Gallup’s Wellness Hotel Program got a financial shot in the arm by county commissioners on Jan. 4 to keep housing homeless people who are at risk of contracting coronavirus.

One hundred twenty-five thousand dollars will be split between a Days Inn that houses approximately 50 individuals and the contractors that provide support for the program, according to Debra Martinez, manager of Gallup’s Behavioral Health Investment Zone, which focuses on ways to help residents live a healthy life.

“It’s very important,” she said of the funding, before noting the program is, “potentially saving lives.”

Anthony Dimas, Jr., McKinley County manager, said the money was approved to be...

A Gallup nonprofit that focuses on economic development just received the largest private donation in its history to create high-paying jobs in the city and McKinley County.

Greater Gallup Economic Development Corporation announced a $1.25 million donation from Tri-State Generation & Transmission Association, a not-for-profit power supplier cooperative.

Tommy Haws, board president of the GGEDC, stated that the funds are significant given the closure of the Escalante Generating Station, the “indefinite idling” of Gallup Refinery by Marathon Petroleum Corp. and the COVID-19 pandemic, which have all placed the region’s economy under “great stress.” Escalante was a...

Week ending Friday, January 8, 2021


Baked-In Warming

A new report warns that the amount of global warming already “baked in” to the atmosphere due to surging greenhouse gases is now enough to warm the planet more than the 2.0-degree Celsius cap outlined in the Paris climate agreement. Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, a team from Texas A&M University, California’s Lawrence Livermore National Lab and China’s Nanjing University says the atmosphere is now set to warm to about 2.4 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. But they say that amount of warming can be delayed for centuries if the world quickly stops spewing extra greenhouse gases from the burning of...

WINDOW ROCK, NAVAJO NATION — The Navajo Nation Department of Justice announced a settlement with Kinross and Sunnyside Gold Corporation on Jan. 13, resolving its claims against the mining companies for creating the conditions that led to the Aug. 2015 Gold King Mine spill. This unprecedented disaster, triggered by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency and its contractors, released millions of gallons of toxic acid mine waste into the waters upstream of the Nation, which then coursed downstream in a yellow plume through two hundred miles of the Nation’s sacred San Juan River. Under the terms of the settlement, Sunnyside, on behalf of itself and Kinross, will pay the Navajo Nation...