January 31, 2024

Come to the Santa Fe City Council TONIGHT, Wednesday, Jan 31st, 6 pm, or call in

Previous letter (01/26/24): Update to The Call for Sanity, please help! / Come to the Santa Fe City Council Wednesday, Jan 31st, 6 pm

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Good morning! Welcome to those new to this list!

I Greg) am in Washington, about to attend a nuclear weapons industry conference, including some key individuals in government. My job here is to learn, cause some ripples, and meet with some of our allies and colleagues inside and outside this conference, in government and in NGO groups. Being here in the "belly of the beast" re-emphasizes the importance of local opposition. The federal government has been largely taken over by interests inimical to life and health.

So quickly, before this dog and pony show starts:

Please come to the Santa Fe City Council meeting TONIGHT, January 31st, at City Hall (200 Lincoln Ave., map) at 6 pm or a little later to a) meet with Trish, Bex, and others, and above all to b) show your support for a City resolution opposing all pit production at LANL. We will meet in the hallway to the immediate west of the council chambers. "Petitions from the Floor," when you can speak if you wish (please do!) is likely to be at approximately 7 pm (Mountain Time). You can call in as well, via Zoom: Go to santafenmgov.zoom.us/j/85063759298. *Attendees should use the “Raise Hand” function to be recognized by the Mayor to speak at the appropriate time.

Repeating from last time: As most of you know, Councilor Cassutt withdrew our proposed resolution against pit production at LANL, in part because she did not believe she had the votes, given the retirement of her co-sponsor Renee Villarreal. We have met with her along with brand-new councilor Alma Castro, and also with the Mayor and his new Senior Advisor Bernie Toon, a long-time Washington insider and lobbyist (including for Bechtel and LANL). These two articles will bring you up to date:

• Santa Fe city councilor pulls resolution opposing plutonium pit production at LANL, Carina Julig, Santa Fe New Mexican (w/comments by Greg), Jan 4, 2024
• Nuclear Option, Evan Chandler, Santa Fe Reporter, Jan 3, 2024

What we have not mentioned up to now is that Mayor Webber and his advisor Mr. Toon brought to our meeting a copy of the executive summary of the The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (Oct 2023). As discussed here, this report proposes a radical increase in scale and pace of modernization, along with an increase in the size of nuclear forces. This report makes the claim that unless the U.S. greatly increases its nuclear weapons efforts along with other strategic system acquisitions over the 2027-2035 period, "deterrence" vis-a-vis Russia and China will be lost. This happens to be the same period of time in which LANL is expected to make all the pits for what these authors hope will be an expanding U.S. nuclear arsenal. Absent new pits from LANL, no new warheads will be possible.

We believe Mr. Toon is helping Mayor understand that the "pit business" is big business, something Santa Fe can count on as a basis of its economy and growth. There's more on this topic, which we will leave to another time. Let's just say that it looks to us as if this resolution is being brought forward in the nick of time. So to repeat, please don't hang back and please come on Wednesday evening! Some central talking points:

• We don't want delay or evasion. We want the City to oppose all pit production at LANL, now. This resolution is not about a new site-wide environmental impact statement (which NNSA is already doing). It is not about non-proliferation. It is not about cleanup, although halting pit production would greatly speed removal of legacy waste. It is not about "workers' rights," regarding which the City has no jurisdiction whatsoever. It is not about empty "support" for the Tularosa Basin Downwinders, which the City is not going to actually pay. It is a non-binding resolution that says something about the City itself. It says the City wants to remain "The Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis," not the City that got sucked into the same black hole that engulfed that sad military tool, Robert Oppenheimer. It says Santa Fe does not want to be the city that "learned to stop worrying and love the bomb." It says Santa Fe doesn't believe in a future "Plutopia" for its economic development paradigm.

• We are asking for the resignation of Mr. Toon, whose $119,000/year salary appears to be an unnecessary City expense. Regardless of his other DC experience, we believe Mr. Toon's former role as Vice President and Manager of Governmental Affairs for Bechtel disqualifies him for any City role bearing on the future of Santa Fe.

Bechtel, formerly the world's largest engineering and construction company, not only was a major part of LANL management from 2006 to 2018 but also is now part of the team managing Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as well as the team managing the Pantex and Y-12 nuclear weapons production sites. Bechtel has a major role in the troubled Sentinel ICBM, the largest civil works project in the U.S. since the completion of the interstate highway system. The Sentinel system comprises the entire "market" for LANL pits for the foreseeable future. Bechtel has been more or less deeply involved with the CIA and various "Deep State" machinations for its entire post-1945 existence. Bechtel lobbied for, and gained lucrative contracts from, the Iraq War. (Please see Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story: The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the World by Layton McCartney and The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World, by Santa Fe's own Sally Denton).

• Will Santa Fe be a city run by and for Santa Feans, or a city run by politicos serving the interests of the federal government, which is powerfully interested in pit production? The resistance to actually opposing pit production shows how important it is to do so.

• The City of Santa Fe will suffer considerable reputational damage by being associated with nuclear weapons production, and plutonium. Some possibilities will be foreclosed, while other bad possibilities related to plutonium and nuclear weapons will open, as is already happening. One dirty industry attracts others.

• We have already discussed the local impacts on many occasions -- the perpetuation and increasing of inequality, impacts to housing markets, traffic congestion, fiscal solvency (bedroom communities cost money), water resources, waste haulage, the dreadful impact on skilled labor markets, the proposed new transmission line to LANL through the semi-wild and culturally-priceless Caja del Rio, the inappropriate type and poor quality of residential construction under LANL "boomtown" conditions (viz: ugly cheap apartment buildings), access to affordable, timely services, and so on.

Please come tonight if you can! Pack the Council chambers!

Greg