In much of New Mexico, the oil and gas industry is all around. The pump jacks dot our landscapes, meadows are interrupted by lakes of fracking fluid, we pass the trucks transporting crude on the highway and we smell industrial fumes. Being a state with ample industrial infrastructure, I assumed that safety was of the utmost importance. How else could we live in New Mexico surrounded by it? Turns out, Martinez administration cut corners on required safety inspections to the benefit of an industry that’s given over $1 million to her campaigns.
This is the story we expose in our new ad, titled “Rules.” It highlights how, after receiving large sums in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry, the Martinez administration created a fictitious safety inspector, allowing almost 500 new oil and gas wells to skip required safety inspections, putting workers, communities and the environment at risk. We cannot allow this kind of corruption to continue in communities all across our state.
By law, oil and gas companies are supposed to be inspected, to be sure that companies follow the rules and keep our workers, communities and environment safe. That didn’t stop the Martinez administration from skipping this step. When the Albuquerque Journal uncovered the scandal, 85% of the sites that Martinez allowed to skip inspections failed them.
New Mexicans had high hopes for Susana Martinez, but she’s let us down and polling shows us that the public is seeing her true, self-serving agenda. It’s clear that Martinez will do anything to benefit her big corporate friends at the expense of our air, land, water and health. Join us to say it’s time to Put New Mexico First. Sign our petition now.»