankenhorn’s glib remarks at the right on Taos Friction, filed under “reductio ad absurdum.” See Kay Matthews’s response above at the La Jicarita web site.
At last Tuesday’s County Commission meeting, Feb. 17, 2015, a day that will live on in infamy, Taos County Commissioners, led by Chairman Tom Blankenhorn, voted down a protest against the transfer of some 250 afy of water rights from the Gallagher Ranch near Questa to the El Prado Water and Sanitation District (District). The District’s Mayordomo, John Painter, aka “Painter” John, claimed that the Office of State Engineer (OSE) says the District needs 575 afy forty years hence to satisfy its “plan.”
Today El Prado serves some 380-metered customers with approximately 1100 consumers, including the redoubtable Joey Perovich at Taos Gravel Company; the District is currently leasing water rights to Joey’s Northern Constructors so that it can get on with building the airport runway. Meanwhile, the attorney of record representing the opposition to airport expansion project has written a letter to the County suggesting that the Town may be in violation of paragraphs “2, 5, and 7” of the conditions attached to the Record of Decision (ROD) by the planning department. Google Airport News above.
Last year in 2014, a new Mayor and Council was elected in Town, partially based on the previous town’s administrative attempt to annex El Prado, Highway 64, and the airport environs. El Prado fought back as did adjacent acequias and the “District.” Activists believed that the Cordova-Peralta cabal, a shoestring operation, was an ill-advised attempt aimed at benefitting los politicos y privados even as the mayor and council had knuckled under to the Coop’s E911 Command Center movida.
Judge McElroy ruled against the Cordova cabal, as did the voters when they elected County Commissioner Dan Barrone, a resident and business owner on Highway 64, as the new mayor. The candidate had moved his address to a house in Town for the sake of pro-forma legalities. The Mayor’s duly appointed manager, Rick Bellis, reportedly rents a house at Barrone’s Olguin Compound off Lower Las Colonias.
Behind the scenes in Taos, another movida, long planned, has been implemented. The economically progressive commissioner Tom Blankenhorn, once a moderate republican, who re-registered as a democrat to run against the “Beaver,” one Nick Jaramillo years ago, prevailed over the Desmontes candidate Floyd Archuleta, thanks to the candidacy of the indefatigable and famed animal activist, Pennie Wardlow, who squeezed enough votes away from Floyd to elect Tom. Once ensconced as Commissioner, the mild-mannered Blankenhorn proceeded to work out the LUDC, which critics claim puts an unfair burden on local landowners, who must hire professionals for minor tasks. Blankenhorn is all about attorneys, hydrologists, and engineers.
But the real object of the political power broker has arrived in the form of an alliance with long time water broker “Painter” John, Tele Gonzales, and an acquiescent District water and sanitation board in El Prado. While the Commissioner himself merely represents El Prado, Blueberry Hill, Arroyo Seco, El Salto, Desmontes, and Arroyo Hondo, his alliance with Painter means the District controls development on Highway 64, what with the Abeyta-Taos Pueblo Water Settlement furnishing the dough for the District’s purchase of 575 afy of water. That’s a surplus of 475 afy, meaning the rest can be used for wells and pipeline development, and critics say the location of a Lowes, Super Walmart, a Hooters, or a casino and golf course in El Prado or whatever.
Currently the “District” leases water rights to Las Lunas and Belen. Painter and his attorney Jim Brockman are playing the game at the big table in the downstream Rio Grande environs. In the County’s haste to help developers, the Commission, including Blankenhorn and Barrone, managed to avoid last year voting on their own Public Welfare Advisory Committee’s recommendation to protest against Abeyta guru Palemon Martinez’s movida to purchase 100 afy for a mitigation well to be built on his own property up in El Salto. The well allegedly guarantees the flow of the Rio Lucero, on which ditch, for now, Palemon serves as Mayordomo. His vecinos say he’s using the fed and state money, like influence at the county, to build not only a public but also a private legacy. Even Palemon knows he can’t take it with him.
All these water rights purchases and transfers come at the expense of Questa area parciantes and watershed beneficiaries, due to the Abeyta Settlement. Millions of dollars will be turned loose in Taos County on March 31, 2017 if implementation takes place as scheduled. The sources of the funds, both state and federal, come from the taxpayers, those who benefit from and suffer at the hands of the local power brokers.
The dots are easy to connect in the El Prado environs. Painter was a neighbor of Fred Fair and Donald Rumsfeld, who converted Sunshine’s Gallagher Ranch into a goldmine through questionable claims during the Red River adjudication process. Joey Perovich of El Prado lived in the house behind the Chevron Station and now benefits from contracts and water right use at the Town’s airport. Highway 64 business owner, Mayor Dan Barrone and his tenant, Town Manager Rick Bellis, are promoting this “regional development” project. El Prado’s county commissioner, Tom Blankenhorn, is the active hand and promoter for developers at the ski valley while doing the bidding of Painter John and the Highway 64 coup organizers.
One might ask, as surely Jody Cisneros will, aka Joe Mondragon, why did the Commissioner and Mayor of Questa Mark Gallegos vote to drop a protest when the proposed transfer sucks the water out of his neighbors’ watershed? Right now the Town of Taos and its good old boys act as Questa’s fiscal agent because the village can’t produce an audit acceptable to DFA. Former Questa Mayor Esther Garcia, the good Ortega, pleaded with Commissioners to protest both the Palemon and Painter transfers. But her successor, Mayor Gallegos, voted against Questenos.
Commissioners from Ranchos de Taos and Llano Quemado and the Weimer/Taos Canyon, Penasco areas, Gabe Romero and Candyce O’Donnell kept the faith and voted to maintain the integrity of the legal process and the wholeness of the watersheds. (Commissioner Fambro is a Barrone/Blankenhorn man.) Gabe suggested El Prado share their abundance with Questa, which village suffers from a shortage and deficit owed to the OSE. But Painter John claims the OSE told him to “buy” not lease. Course the whole Abeyta agreement revolves around the “utopian” notion of “sharing.”
When county commissioners begin to play fast and loose with intra-County transfers, the courts and OSE may say that future hometown protests and cases filed against inter-county transfers, promoted by water brokers from Santa Fe and Albuquerque, will be weakened. Blankenhorn’s indirect approval of Palemon and direct support for Painter could create a legal slippery slope.
In a rambling address to the commission Tuesday last, El Prado’s spiritual mayordomo, Arsenio Cordova, whose son Willie works for the EPDWS District, blessed the Painter John and Commissioner Blankenhorn movida aimed at de facto control of Highway 64 and the airport project. “If we don’t annex it, the Town will,” said the Chicano, ominously to the Friction off the record. “Then we’ll have to put up with Bellis as “regional director.”
Blankenhorn told El Salto’s Stella Gallegos that he was a promoter of “regionalism” or water planning for the valley. Come election time, he may find himself in violation of the political covenant he made with the residents of Arroyo Seco and El Salto. Just as Fermin Torres was ousted as mayordomo on his ditch in Seco/El Salto, so we hear Palemon Martinez’s star is fading. Up in El Salto the sun sets early during this winter of their discontent. The parciantes and members of the MDWCA are looking for their pitchforks.
Ever since the Chicano Barber disappeared from behind the red and white barber pole in El Prado, the Chicano Chamber has been meeting at the local cultural center, Las Pistoleras. Issues about water rights, land grants, village sovereignty and the ethnic struggle are analyzed and debated. Films on Reies Tijerina, Cesar Chavez, and the ultimate action figure, Machete, are seen as symbolic of La Cultura’s transformative renaissance. For now Las Pistoleras appear to be backing the District as that tail wags the dog in Taos.
Caveat: El Machete’s mood, mis amigos, can change in a heartbeat. If you want to know how this story ends, watch the movie, “Chinatown.” Or maybe “Salt of the Earth.”