Local News

Los Alamos National Laboratory director Charlie McMillan spent the good portion of his week in Washington and one of his stops was Capitol Hill where he testified at a hearing before a Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces.

McMillan used an interesting analogy when it came to describing the budget scenario at LANL.

“You may have seen the film 'Moneyball,' based on the book of the same name. When I lived in the Bay Area, the Oakland A’s turned baseball’s conventional wisdom on its ear," McMillan said in his testimony.

ALBUQUERQUE (AP) — Major stretches of river have already gone dry, farmers are leaving their land fallow, and cities are clamping down on water use, but things in New Mexico just went from bad to worse Thursday.
The latest map from federal forecasters shows exceptional drought has spread from a quarter of New Mexico to nearly 40 percent in just one week. At this time last year, less than one-tenth of the state was affected by what is considered the worst category of drought.
New Mexico — the nation’s fifth largest state — is in the worst shape of any state, and conditions have only intensified over the past seven days.
This week’s U.S. Drought Monitor shows a swath of red and dark red across New Mexico, indicating extreme and exceptional drought conditions. The ominous colors stretch up through the Midwest, showing conditions have also worsened over the past year in parts of Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
“These kinds of conditions will certainly persist for a while,” said Tim Shy, a senior forecaster with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque. “Even if we do get repeated rains over a long period of time, for them to crack the threshold and get us back out of the deep brown color is going to be pretty difficult indeed.”

A public meeting Wednesday on the Los Alamos Community Trail Plan drew 35 assorted hikers, dog walkers, runners, mountain bike riders, equestrians and residents living next to open space.

Long-time trail advocate Dorothy Hoard attended the meeting and liked what she saw.

“I was on the committee that set up the Trail Management Plan in 1994. We set up a trail network that was quite modest compared to this,” Hoard said. “Craig Martin is my hero.”

Attendees asked extensive questions during Open Space Specialist Craig Martin’s presentation and then dispersed to review and comment on 16 proposed projects.

Martin will use feedback from the meeting and an Open Forum discussion on the county’s website (losalamosnm.us) to prioritize projects toward implementing the plan.