thank you governor for being here in the studio today thank you laura i'm delighted to be here so i have so many questions for you but environmental issues just don't get the attention they tend to deserve so even though i want to hear about covid and reproductive rights and some social issues we're sticking to the environment today perfect given the passage of the inflation reduction act i think it's on the mind of so many americans and certainly so many new mexicans and leadership in western states yeah so um this year's fires kind of jumping up to northern new mexico after hermit's peak and calf canyon the forest service is supposed to be releasing a review of their prescribed fire protocols and that might actually even come out this week before this airs what do you know about their plans or their conversations about prescribed fire what they what they committed to so we'll see if it's in this um actual presentation to us about a plan which is this notion that they don't adopt their prescribed burns forest management or forest health reviews in this new extreme drought environment and provide no notice to states about taking fuel particularly through prescribed burns out of the forest is problematic as we saw right it was both fires both caused uh by negligence frankly gross negligence of the federal government so my expectation is true to their word that notice requirements are in that collaboration requirements about what constitutes getting the fuel out and that while i think there's a group of new mexicans who have little tolerance for ever doing prescribed burns i think the notion given the vast acreage we're talking about in all of our national forests across the country that that may be an unrealistic effort particularly when you look at some of the terrain but uh in the spring and windy seasons and frankly in the heat of the summer when the temperature is so high and there's no humidity we're expecting it to be very weather-centric so winter and we're expecting like i said you know very specific notice and then we want to be part of the science you know what would constitute the parameters and then what states go in what order and how uh and i'm expecting that at the very least but they have a lot of climate change work in order to catch up to the reality of today across the globe and certainly in their work as a federal entity responsible for forest health yeah and do you feel like the federal government has been responsive and transparent when it comes to the fires the recovery you know transparency is uh tough uh because it is when folks get frustrated uh for government for any reason i share that frustration but government by its nature is sort of a large can be an unwieldy sort of organization and nothing more unwieldy than maybe the pentagon in and of itself and then the federal government as a whole so they were clear they took responsibility the president said unequivocally to america and 10 new mexicans our fault we will do everything to fix it and expect more from us that's happening but it is an institution that doesn't work well with being flexible and on the ground in a meaningful way if you're a new mexican and primarily if you're living in the areas affected so let's just focus on mora county but that's not the only county affected but they have been literally i think the technical word hammered by these floods it is a slow arduous and by design find a way for you not to be eligible for a program not the reverse and that has been incredibly frustrating and mind-numbing i had a report today and uh they're clear that i'm not happy i'm not happy about the lack of immediacy so this is where the state and you'll see us we've been purchasing and buying livestock feed and you know getting food and we're looking at getting wood and temporary housing because if we wait for fema or there are other programs it'll be several years and that's untenable and i need the senate to act on legislation that's in front of them because this allows us to sort of ignore to some degree these arduous processes and to jumpstart recovery in the state so it's both they've taken responsibility they're they're on the ground still i have 300 people from fema alone on the ground here but it should translate in my view to a lot more debris removal and a whole lot more help for new mexicans so they're gonna the state's gonna have to come in and deliver that for them and we will right so as governor you have one role to play and one set of responsibilities that's separate from the federal government but the federal government does control a lot of land in the state and makes a lot of decisions for us um i'm thinking in particular not just about forest management but whole tech this private company that wants to bring the nation's commercial nuclear waste here is there a way for the state to be stopping this from happening i believe so i want to be really clear to your viewers it's not an easy or straightforward path i mean the reality is is that the federal policy makers and the federal government knew that no state really was going to stand up and volunteer to take the most dangerous waste from all of our nuclear energy and nuclear power plants so not just but spent fuel rods which i think most people are familiar you don't want those in your backyard and when we were doing the waste isolation pilot plant and we were doing that in the 80s actually i used to work there in the 80s right out of college i did it in albuquerque because we were still drilling but the whole purpose and promise was that new mexicans would never be subjected to having no role or choice in the kinds of nuclear waste that would be disposed of at whip well fast forward to 2022 and what we have is a new federal structure that says states really don't get to decide an independent commission gets to the side and of course they are leaning towards deciding that new mexico will be the recipient and that the company that they will work with to do that transport and management is a company called holtech so you should expect us to do the things that other states have done past legislation that says never have the attorney general already is filing lawsuits we do have control over permits and like efforts so we are poised to fight it and to really ask the federal government here's an option that they have that they have not undertaken because we keep fighting about where it should go why don't we do the research to both safely store it where it is and clean it up where it is and potentially reuse it and given that this is a state that knows about innovation with two labs we'd be happy to dedicate our labs to work that would make a difference around the country it is a national issue to be responsible for in my view this is the best way for new mexicans to work through this problem for the country without just being told that we have to take on something that i don't believe has the right safety standards or aspects or transparency by a company that we ought to be told we have to deal with so we're going to fight it and my intention of course is to win but i want new mexicans to know it's a heavy lift because they created a system that doesn't allow me to directly say no so we have to find other legal avenues to do that so similarly kind of reminding me the defense department in the state are at odds over the cleanup of pfas contaminated groundwater at places like canon space yeah yeah so you know i feel like there are a lot of conversations around the country about states rights that kind of drift into other social issues oftentimes and yet i feel like with whole tech with the defense department um you know here we as a state are trying to say you have to clean this up or you can't bring this waste here what sorts of tools do we have for instance with with the pfas cleanup well one that i think is quite fascinating that you are probably aware of but i don't know about our viewers so we have the military who shouldn't surprise us and i i don't mean to disrespect uh that we need these military bases we do we want them here but we've had some issues where including the jet fuel spill right here at kirtland and we don't have the kind of robust i mean you think about it it's congressional efforts it's uh uh investments from congress that get to the bases and the right military branch to do cleanup then it's having the states take a significant role and it's constant right to get them to be accountable now the same is going to be true for this forever chemical that is a result of fire fighting foam that they were using but here's an interesting vehicle that only new mexico is using and that's where we sort of separate the roles of the federal government so we have the federal environmental protection agency they agree with us that the pfos a forever chemical a carcinogen a toxin an environmental pollutant hugely problematic needs to be not just attenuated but cleaned up and addressed and now we need to set new requirements right so that nothing is safe right we know that and they've done that zero is safe in any of our uh water well they're suing their own federal partners that's a very interesting dynamic that i think could prove to be very effective for states like new mexico to have another tool in that toolbox and then the reality is is that a state like ours has to find more resources because while we fight these battles where you might get money on the back end we need to be cleaning it up on the front end and that's clear now more than ever states need the kind of leadership and ability to do more of this work themselves and then the federal government will come in the back end because while we wait we have pollutants that are migrating in places we do not want them last good thing you're not going to let them use these chemicals anymore and so frankly new mexico for the rest of the united states is setting into standards that are going to protect other americans because of our effective leadership and i'm really proud of that but it still takes far too long and it shouldn't and we need that and i'm hoping that this new federal law the inflation reduction act and this administration is really going to kind of jumpstart how they actually put resources and tools on the ground to help states frankly clean up what we often refer to as superfund sites they're slow and we can't tolerate that as a state anymore and we won't yeah the the pivas issue kind of in many ways reminds me of you know communities that 70 years after the manhattan project or decades after the cold war is over are still dealing with sites uranium mining sites that haven't been cleaned up so when i think about the future of clovis or portales or some of these places like are they in 70 80 years still going to be grappling with this pollutant it could which is uh something i have zero tolerance for and uh you know i talked to secretary wilson and said look you got to take responsibility i didn't win that then but i want it with the biden administration and uh being really aggressive being assertive about protecting our water air and soil does make the difference and we're not going to let them do that and the way that i know for sure is because not only do i have another partner that's identified all those liability issues but given the kind of resources that we have available we can do upfront investing and then our job and it also motivates other policy makers over the long haul to make sure that the federal government replenishes what we spend see that's critical because once if you just keep fighting it then you end up in the same strategy that you just identified the tularosa basin is still waiting for both what i would call reparations to individuals who have been harmed in their families you get chromosome damage that last generation after generation frankly forever if you've been exposed uh to uh these radioactive materials and they had direct exposure over and over and over again from testing before the manhattan project or as part of the manhattan project so maybe a better way to describe that so yes lean in do the work up front have the partners that identify the liability on the front end because that's that proving part that has created these 20 30 40 50 60 70 years because generally speaking federal government really isn't liable we've set a new pattern they are really liable and we're going to hold them to it and new mexico is leading in that front right so switching gears a little bit four years ago in 2018 scientists said we had about a decade to get to net zero emissions to over catastrophic impacts from climate change we're already seeing catastrophic impacts your administration has taken strides on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas industry in particular is that enough it is at a very important start but no we have to do everything and i think that's been part of the dilemma is that we've spent so much time trying to figure out you know one thing we are in a crisis climate change is real we really have past i mean scientists that threshold were telling everyday americans and reporting to congress in the 60s that we were in trouble just in the context of using gasoline and the number of cars on the road in the 60s this is how we ended up with you know smog reductions 60s 70s and 80s and they made a huge difference but we focused on one thing in one way in a couple of states in particular that had large population centers and a lot of driving like california in los angeles we didn't think about this as a national international agenda so i do think we are now clear that it is an international agenda and that the entire globe is going to have to do this on every single front so the methane rules and the no flaring requirements even making sure that we're recycling water that we want renewable energy not diesel engines powering right our wells and all of the work going on at each drill site closing up abandoned wells all of these and more are critical for making sure that we're reducing and minimizing all of our emissions in oil and gas now we've got to figure out transportation agriculture we've got to have lots of conversations and significant policies on consumption americans are some of the high i think we are the highest consumers of energy per person in the world and in the industrialized nation that's not sustainable i think the innovation here can be very productive for a state like new mexico so you know we're meeting our targets for renewable energy we have the largest wind uh farm in north america we're the cheapest place for solar we've got more than 12 000 jobs in solar we added more jobs in solar last year than any other state i mean we're doing all the things that create those transitions we need to do more and i'm very excited actually again about the inflation reduction act because it's 370 billion 20 billion when you add the extra five that are us senators got in the legislation over the finish line for water we're going to need all of it and thinking about how to get carbon out of the atmosphere thinking about other cleaner ways to have access to energy to maybe doubling our efforts and knowing that we can meet those targets i want new mexico to be net zero by 2050 i have to have a lot of strategies in play to do that it can't just be where right by 2045 utilities uh 2050 world co-ops i think we might beat that 2050 actually by all of our partners but we're gonna have to do a lot more and so you should expect us to have again we've had very robust you know investments in environmental policies and incentives including clean car standards on a climate force task force climate change task force uh making sure that we that we're meeting and joining the us climate alliance that we're going to meet the paris accords and as you know new mexico has been identified as a leading sub-national which just means you may not be the president of the united states but as a state in and of yourself you're leading the world in policies it can really make a difference we're going to need more trees and more healthy right good soil to help us draw carbon out of the atmosphere all of the above so one of the priorities that you identified this year was hydrogen development so how does that square with emissions reductions it has a huge impact and it's an area where you know folks have concerns and i really value that input and we got a lot of good input during the legislative session what we want is the right transitions but they're transitions you don't want to go from one that may have some issues to another and hydrogen is such a large body of effort some hydrogen producing efforts which take natural gas as an example and use that in a way that we're not using gasoline so we've moved up in terms of making sure that we have fewer emissions and certainly if we could do that for air travel we've got a company that says they can and you know we're watching that innovation i think there are folks on both sides of that research that are giving us good information hard to say today that it's going to transform the that we're never going to have to use jet fuel again it'd be great if we could say that but we ought to be looking and leaning i need hydrogen in new mexico to look like this and when a bridge washes out right i could just drive a hundred miles every time or i could out of the way or i could build a new bridge so we're building new bridges this is a bridge to get to the other side but eventually i get to figure out why i still have all that flooding and i got to mitigate in much more dramatic ways we want it to be the lowest carbon intensity we want real innovation i want to lead so that water use becomes a significant issue that you want to do that here show us that you do that here in other ways and i think being a leader in those innovations creates yet other transitions yet to be identified what i don't think we want here or anywhere in these transitions is to go from one fossil fuel environment holistically to another without recognizing we're improving improving improving while we have enough renewable energy so that we don't need transitions anymore and the quicker we do both the safer we are and the more we've done to save the planet and my expectation is is that every single policy does exactly that which is why i'm leaving the hydrogen hub because i don't want another state with the federal government to tell us that we should minimize our transitions that we should accept whatever we know today i don't want that here i think new mexicans should feel like they've got leadership in a place to make it the very best it can be and the money that gets spent here by the feds is to showcase that that transition can be shorter and it can be greener that's what we want and i want that to happen in all the states around us because these borders really are invisible lines when we're talking about climate change so that's really important to me as a leader in a state that deserves the best environmental protections anywhere in the country where in the world so in addition to contributing to climate change and causing environmental and public health impacts the oil and gas industry does also boost the economy and i'm curious with this big budget surplus we have what money can sustainably be put into reducing emissions cleaning up that industry and really making sure that communities are able to deal with an increasingly challenging future no it's a really important topic because we have a tendency to really ask for accountability and innovation money in state government in the environment department and the other department that's involved in oil and gas oversight is the energy minerals and natural resources department and uh given both record revenues and that we need to have not just these balances there's no balances when we're talking about environmental protections right we can have enough energy to meet our needs and export and we don't have to sacrifice all of our environmental protections particularly at the site or the source where typically we have rural communities who without our support aren't going to get attention to those public health issues and they deserve it and require it both so here in the same way we did early childhood set up funds that don't have to be re-litigated every year that allow us to make real-time investments into these communities in particular you know we did that with the energy transition act right we said as we do this transition and we move from coal-fired uh plants we're gonna have job issues and economic issues there are impacts and to say that there aren't means that we're not dealing with right lifting up in its entirety these communities so we put 40 million 20 million directly to workers 20 million that goes to the community to think about their economic futures so you can clean up you can do more air quality monitoring we can make sure that our methane monitoring innovation is the best in the world we can put those jobs there you know we want to be the first state in the nation to have uh you get alerts on your cell phone when there's a and where we're in process so that you'll know where a methane leak is and you'll also know how long it took us to get it fixed and who's responsible so that you have that kind of transparency you want to empower a local community tell them what's happening in their backyard that's real empowerment and we have folks who are willing to help us with that i mean i do it'll sound like it doesn't go together but in fact a lot of that innovation is happening in this industry itself and while i want you know the objective review i need that innovation and it's powerful in this space big funds lasts more than one fiscal cycle and it really identifies that we're paying attention particularly to these communities and we're cleaning up while we're in these transitions and i'm really excited about that and all of our economic sectors laura are over performing and they're going to need to because when more than 50 of your revenue is coming from one energy sector you have to think about very meaningful ways in addition to the renewable energy sector but other economic sectors that get you there and we are and we're showcasing that that can be done it's not an overnight enterprise but it's the right set of investments that really do finally resolve you have to diversify your economy that makes us greener and cleaner and safer and while you do that you need to put funds together that will last right legacy funds that deal with legacy pollution that are really clear about protecting new mexicans now and well into the future so i wanted to pivot to water planning your administration's first state engineer john d antonio he resigned citing a lack of financial support i'm curious if that's changed and three years into your four years almost into your administration what advances what progress have you made on water policy in the state i think we've made considerable advancements but to your point the state engineer's office has been woefully understaffed and underfunded for well more than a decade um before 2019 when i took office as governor and primarily i think not because policymakers both parties don't care about water but there's an interesting set of circumstances that cause new mexico policy makers not to think about it in my view in the right way one water in every arid state is a lot about fighting over water right and water jurisdiction and water ownership and so basically the state engineers office has been transformed into a large litigation office and we need it because other states sue us like texas for water and so we are constantly involved in water litigation we have plenty of internal water litigation uh if you look at all just the water settlements in communities primarily those that are impacted by sovereign water rates and we have settled a record number of these uh sovereign rights water cases so that we are assuring water delivery we're protecting sovereign water rights and we're putting frankly and we need to hundreds of millions of dollars into assuring safe reliable water uh in a variety of places so we're getting to the laguna water settlement that just got sent to the feds you know the amit water settlement is about done in terms of the money that it needed but with the big first chunk early in my administration 2019 100 million water settlements going all the way up the rio grande corridor those are recurring with those sovereign nations uh so when you're thinking about whether or not a little community like cuyamongay is going to have access to water these are critical aspects that have to get done and they require hundreds of people working on them and we don't have hundreds of people and they are literally in court or doing hearings every single day so that has mired policy making um and sort of what i would call leaning forward in the state engineer's office and it's a fair criticism by those about what's happened so we've asked the legislature we got some real investments last year we need to transcend from that environment into a whole new policy arm most of the policy work in just one year has been at trying to figure out why we run out of water so take chama as an example and there's no mystery here we didn't invest for 50 years in water infrastructure and it is all broken and when it's broken and water doesn't reach its end users guess what people do they put illegal taps into a water system and not certainly you know mad at that individual because i understand it you need water but that cannot be the system including illegal septic i don't even know if you can call it a system tank well that has eroded water viability in every single community we ran out of water in cuba we ran out of water in chama today is the first full day that we didn't actually have a generator burnout in filtering water in las vegas we're fixing dams every dnf dam in new mexico dry and wet that's every dam so the policy actually first is we need to fix failing infrastructure because you can decide any number of water conservation and water innovation water capturing motivating factors that actually get people to use less but if they never could get it in the first place or it's so unreliable we aren't going to move new mexicans into that arena so this whole next year is finishing all of that water infrastructure so the federal monies well over so far 100 million and well more than that is coming the state legislatures put in 30 plus so tens of millions of dollars that's now out the door we'll finish up the settlements and uh the only work now that we were able to get that done is we have to figure out ways to conserve the water that we have to be really clear about how much water we aren't going to have we have to make the federal government do what they need to do with the colorado river i think they are now and having money creates a different set of opportunities for states who were just going to fight and now you know having resources does give you an opportunity to be innovative new mexicans should expect that a lot more is coming out of the state engineer's office but to be fair to the former state engineer i don't think he was wrong one iota about a set of conditions we all inherited there and it's really time to transcend that so the governor has a lot of power in terms of setting the agenda for the legislature and i'm curious if you were re-elected you know where does climate change and water planning fit on your agenda in terms of nudging the state legislature next year if we don't have water there isn't anything we can do we have to wherever the funding gaps are again as i talked about the fires the state has an opportunity i mean these are once-in-a-lifetime sets of opportunities we need to take them the water conservation fund and the interstate stream commission are examples of forward thinking in former democratic administrations about you can't wait a year when you need water infrastructure money right when people need water they need it so that was really back then a very creative way to create a fund and to put water out but it's small and the way in which they replenish that fund is also too small to deal with our rapidly changing environment and our much hotter drier environment that is not going to stop and i hear new mexicans all the time now say you know these are record rainfalls it's been a productive monsoon season but if you think this season is the biggest monsoon season ever not true and if you think that this was enough to eradicate decades of a ridification here also not enough and it's not just happening here it's happening everywhere and the west is particularly impacted which means where we get other water isn't coming to us we have to put sizeable resources into funds that allow us to in real time invest strategies that are developed by state and by tech by the labs and by our own state engineer and deploy them in real time legislatures should set those parameters in a fund and then give us the fund and make sure that we're allocating all the time but i also want this session to be about healthcare delivery and behavioral health and education of public safety and we have made we've planted the seeds and our garden is growing but none of that is mature and to stop doing those investments today would be a disaster for a state that still needs so much in those areas so i have bold and big plans for this upcoming legislative session where i think by the time we're in session if i'm lucky enough to be in that position again we'll have four billion dollars to save to invest and to utilize in meaningful ways to solve whole problems not to sort of nibble around the edges it's an incredible exciting time for new mexico it is so i'm curious you know climate change touches on all of our lives and makes existing challenges harder even behavioral health care or any kind of challenge that we face in new mexico is exacerbated by climate change yet it isn't something that climbs to the top of many people's priorities or even political conversations and i'm curious if you think that is going to change in our lifetime i have to believe it's going to change in our lifetime because there's not an option i think that what we don't say out loud so i'm going to say it out loud we're already surpassing the time frame for minimizing or eliminating what many scientists would identify as cataclysmic catastrophic problems these wildfires are an indication these hurricanes and flooding these are all significant issues that aren't going to stop they're just going to get worse rising sea levels and frankly all of the the melting of our glaciers are significant issues and even the permafrost aspects are significant public health issues that i think people aren't paying attention to in terms of we're now exposed to things that have been locked in a frozen tundra that like covid can pose incredibly significant infectious disease and disease public health issues that are gonna require real attention that's past now we have to have sufficient resources to protect people around the globe to deal with famine having the ability to have enough water and to grow enough food to really think about how we shift our agricultural practices same in new mexico we've got several million tens of millions out in grants to think about how we do ag differently and how we grow more food and make it more readily available to new mexicans all of that has to shift right now i think that uh i think the fact that we have 370 billion dollars in a brand new piece of federal legislation is test amount to the fact that the conversation hasn't just shifted the investments that cause us to do things differently so that my grandchild has the opportunity to be outside and to live where she chooses in a world that's fast approaching right that jumping off a cliff situation i'm feeling much more confident and i don't want to minimize how tough it's going to be all around the world but it's why new mexico needs to to keep leading and i have every intention of doing that in every possible way well thank you governor for joining me i appreciate it it's been lovely laura thank you very much and thank you for caring about our planet thanks