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While Chevron floods the media with massive public relations campaigns statewide touting community involvement, that allows it to evade responsibility for environmental damage inflicted on the communities of New Mexico.

The tentacles of Chevron鈥檚 corporate colonialism reach deep, manipulating state and local elected officials, the media and even compromising environmental groups. In the northern mountains Chevron is trying to neglect Superfund obligations to clean up mine wastes in Questa. In the southeast, the massive toxic brine and fracking pools along the Permian Basin have saturated the land and the poisonous liquid is seeping to the surface creating 20-acre toxic brine pools, sinkholes and even earthquakes.

Chevron and other big oil drillers lavish their shareholders with billions of dollars yearly while failing to take into account the massive environmental contamination caused by their operations. Now Big Oil wants New Mexico taxpayers to get into the business of cleaning up their mess under the guise of 鈥減roduced water.鈥� Regardless, Chevron continues to attempt to have New Mexico taxpayers foot the bill for cleaning up their messes.

Look what鈥檚 happening to environmental cleanup at the Questa mine, which was judicially mandated in a Superfund consent decree. Granite, Chevron鈥檚 Superfund contractor with over 150 employees, has wound down operations and removed its equipment off the mine site along the Red River. The RV parks in Questa are nearly vacant and the Chevron cheerleaders are left unemployed and in limbo pushing an irrelevant produced water petition (toxic water which they won鈥檛 drink). In a hypocritical stance, produced brine water promoters want taxpayers to clean up oil and gas corporations鈥� environmental mess while turning a blind eye to Chevron鈥檚 pollution in their own backyard.

Instead of demanding that Chevron clean up its environmental damage at the mine and tailings site, the mayor of Questa, in tandem with Kit Carson Electric Co-op (who the mayor works for), wants to break ground in May for a water-intensive, flammable and combustible green hydrogen plant next to Questa鈥檚 elementary school. This ill-conceived plan at taxpayers鈥� expense (a $231 million U.S. Department of Agriculture grant) will create maybe 12 jobs and use up to 31,000,000 gallons (95 acre feet) of water a year. In the midst of a prolonged drought, this massive groundwater depletion will result in many domestic wells going dry as well as the desertification of the entire area. The siphoning effect will also deplete acequias running north of Questa, Llano and Cerro, leaving farms and ranches dry.

The lack of water for a water-intensive project is enough for it to fall on its face; but there is more. The flammability and combustibility of green hydrogen are well documented yet greed and illusions of power are blindly driving this project. Placing this hydrogen gas plant next to our elementary school should be criminal and elected officials promoting this ill-fated plan should be recalled. The production and storage of hydrogen gas is highly dangerous and Kit Carson Electric and the village of Questa have no experience in any of these processes, yet greedy power brokers and petty politicians are willing to put people鈥檚 lives at risk.

Whether Chevron is pushing produced water, abandoning a Superfund site or fabricating illusions of a water-guzzling green hydrogen plant, its corporate strategy appears to be to obfuscate, deny and delay. Quid pro quo deals with local and state politicos, sponsorship of media and public relations campaigns, and the neutering of the Environmental Protection Agency and the New Mexico Environment Department can only be offset by an informed and educated public willing to hold this corporation accountable for the environmental destruction it has caused.

Juan Montes is a Chicano environmental justice advocate and is a concerned citizen de Questa.