Good afternoon, Recently, the dust issue has been discussed in depth in the city council, in a town hall meeting, in a technical workshop, at a luncheon for members of the development community, and in numerous neighborhood meetings. The issue for residents of Las Cruces whose homes are adjacent to the large scraped areas is the collection of point source dirt/sand/dust on their properties—ruining landscaping, door locks, roofs, and their ability to sell their homes. Unfortunately, the four monitors currently located in Dona Ana County do not measure this kind of dust/dirt/sand that travels along the ground to pile up in a nearby location. However, a visit to any of the homes of residents affected by this phenomenon leaves little doubt. For more information, go to http://akimab.com.

The four monitors located in Dona Ana County measure dust and other pollutants in the air and they frequently do measure exceedences in the level of “particulate matter” that is allowed by the Environmental Protection Agency. This is the kind of dust that comes from Deming or agricultural activities or unpaved roads or construction activity, and gets whipped up into the air when the high winds arrive. This kind of dust can cause serious health problems. Coincidentally, the NM Border Health Office has recently embarked on a study of health problems caused by disturbing the soil. When soil in our area is disturbed, it releases fungi that can cause health problems. The NM Border Health Department project includes training physicians and other health care professionals to test for “valley fever,” one of the diseases that can result from breathing the fungi released by disturbing the soil. In AZ, the number of confirmed cases of valley fever used to be around 50. After a program of testing and reporting results was instituted, the number of confirmed cases surged. It is now close to 6000. The NM Border Health project will also include greater monitoring and that monitoring will be connected to weather patterns as well.

Fortunately, cost effective dust abatement measures are available and some local developers are even experimenting with new procedures that are particularly successful for our local soils and climate. A group of residents, the City of Las Cruces, the regional EPA office, some local developers, and the NM Environment Department have been working on this problem and are looking for new funding to support further study of local measures. Given the dust abatement models available from other areas of the southwest, the advice given to us by the dust expert who recently visited our area, and the ongoing experiments being conducted locally, we should certainly be able to work together to bring a reasonable and economically feasible solution to these problems.

Sharon Thomas
City Councilor, District 6

For more infromation about the model for changes in our ordinance, please visit
Pima County Air Quality.