The Gallup City Cemetery suffered damage from the July 24th downpour.

Assistant City Manager Jon DeYoung told the Gallup Sun that 100 graves were damaged by flooding. One-hundred of them caved in.

DeYoung said the repairs will include adding more dirt to fill in the sites. He estimated that the repairs would be completed in the next few weeks.

City of Gallup Parks Director Vincent Alonzo went into more detail about what it takes to recover graves after the storm.

“Right now I have a crew out there — What they’re doing is, wherever it’s sunk in, they’re having to refill and make new grave mounds,” he said. “Wherever the headstones have sunk we’re having to lift them...

Part Three of the follow up to the story “A century of federal indifference left generations of Navajo homes without running water”

The absence of water cascades. In addition to complicating every step of daily life — from washing hands, to making stew or having a cup of tea, to doing the dishes afterwards, it drives up illnesses and complicates public health issues. No water meant a school wasn’t built in Torreon, and other buildings were abandoned because of dry taps. Businesses didn’t open, medical clinics couldn’t operate, jobs drifted away.

Whitehorse Lake Chapter and Pueblo Pintado had both been denied housing — the square, stucco-sided houses with peaked roofs...

Week ending Friday, July 23, 2021

 

Climate Disasters

Atmospheric experts concede that they were shocked by the intensity of the recent European floods and the North American heat dome, saying their computer models are not yet able to project such extremes. Some scientists say the next official predictions due out in August by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will already be outdated when released due to the rapidly intensifying climate emergency. Freak weather events are now happening with greater frequency, ranging from the heaviest rain on record in parts of Japan and China this month to the record-breaking June heat across parts of India, Pakistan and...

Prairie Grouse Endangered in Eastern New Mexico, West Texas; Threatened in Northeast Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado

ALBUQUERQUE — In response to a 2016 petition and lawsuit from the Center for Biological Diversity and partners, on May 26 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to protect the lesser prairie chicken under the Endangered Species Act.

The Service determined that lesser prairie chickens in the disappearing shinnery oak prairies of eastern New Mexico and West Texas qualify as endangered. Populations of the bird in other grassland habitats in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado qualify as threatened.

“We’re thrilled to see these magnificent dancing birds...