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Editorial: Can NM’s nimby counties do without oil, gas, cash?
Editorial: Can NM’s nimby counties do without oil, gas, cash?By Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board
PUBLISHED: Sunday, November 16, 2014 at 12:02 am
NIMBY: Not In My BackYard. Opposition to the locating of something considered undesirable (as a prison or incinerator) in one’s neighborhood.
San Miguel County has placed restrictions so severe on oil and gas exploration and drilling that it might as well be a ban. Mora County has banned oil and gas extraction.
Why not expand the restrictions to the end user as well? Perhaps at their next county commission meetings, commissioners should also ban gasoline pumps. And furnaces. And public school funding. Because those are the kinds of products the oil and gas industry supplies and public services it funds. Almost one-third of the state’s general funds come from taxes and royalties paid by these companies.
It’s a textbook case on nimby-ism, expecting the rest of the state to accommodate the industry and send the fuel and cash north. But what happens if, as the industry fears, it sparks a wave of anti-development sentiment in other counties?