50 years doesn’t change need to balance jobs and environment
In a 1971 interview with Tony Hillerman, newly elected Gov. Bruce King talked about two kinds of erosion.
On the family ranch in Stanley, he used to ride a horse trail that branched off the Santa Fe Trail. “When I was a boy you could jump your horse out of it anywhere. But when I got home from the Army, from World War II, it had washed ten feet deep and 30 or 40 foot across.” He knew it would take years to repair the damage and made a mental note that it should never have happened.
Then he told Hillerman, still a UNM academic with two published novels and not yet famous, about a graduation ceremony he attended in a rural high school. It was a happy day, “but you look at that diploma in that boy’s hand, you can’t help thinking what it really means. It means he’s going to have to leave home now because there’s just no job around there for him.”
The challenge he saw as governor was balancing environmental protection with jobs. “We want to set up a body of regulations that will protect what we’ve got here, keep it from being destroyed and wasted and torn up, but we want to get it done without making it harder for a man to get a job,” he said.
The issue then was strip mining, which had devastated West Virginia. King didn’t oppose the strip mining then under way for molybdenum in Questa and coal in the Four Corners, but he wanted the surface to be properly restored.
“We’ve got to deal with that problem with two ideas in our mind. If we let the land be ruined, it’s usually ruined forever,” he said. “But we can’t afford to forget the people who need a chance to make a living. You’ve got to decide how high the return has to be in terms of payroll to make it worthwhile to accept damage to the land.”
King established a commission to write comprehensive regulations for strip mining and timber cutting. He asked the federal government for a moratorium on development of coal-fired power in the Four Corners until better air quality regulations could be adopted.
“I’ve got four years in this office, and when I’m done with it one thing I’d like to have finished is a good, strong, sensible set of environmental laws” with property rights that didn’t “interfere too much with the economy.”
In his autobiography, “Cowboy in the Roundhouse: A Political Life,” King said he campaigned on education, which he thought needed improving at all levels. Teachers wanted a raise, and the shadow of a 1966 strike made him uneasy. He asked for a 7% increase; lawmakers approved 6%, and he took some heat.
When it became clear that schools around the state weren’t equitably funded, King’s administration pushed for and got an education funding formula to assure the poorest districts had the same support as rich districts.
If an agency needed fixing, King reached out to his vast network of friends and usually (not always) plucked the right person for the job. The “search committee” was in his head, and politics were personal. We’d all shaken hands with King at least once.
This was 50 years ago.
A pessimist might say we haven’t come very far. I say we have. King’s concerns moved through administrations and legislative sessions, and public servants addressed the latest wrinkle. That’s not failure, it’s reality.
In a state like New Mexico, we will always be trying to balance jobs and environmental protection. We will always need to improve education. Each generation thinks it’s seen the worst, but the struggle for balance is a constant. We stay vigilant, as the rancher keeps an eye on erosion.
This article originally appeared on Carlsbad Current-Argus: 50 years doesn’t change need to balance jobs and environment
