March 17, 2020

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Please write or call your Santa Fe city councilor and/or ask your friends to do so: "No LANL in Santa Fe;" and delay choosing a developer until City government can function more normally

Action items, this letter:

• If in Santa Fe: urgently write or call your City councilor and any other councilors you may know (contact information). Messages:
• "No LANL in Santa Fe." Use your words. (Background, talking points on the Midtown project)
• Adopt a resolution preventing LANL or its parent NNSA from participating in the Midtown project (draft, submitted to Council Feb. 26)
• Adopt a resolution requesting a Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) for LANL (draft, submitted to Council Feb. 26)
• In your calls and letters, condemn industrial plutonium processing and manufacture of plutonium warhead cores ("pits") at LANL; reject nuclear pork-barrel and its specious "economic development" promises

• If you know anyone in Santa Fe, ask them to make these calls.

Dear New Mexico friends –

The action portion of this message is similar to our March 10 letter. Please see the action items above!

There is this added bit of news, received in an emailing from the City, which makes our request very urgent:

"The Midtown Redevelopment Evaluation Committee has made its recommendation for the most qualified developer to the Governing Body [City Council], who will meet with the developer in an executive session on March 25 to get clarification and ask questions before moving forward with an exclusivity agreement."

The City is very close to formally selecting a developer. We do not know who this developer is, or what the roles our nuclear weapons agency (NNSA) and its LANL contractor (Triad, LLC) might play in his or her proposal, right now or in the future.

At this point, there is zero transparency as to what this project really is. The proposed components, "values," and "visions" comprise a large, vague smorgasbord from which many different outcomes could materialize. The process is entirely secret.

We remain very concerned about a possible NNSA or LANL presence in this project. LANL's work is nearly all nuclear weapons related. It is a bomb lab and unless we can stop it, is about to be a production plant -- perhaps soon a failed production plant. We do not want the City to enable nuclear weapons production.

Separately, we also do not believe it is wise to proceed with this project under current a) pandemic and b) incipient economic recession conditions.

We hope you will contact the City Council ASAP and convince your friends to do so as well, expressing these and/or related supporting views if you share them.

In two emails, Lydia wrote to the City Council,

In view of the current COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis facing the nation, the State of New Mexico, and the City of Santa Fe, we are requesting that no further work be conducted on the Santa Fe Midtown (Campus) District Project at this time, and until further notice.

The duty and highest priority of the City Council at this time is to provide the best prevention, protection, health care and welfare for the citizens of the City of Santa Fe.

We appreciate your concern, attention and actions on behalf of the City of Santa Fe, and ask a response to this request by March 20, 2020.

In prayers for safety, health, and peace for our City, our nation, and the world, we remain,

and

The coronavirus pandemic is a national emergency that is already changing our society and economy, to a degree and in ways we do not yet understand. We cannot be sure that yesterday's financial guarantees will be solid tomorrow, or that any given developer or tenant will want to, or be able to, follow through on their commitments. The City's priorities may change. Federal priorities may change. To move forward with a huge project like this, with its very high development costs, in these very fragile times is not advisable. This is a big financial gamble for the City of Santa Fe at this time. The instability of the economy of the United States is weighing heavily in the minds of Americans. What convincing evidence of financial stability could any developer really provide?

We aren't asking to abandon the project, but to put it on hold until there is more clarity and this multifaceted emergency is past. It is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

It is very important to try to reach councilors as soon as you can.

There is some really big news about LANL's proposed mission change: NNSA is building an 80 pit per year (ppy) plant at LANL, not a 30 ppy plant. Next time.

Thank you in advance!

Greg, for the Study Group