Gallup Sun

CONCLUSION: A deal climate change could bust

As part of the settlement that made the Navajo-Gallup Project a possibility, the Navajo Nation shifted its priority date from 1868, when the reservation was established and among the earliest rights in the Colorado River Basin, to 1955.

“That’s yesterday, in terms of water rights,” Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, said.

Given that the system puts the newest rights at the top of the list to cut when faced with a shortage, that puts Navajo water supplies in the crosshairs when faced with ongoing drought and increasing aridification of the Southwest.

Flows in the entire Colorado...

Week ending Friday, June 4, 2021

Urban Microbiomes

Every city has been found to have its own unique “fingerprint” of viruses and bacteria that researchers say can probably be used by authorities to determine where someone is from with about a 90 percent accuracy. A team led by Cornell genomics expert Christopher Mason asked colleagues around the world to collect swabs from urban transport systems and conducted a genetic analysis on each. Besides finding that the larger the city, the more complex its diverse microbial life, they also discovered 10,928 viruses and 748 bacteria that were previously unknown to science. “I think it’s a wonderful affirmation of how much left we have...

With Fourth of July only 26 days away and drought conditions not getting any better, the Gallup City Council had a decision to make at its meeting June 8: To ban or not to ban— fireworks.

Gallup Fire Chief Jesus Morales and Fire Marshal Jon Pairett informed the council that the county and city’s drought conditions hadn’t changed since McKinley County Fire Chief Brian Archuleta last presented the findings to the county commissioners May 4. McKinley County is still in the D3 and D4 intensity zones according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Morales and Pairett advised the council to proclaim extreme drought and ban certain types of fireworks.

“The purpose of this proclamation is...

Online fraud and scams are digging into New Mexicans' bank accounts to the tune of $7 million in the last year.

The figure comes from the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center which said 837 of the stat's residents over the age of 60 lost over $7 million in 2020.

More than half of that amount - $3,880,981 - was lost due to confidence fraud, most commonly known as romance scams.

COVID-19 restrictions forced more older people to use the internet to shop and socialize, exposing them to scammers and criminals.

"The FBI and our partners work to investigate scams and crimes against older adults, but the keys are prevention and awareness," Special Agent in Charge Raul Bujanda of the...