Siblings guard goal for Monte del Sol boys, girls soccer Sports, B-5
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
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ATC school finally buys campus
Database details doctor, drugmaker links Pharmaceutical- and device-makers paid doctors roughly $380 million in fees during a five-month period in 2013. PAGE A-2
The south-side charter school finalizes a deal to purchase its current home, clearing the way to expand. LOCAL NEWS, B-1
From pupusas to hot dogs, owner of funky new take-out eatery serves up a colorful cast of cuisines. TASTE, C-1
U.S. and Afghanistan sign security pact Agreement allows 10,000 U.S. troops to stay and assist Afghans. PAGE A-3
Cost to revive WIPP could top $500M Marisela Martinez-Cola, right, of Atlanta and her husband send their son, David, 7, to private school and have hired a tutor to improve his reading. DAVID TULIS/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Watchdog: Department of Energy plan underestimates time needed, price tag to reopen nuclear waste site after leak
DA asks court to declare Rio Arriba position vacant
School spending by affluent widening wealth gap
By Uriel J. Garcia The New Mexican
Top earners’ education budgets jump 35% since start of downturn
A 2010 aerial photograph of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad. WIPP stopped receiving waste shipments in February when a truck fire followed by a radiation leak happened within days of each other. COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
By Josh Boak The Associated Press
By Patrick Malone
WASHINGTON — Education is supposed to help bridge the gap between the wealthiest people and everyone else. Ask the experts, and they’ll count the ways: Preschool can lift children from poverty. Top high schools prepare students for college. A college degree boosts pay over a lifetime. And the U.S. economy would grow faster if more people stayed in school longer. Plenty of data back them up. But the data also show something else: Wealthier parents have been stepping up education spending so aggressively that they’re widening the nation’s wealth gap. When the Great Recession struck in late 2007 and squeezed most family budgets, the top 10 percent of earners — with incomes averaging $253,146 — went in a different direction: They doubled down on their kids’ futures. Their average education spending per child jumped 35 percent to $5,210 a year during the recession compared
realistic about when it will reopen. It will take a lot longer than that, and it’s going to cost a lot more than they’re saying.” The investigation into the cause of the radiation leak has focused on a burst drum of nuclear waste stored at WIPP that came from Los Alamos National Laboratory. It was highly acidic and contained nitrate salts, organic kitty litter used as absorbent, an acid neutralizer that chemists have since questioned as potentially reactive and a leadladen glove dropped in the mix during treatment of the waste at Los Alamos. A drum with similar composition sits in a subterranean panel at WIPP near where the breach occurred, but that second drum has not ruptured, Whitney said. The investigation into the exact cause of the leak could last until the end of the year, Whitney said. But that didn’t stop the Energy
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T
he U.S. Department of Energy aims to reopen the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, at least partially, by April 2016, according to a recovery plan unveiled Tuesday. But full resumption of operations at the underground nuclear waste repository might have to wait up to five years, federal officials said. The estimated cost of bringing WIPP back to life could top $500 million, according to the report. WIPP stopped receiving waste shipments in February when a truck fire followed by a radiation leak happened within days of each other. “DOE is committed to reopening WIPP,” Mark Whitney, the department’s acting assistant secretary of environmental management, told reporters Tuesday. He acknowledged the “aggressive plan” seeks to open the waste storage facility
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u Read the Department of Energy’s WIPP recovery plan at www.santa fenewmexican.com.
sooner than many early estimates, which suggested WIPP would be closed until 2017 or beyond. But a nuclear watchdog that closely monitors WIPP questioned whether the Energy Department has underestimated the time it will take to resume operations and understated the cost. “Thirty-five years ago, DOE was saying WIPP was going to be open by the mid-’80s. Then 25 years ago, in the late ’80s, they were saying WIPP was going to be open in the early ’90s, and it didn’t open until 1999,” said Don Hancock, director of the nuclear waste safety program at the Southwest Research and Information Center. “They weren’t realistically looking at what it was going to take to open WIPP then, and now they’re not being
Please see WIPP, Page A-4
As Hong Kong holiday looms, protesters and officials appeal to silent majority
Pasapick
By William Wan
National Acrobats of China
Protesters rally Tuesday outside the government complex in Hong Kong. Demonstrators have called for a big showing Wednesday, the first day of a big two-day holiday.
The Washington Post
HONG KONG — On the eve of what could be the biggest turnout yet in Hong Kong’s continuing protests, and a crucial test of wills on both sides, a demonstration that began with physical confrontation between authorities and prodemocracy demonstrators shifted Tuesday into a public relations duel aimed at the mass of undecided residents here. Three days into protests that have brought whole swaths of the city to a standstill, both sides appeared to be carefully plotting their next move. Some pro-democracy leaders demanded a meeting with Hong Kong’s leader and threatened new acts of civil disobedience if unmet. The actors in Wednesday’s drama will be the protesters and authorities of Hong Kong, but the Chinese leadership will be follow-
Index
Calendar A-2
Rodella refuses to step down as sheriff
LAM YIK FEI THE NEW YORK TIMES
ing events closely. Huge public protest is anathema to Beijing, and what happens in Hong Kong over the next day or two could shape the Chinese response. The demonstrators have called for a big showing on the first day of a big two-day holiday and say they’re not leaving. In his first remarks on the protests since the Hong Kong police
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used tear gas against demonstrators Sunday, Leung Chun-ying, the semiautonomous Chinese territory’s chief executive, gave no indication he would be willing to meet with organizers and called on one of the two main groups organizing the protests, Occupy Central With Love and Peace, to end the demonstrations.
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Award-winning acrobatic troupe perform at The Lensic, 7 p.m., $15$45, 988-1234, ticketssantafe.org.
Obituaries Paulette V. Cummins, Santa Fe, Sept. 25 Frank A Demolli, 83, Sept. 20 Charles F. Jackline, 90, Santa Fe, Sept. 27 Angie Saavedra
Opinion A-7
PAGE B-2
Today Partly sunny. High 74, low 40.
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Lopez, 90, Santa Fe, Sept. 28 Gayle Joanne Travis Luchessa, Sept. 17 Judge Lorenzo V. Martinez, 90, Los Luceros, Sept. 27 Robert R. Trujillo, Sept. 23
PAGE A-6
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Travel C-2
BREAKING NEWS AT WWW.SANTAFENEWMEXICAN.COM
Fighting to the end, convicted felon Tommy Rodella refuses to resign as Rio Arriba County sheriff. But that isn’t slowing efforts to replace him. First Judicial District Attorney Angela “Spence” Pacheco on Tuesday petitioned the state District Court to declare that the sheriff’s position automatically became vacant Friday when a fedTommy eral jury found the Rodella 52-year-old lawman guilty of violating an Española man’s civil rights while brandishing a handgun. Rio Arriba County officials, who first asked Rodella to resign as sheriff after his indictment in August, repeated their request Tuesday. But his lawyer said Rodella, whose term runs through the end of the year, won’t step down voluntarily. Carlos Trujillo, a spokesman for Rio Arriba County Manager Tomas Campos, said the county on Friday stopped paying the sheriff’s $56,000 annual salary to Rodella, who remains in federal custody while he awaits sentencing Dec. 26. Trujillo also said the commission is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Wednes-
Please see RODELLA, Page A-4
Commission OKs Aamodt water system resolution By Daniel J. Chacón The New Mexican
A divided Santa Fe County Commission approved a resolution Tuesday that establishes policies for the planning, design and construction of the proposed regional water system, which will primarily serve residents of the Pojoaque Valley and four neighboring pueblos. The commission approved the resolution 3-2, with Chairman Daniel “Danny” Mayfield and Robert Anaya casting the dissenting votes. The construction of the regional water system is what Adam Leigland, the county’s public works director, called one of the pillars of an agreement to settle the 45-year-old Aamodt water-rights case aimed at determining the extent of Indian water rights in the valley north of Santa Fe. The settlement, which affects thousands of people, was approved in 2010 by the pueblos, the federal government, the state and the county of Santa Fe. The publicly funded water system is intended to import water from the Rio Grande to replace the pumping
Please see RESOLUTION, Page A-4
Three sections, 24 pages 165th year, No. 274 Publication No. 596-440