Judge Sugg’s Order: Reflections – Part One
By The Alto CEP
On August 31, 2023, Judge Sugg of the Twelfth Judicial District Court issued an order denying a motion for preliminary injunction (case No. D-1226-CV-2021-00241) to terminate the building of the Alto concrete batch plant on State Highway 220. The 81 page document ended with Judge Sugg’s statement, “It is therefore ordered that the Plaintiffs/Counter-Defendants’ motion for preliminary injunction should be, and is hereby denied.” For area residents, the document presents questionable and suspect information as we await Judge Sugg’s final decision.
The average resident of the area will not read an 81 page document that ends negatively but even skimming, there are glaring discrepancies. For example Summit Operations is identified as a septic tank manufacturing (p. 05) business, which it is not. Nineteen pages later, the business is identified as an installation entity. Which is it? It does make a difference.
In a linguistic labyrinth attempt to create the falsehood that the area surrounding the proposed site is industrial, the Judge states that, “Accordingly, attempts to characterize the location of the proposed concrete batch plant as residential are misleading.” There are at least 140 residents living in what has been identified as a sacrifice zone surrounding the proposed concrete batch plant site (Ruidoso News, 10 November 2023). At least two commercial lots have residences on them and there are no industries in the entire corridor. To label the area as anything but residential is a misnomer and the Judge evades a label by stating, “The area consists of a mix of residential, commercial, and industrial use.” That is misleading.
The Alto Coalition for Environmental Preservation stated in County Commission presentations two and a half years ago that this is a primarily residential area and no one opposed that designation. It has now been brought to the attention of the Alto CEP that a New Mexico law (New Mexico Statutes, Chapter 3, Article 21, Section 3-21-1 “Zoning; authority of county or municipality”) if evoked, would have possibly prevented the resulting litigation and the contractor might have built his plant on his 146 acre property just five miles north along State Highway 48.
It is without question that the immediate and expanded area surrounding the proposed concrete batch plant is residential and this basic premise precludes the industrial zone argument which favors this interloper.
To be continued – Concrete batch plants of the area