Home Care In Garfield, NM

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Neighbors who live along Garfield Avenue said the street is a known hotspot for drivers seeking an alternative route away from major thoroughfares in the Nob Hill area.

Now, the city wants to help fix a half mile of the stretch along Garfield Avenue from Girard down to Carlisle. The decision comes after neighbors said the corridor has become plagued with speeders, and, other than a few stop signs, there’s very little to slow drivers down.

“I have seen people go through the stop sign, just like it’s not even there, not even slowing down, not even looking,” said one neighbor.

While Garfield Avenue does have alternating stop signs at every other intersection along the half-mile stretch, residents complain the corridor is in desperate need of traffic calming measures.

“Well, it’s not well marked. There is not a speed limit sign on the whole thing.”

Last November, several vehicles parked along Garfield were hit after thieves stole an ATM from a nearby business and dragged it through the corridor, causing thousands of dollars in damage.

“Some speed bumps would probably help, really. Only a physical barrier would be able to stop the people from breaking the law.”

As part of a push for a safer roadway, the project developer, Bohannan Huston said the goal is to ensure public safety.

“We are just looking at opportunities to make that more comfortable for the residents,” added Bohannan Huston Spokesperson, Denise Aten.

Aten said some of the solutions proposed along the stretch include narrowing lanes to slow traffic speed, adding striping modifications for bicyclists, and expanding pedestrian walkways.

However, people who live nearby said they want other alternatives and what’s being proposed won’t prevent speeding.

“I think a physical barrier is the only real solution.”

Other considerations for the project also include smaller roundabouts to the area. A City of Albuquerque Department of Municipal Development spokesperson said they are also looking at adding more speed limit signs along Garfield Avenue.

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No decisions have been made on the proposals, public input will be accepted through March 16. Input is accepted by email at [email protected] or by phone at 505-264-0111.

For some people, too much salt is bad for health. Too much salt is also bad for growing most crops.

Salty soil is a common problem for farmers in the arid West and it's gotten worse because of the ongoing drought. Water is necessary to flush salts out; without it, salt builds up over time.

In New Mexico, one crop that's suffering is the state's beloved chile pepper.

Chile is not just a crop in New Mexico — it's an identity. Whether red or green, the long leathery pepper with its unmistakable aroma is the reigning ingredient in local cuisine. It's posted on road signs, arranged in vertical wreaths for decoration and protected by state law from impostors. But lately the state's chile crop has been declining.

Joe Paul Lack is a farmer who married into New Mexico's chile dynasty. His wife's family is credited with commercializing a mild green pepper known as Big Jim.

"This is the third year that I have not had one acre of chile," he says. "I've been farming since the '70s, so yeah, that hurts."

Lack farms in southern New Mexico, near Hatch, the state's chile capital. Foreign competition and labor shortages are partly to blame for the shrinking chile acreage. But so is drought.

Dry weather forces farmers to pump from underground aquifers. The water spills into irrigation canals that flow onto fields, making up for a short supply in the neighboring Rio Grande. But while groundwater can be a blessing, it's also a curse.

"The aquifers tend to be salty," said Stephanie Walker, a vegetable specialist at New Mexico State University.

Salt is part of a geologic legacy beneath the desert, leftover from ancient oceans that once covered the West. The shallow aquifer under New Mexico's chile fields concentrates the salt. Experts estimate salt content there has quadrupled in the last four years.

"The longer growers have to pump water ... the more detriment to the vegetables that they are trying to grow," Walker says.

The detriment comes in the form of root damage, which weakens certain crops, like chile. In New Mexico, production is down 40 percent from record highs a decade ago. That's despite better farming techniques that allow farmers to grow seven times more chile per acre than they did back in the 1990s.

"What we need is a couple of monster snow seasons," says Phil King, a civil engineer and consultant for the Elephant Butte Irrigation District.

Like the Colorado River, the Rio Grande depends on snowmelt. The more water in the river, the more water to flush away the salts. But as global temperatures rise, scientists predict there will be less snow to feed rivers. One federal study says the Rio Grande could lose a third of its flow by the end of the century.

"Our whole system is predicated on having a supply of fresh river water from the north, and if we don't we are simply not sustainable," says King.

The battle against salt is happening across the West. It's fallowed more than 100,000 acres in California's San Joaquin Valley. Salty runoff from farms in the Colorado River basin was what prompted the federal government to build a desalination plant in Yuma, Ariz., after years of complaints from Mexican farmers downstream.

"We have a tendency to utilize our resources to their fullest capacity and then go through painful downsizing when necessary," King says.

The Elephant Butte Irrigation District, which covers 90,640 acres in southern New Mexico, is making an effort to combat its salt problem in an era of little water. Farmers are installing drip irrigation, which uses less water and pushes salt away from a crop's root zone. The district is also looking into creating systems that capture storm water.

No matter the challenges, farmers pledge to not let their state's beloved chile pepper die. Those who have stuck it out say they'll continue until nature forces them out.

GARFIELD HEIGHTS, OH (WOIO) - With temperatures in the single digits, it's tough to think of a worse time of year for the heat to go out, but that's exactly what happened at an apartment complex in Garfield Heights.

NM Residential Vice President Shawn Whiteman said the company bought new boilers for Rockside Place Apartments in spring of 2017. Less than a year later, they're already having issues that are impacting tenants, like Tamia Wells.

Wells told Cleveland 19 News she's using her oven to heat her home.

"It's just dangerous. I don't like having the oven on. I've never had to live like this. It's crazy," she said.

The boiler that heats Wells' Rockside Place Apartment broke. Now, she's doing her best to keep herself and her 1-year-old son warm.

On top of cranking up the oven, they laid down towels to block the drafty door wall and layered up.

"We had to bundle up, me and my mother, we had to literally have my son with us and bundle up all together and lay together so we could keep some kind of body heat," she said.

Wells said she's lived at Rockside Place Apartments for about three months and this is the first issue she's had, but, she said, it's a big one.

"We're all getting sick because it's cold. We step outside and it's still cold inside," Wells said.

According to management, about 30 tenants are in the same situation as Wells.

Whiteman told Cleveland 19 News a boiler broke Tuesday. While mechanics tried to fix it Wednesday, the water went out for a bit and a second boiler broke. The repair company ordered parts to fix the boilers and hope to have the heat back up and running Thursday.

Until then, the apartment complex is giving tenants heaters to help them battle the bitter cold.

"This is ridiculous. We have to live in these conditions and the rent is close to $700 a month and you're demanding rent in these type of conditions when it's below 6 degrees outside. We've got kids. It's not fair," Wells said.

Heat is included in tenant's rent. Whiteman said, once the boilers are fixed, management will "make it right" with the people who lost heat and, most likely, figure out a way to compensate them for the time they lived without heat.

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LAS CRUCES — The unusually wet winter in Don?a Ana County has its benefits, such as infusing desert land with much-needed moisture and taking nutrient-carrying rain to plants.

But, for red chile farmers, the precipitation has its down side, too — namely by slowing the harvest of crop.

"It's been so wet," said Garfield-area farmer Dickie Ogaz. "We haven't been able to get through harvesting."

At issue is that muddy fields keep farm workers and harvesting machinery from moving through the fields. While the ground may dry out for a while, storms have been frequent enough to re-soak it periodically.

Red chile, grown on the same plants as green chile, matures in the fall as temperatures begin to drop. Farmers said red peppers can remain on the dried plant for weeks or months after the first freeze. Rain doesn't initially damage the peppers, but after an extended amount of time, exposure to the elements can degrade the quality, they said.

Randy Garay, who grows chile in Arrey, said warmer than usually fall temperatures led to more production of both green chile and red chile. He estimated there were extra two weeks of growth beyond a typical season.

"The summer was extended," he said. "We had a late freeze. The plant was able to keep on producing and yield a little more than other years."

But then rain storms began sweeping across the county, creating a stop-and-go harvest operation for red chile.

"Here at the end, the rains extended the time line for harvest," Garay said. "When it rains we couldn't get back into the field."

Through last week, Las Cruces sat at the fourth-wettest January on record with nearly 1.4 inches of rain having fallen since the start of the month. That total didn't include the rain of this weekend.

Garay said in more-typical years, he's finished the red chile harvest by Christmas or the new year. But this year, his operation — harvesting and processing — operation wound down a little more than a week ago.

Hatch-area chile farmer Jerry Franzoy said most of the larger commercial farms were able to finish their red chile harvest already. His operation focuses more on green chile than red chile and so wasn't affected much by the weather.

"There's real small farms that are still picking chile, even today," he said Friday. "Most of the bigger farms, they're just done."

However, Franzoy said the precipitation could create delays for other field work, such as planting of onions, if it continues. The moisture has benefited some crops already in the ground.

In 2015, some 7,700 acres of red chile, including paprika and long hot/mild, were harvested in New Mexico, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's most-recent numbers. The crop was valued at $11.2 million, accounting for more than a quarter of the total chile sales in the state.

Garay said in terms of chile, 2016 went well, though it featured unusual weather.

"The quality was good," he said. "This summer was one of the hottest on record. It created some obstacles — a little more heat in the chile than in other years. Overall, it was a pretty good year."

Ogaz said the quality is good for the red chile crop; weather is the main problem.

"The yields were good, but we just couldn't get it out of the field," he said. "I hope we can get through one of these days."

As the harvest winds down, organizers of the 2017 New Mexico Chile Conference said they're prepping for this year's event, which focuses upon research and industry trends. The event runs March 6-7 at Hotel Encanto in Las Cruces.

Diana Alba Soular may be reached at 575-541-5443, [email protected] or @AlbaSoular on Twitter.

LAS CRUCES - A group of students called for greater diversity at New Mexico State University in a march organized by the Black Students Association on Tuesday.

About two dozen students marched from NMSU's Educational Services Center to the provost's office, where they delivered a list of six demands aimed at diversifying the campus and also met with Executive Vice President and Provost Dan Howard.

"Today, we had our March on NMSU, and it was kind of like a parallel to the march on D.C.," student Darnicia Holt said, "and the purpose of it was to bring the president's office a list of demands and things we want to see as far as this campus is concerned in terms of diversity."

Holt, the spokeswoman for the Black Students Association, said the list of demands included increasing diversity among administration, faculty and students at NMSU.

In the fall semester, 407 black students comprised about 2.8 percent of the main campus population of 14,432.

"We recognized that we do live in New Mexico, and African Americans only make up 3 percent of the population, but we don't feel like that should a mirror reflection on campus," said Holt, who is studying communications. "We would like to see an increase of that — more than just 3 percent — and not just for us but for other diversity programs on campus as well."

Meligha Garfield, the president of the Black Students Association, said students also called for a "separate diversity council" and asked for a minimum of two university senators to represent diversity programs on campus.

The list of demands also included:

Garfield, a graduate student studying public administration, described the meeting with Howard was "positive," but he and others want the university to take immediate action to implement their demands.

"Being able to sit down and have that meeting — that's a wonderful thing — but until some of those things are implemented then," Holt said, "as an organization and as student leaders and as students on campus who do represent the diversity programs, we're going to be in a state of unrest until those things are actually implemented."

Garfield said he wants the university to meet the demands during the 2018-19 semester.

Tuesday's march was part of a series of events organized by the Black Students Association in honor Black History Month.

"This week itself is Blackout," Garfield said, adding that the events were aimed at shedding light on "injustices that are happening around in our country" and at NSMU "because many people do not know the other things that are happening on our university because they're not spoken for, especially promotion of diversity."

Carlos Andres Lo?pez can be reached 575-541-5453, [email protected] or @carlopez_los on Twitter.