Roswell Daily Record
Vol. 122, No. 118 75¢ Daily / $1.25 Sunday
INSIDE NEWS
THE VOICE OF THE PECOS VALLEY
May 17, 2013
NM engineer plans to meter water wells SANTA FE (AP) — Irrigators, municipalities and industry in parts of drought-stricken eastern New Mexico will be required to install meters on their underground wells to measure water use under a plan by the state’s top water manager. State Engineer Scott Verhines said meters must be installed by January in the Fort Sumner Underground
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Water Basin, which is within a larger area that relies on surface water from the Pecos River. No meters will be necessary for household wells or small wells supplying water for livestock.
The metering requirement is expected to mostly af fect irrigators in the sparsely populated water basin, which covers about 4,900 square miles of porof DeBaca, tions
The lower Pecos River downstream from the Fort Sumner area is at the center of a legal dispute over pumping from another groundwater basin.
Guadalupe, Quay, Chaves, Roosevelt and Torrance counties. “New Mexico is experiencing our third year in a row of severe to exceptionally severe drought,” Verhines said in a statement.
“Naturally, this has placed tremendous pressure on our state, especially our southeastern region. New Mexico must maximize our water supplies. Therefore we are protecting water rights owners from over -
NEW DRILLING RULE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Companies that drill for oil and natural gas on federal lands will be required to disclose publicly the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing operations, the Obama administration said Thursday. The new “fracking” rule replaces a draft proposed last year that was ... - PAGE A9
WEB
For The Past 24 Hours
• NMMI’s Paternoster arrested • UFO Research Center library outgows space • FatMan’s open for business in Hagerman • Another debit card scam; let’s be wary • Rockets State Champs!
INSIDE SPORTS Amy Vogelsang Photo
From left: Missouri Avenue Elementary Accelerated Readers Priscila Humaran, Kyra Cloud, Christian Carillo, Izaiah Gonzales and Tegan Goodheart admire their new bikes, given to them Thursday by Johnathon Parnell who tuned them up as his Eagle Scout project.
All-Star Readers get Eagle Scout wheels AMY VOGELSANG RECORD STAFF WRITER
ALBUQUERQUE — Roller coasters, generally speaking, are fun and exciting. All the ups and downs, the thrill of racing down the first hill after the slow ascent and the hair-raising excitement of the hairpin turns make roller coasters a major attraction at every theme park. A roller coaster of emotion, well, that’s a different story. The Goddard baseball team rode shotgun on an emotional roller coaster on Thursday, and the end of the ride was more “that sucked” than “that was awesome.” - PAGE B1
Kids smiled and showed pure excitement as they realized they had won
bikes simply by reading. For the end of the year awards ceremony at Missouri Avenue Elementary, six students with high scores in the Accelerated Reading Program were
OBITUARIES
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TODAY’S FORECAST
CLASSIFIEDS..........B6 COMICS.................B4 FINANCIAL .............B5 GENERAL ..............A2 HOROSCOPES ......A10 LOTTERIES ............A2 OPINION ................A4 SPORTS ................B1 WASHINGTON .........A9 WEATHER ............A10 WORLD .................A8
INDEX
awarded new bikes Thursday that had been tuned up by Johnathon Parnell as his Eagle Scout project. Parnell, 13, has been in Boy Scouts for three and a half years, and after
Texas twisters hit Habitat homes
TODAY’S • Robert Chewning • Howard Kent Reed • Wanda Martin - PAGE A7
County reviews interim budget
See WATER, Page A3
ILISSA GILMORE RECORD STAFF WRITER
TOP 5
ROCKETS FALL
diversions and identifying any water waste by metering groundwater wells. In order to protect everyone’s water rights, we need to know exactly how much water is pumped.” The small communities of Fort Sumner and Vaughn are included in the region. However, wells used by
AP Photo
Homes are heavily damaged in Granbury, Texas, on Thursday, after multiple tornados hit the area Wednesday night. Ten tornadoes touched down in several small communities in North Texas overnight, leaving at least six people dead, dozens injured and hundreds homeless. Emergency responders were still searching for missing people Thursday afternoon.
GRANBURY, Texas (AP) — Habitat for Humanity spent years in a North Texas subdivision, helping build many of the 110 homes in the low-income area. But its work was largely undone during an outbreak of 13 tornadoes Wednesday night that killed six people and injured dozens. On Thursday, authorities combed through debris in Granbury, while residents awaited the chance to see what was left of their homes. Witnesses described the two badly hit neighborhoods as unrecognizable, with homes ripped from foundations and others merely rubble. Granbury, about 40 miles southwest of Fort Worth, bore the brunt of
receiving the 11 required Eagle Scout badges, he is about to complete the rank. For his project, he decided to get bikes and
See READERS, Page A3
During its regular business meeting Thursday, the Chaves County Board of Commissioners reviewed an interim budget for the 2013-2014 fiscal year, while planning ahead for financial upcoming changes the county will face. County Manager Stan Riggs said the county needs to take preventative measures against challenges that will soon present themselves due to issues such as the phasing out of the hold-harmless agreement and increasing health insurance and PERA costs. “I don’t know what the future’s going to hold,” he told the board. “I just know if you don’t plan for it now, it’s going to be really ugly in three to four years.” Much work has been done to trim the budget, he said, but the county needs to find ways to carry out its business more efficiently and “make sure everything we spend out there has a mission and a purpose.” See COUNTY, Page A3
‘How many’s 1 billion?’
Mark Wilson Photo
Students from Military Heights Elementary examine an 18-inch x 15-foot grid designed to teach them ratios and values in the What’s My Place, What’s My Value program’s field trip to the No. 10 fairway of the NMMI Golf Course, Wednesday. The children were having a hard time fathoming the value of the number 1 billion, and, by using the grid, which consisted of a series of 100,000 quarter-inch squares as a measuring stick, were able to physically visualize the vastness of the number 1 billion once the student body formed a perimeter measuring 64 yards x 390 yards, proportional to the grid, thus illustrating the vastness of the number and its ratio with the smaller number of 100,000.
Badgered: President acts, but Republicans unsatisfied
President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during their press conference, in the Rose Garden, Thursday.
See TEXAS, Page A3
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama, seeking to regain his footing amid controversies hammering the White House, named a temporary chief for the scandalmarred Internal Revenue Service Thursday and pressed Congress to approve new security money to prevent another Benghazi-style terrorist attack. The efforts did little to satisfy Republicans, who
see the controversies as an opportunity to derail Obama’s second-ter m agenda. House Speaker John Boehner suggested the White House had violated the public’s trust, and he promised to “stop at nothing” to hold the administration accountable.
“Nothing dissolves the bonds between the people and their government like the arrogance of power here in Washington,” Boehner said. “And that’s what the
American people are seeing today from the Obama administration — remarkable arrogance.” The targeting of conservative political groups by the IRS and new questions about the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, last year — along with the Justice Department’s seizure of journalists’ phone records — have consumed the See OBAMA, Page A2