Ray Powell
As land commissioner I focus all of my efforts at the State Land Office on working with our outstanding public employees to help generate more jobs, revenues and projects that enhance the quality of life of our local citizens while protecting the long-term health of our public lands.
That may sound like typical political rhetoric, but I look at the New Mexico Land Office and our $9 billion permanent fund as our promise to future generations. If we degrade or sell the land, or squander the permanent fund, we have violated our promise to current and future generations.
In my previous term, I worked with our local communities to facilitate affordable housing; day care and senior centers; soccer, football and baseball fields; regional recreational facilities; business parks; master-planned communities; outdoor educational opportunities; and nature preserves. I pledge to work again with our local communities to determine the best uses of state trust land in their local area.
New Mexico has been blessed in so many ways, one being our extensive non-renewable resources – oil, natural gas, coal, and potash – on our 13 million acres of public trust lands. The royalties from these non-renewable resources have helped educate every child in New Mexico while keeping our citizens’ tax bills lower. Recently, the contribution from the trust lands and permanent fund to our public schools, universities, and hospitals has been $500 million per year.
We have additional great news – New Mexico state trust lands provide land for the important work of agricultural production. They also have enormous potential to produce renewable energy from wind, solar, geothermal and biomass.
Revenue from these reoccurring resources can eventually bridge and surpass the declining revenues from the non-renewable sources. The energy produced from these renewable resources can also be sold and transmitted to other parts of our country to provide the important energy resources needed for national economic prosperity and a sustained quality of life.
We also have the intellectual capital in our private companies and universities and in the military research facilities and national labs in New Mexico to lead the world in the development of technologies that optimize the development and use of both non-renewable and renewable energy. The State Land Office can play a pivotal role in these efforts by providing lands to locate renewable energy production facilities, transmission lines and commercial sites for renewable energy technology research and production.
Taking care of the land
While this all sounds great, we all choose to live in a place that we enjoy and where we feel connected to the land. Therefore, if we don’t look at the big picture over a long period of time – with regard to the health and resilience of our lands – then we degrade and despoil them.
These lands produce the food and water that sustain us. Our public lands also provide our quality of life that makes living in New Mexico such a unique and exciting adventure. Being able to hunt, fish, bird watch and recreate on our public lands makes New Mexico a haven for all who love to be outside.
Because of these public lands you don’t have to be rich to enjoy the outdoors.
Our efforts at the State Land Office to support our people must also provide life for all of nature’s species that call New Mexico home. It is this rich diversity of life that attracts most of us to this special place and that will provide future generations with the same quality of life that we have enjoyed.
As Aldo Leopold said, “When we take care of the land, the land takes care of us.”
Powell, a Democrat, is the state land commissioner.