Re: LASG friends ltr (08/02/26) For those who have signed the "Call for Sanity" at StopTheBomb.org and are local -- let's meet this coming Thursday evening 8/6/26 in Santa Fe at 6 pm

Dear friends -- 

Good evening! 

To update yesterday's meeting invitation, our meeting place will be at the Santa Fe Friends Meeting,505 Camino de Los Marquez (map). This will be an in-person meeting only, with one or more possible guest speakers not yet confirmed. 

We wrote the City Council today with an updated draft resolution, with a long list of "reasons why." 

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) plutonium pit production program is a huge endeavor, one that will cost $30 billion before construction is finished. As we keep emphasizing, this is by far the largest capital project in the history of New Mexico. A program that large, and for new weapons of mass destruction to boot, generates a lot of "reasons why" it shouldn't happen. So the list of "whereases" we sent the City is not by any means complete. 

Your voice is necessary to bring the issue alive, to awaken a drowsy people in denial of their own political agency.  

Does it need to be said that a state which opens the door to plutonium bomb-building will also have a lot of other dirty industries knocking on the door? In economic development parlance this is called "pollution shopping" -- corporations looking for a friendly place where risk, pollution, and resource use are accepted in return for a few "jobs." 

Our letter to the City said there had been some important recent developments bearing on the future of LANL. We tried to make a short, readable list of those developments. Here's what we wrote: 

• Fire in glovebox at LANL plutonium facility sparks safety discussion, NuclearNewswire, Jul 30, 2026

• “Housing, open space, and more: one more week to weigh in on how Los Alamos grows,” Stephanie Nahkleh, We Can Have Nice Things, Jul 24, 2026. See also LANL employee demographics and housing demand, LANL, Apr 29, 2024, recently obtained from the City of Santa Fe under IPRA. We understand that affordable housing is key to the survival of Santa Fe as a livable city. This memo does not particularly analyze or emphasize this enough. Our recent ad in the Santa Fe Reporter includes these remarks:

LANL’s direct impacts on quality of life are hard to quantify but real. Just 5 minutes of additional traffic delay every day costs drivers hundreds of dollars each year in lost time and increased car maintenance. If we arbitrarily assume that the thousands of well-paid LANL commuters that have moved to Santa Fe in the last few years have had, for example, a 5% impact on average rental costs, this amounts to more than a thousand dollars a year for each renter in the City. No matter what assumptions you choose, the aggregate cost to City residents works out to tens of millions of dollars per year.

• " House passes requirement to build more than 200 plutonium nuclear warhead cores annually by 2050; Views of key senators, representatives not yet publicly known, press release, Jul 23, 2026

• U.S. defense bill would accelerate plutonium pit production, with possible increase at LANL, Santa Fe New Mexican, Jul 24, 2026

• New Mexico town passes resolution opposing pit production, Exchange Monitor, Jul 16, 2026

• Town of Taos Resolution 26-37,Jun 9, 2026, “Objecting to Plutonium Warhead Core "Pit" Production at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Requesting the President and Congress to Prioritize Removal of Legacy Waste over New Waste”

• Plutonium "pit" production now a $60 billion program -- $20 billion down, $40 billion to go, press release, Jun 8, 2026

• Plutonium (Pu) Modernization Spending, Actual, Proposed, and Estimated, by Site and Fiscal Year, $M, from FY27 and prior CBRs, LASG, Jun 7, 2026 update

• Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Chronicles Concerns Regarding Lack of Access to Critical Safety Information, press release, Jun 4, 2026

• DOE still restricting access to DNFSB, board says, Exchange Monitor, Jul 15, 2026; DNFSB letter to Congress, Jul 10, 2026


• DNFSB inspectors raise concerns over NNSA staffing at Los Alamos, Exchange Monitor, Jun 23, 2026


• (We are working with journalists on this issue and there will be more on it soon.)

Friends, now is the time to speak up. 

Looking ahead, we hope you will be able to come to the Santa Fe City Council meeting on Wednesday, August 12, to speak in favor of a resolution opposing pit production at LANL during the "Petitions from the Floor" agenda item, which usually comes up around 7 pm. You will have 2 minutes. We hope you will put that date on your calendars.

The Upas Tree

Speaking economic development lingo again, big institutions like LANL which suck up available labor, bid up housing and services, create or exacerbate inequality, use up resources, hypnotize governments, and thereby "poison the ground" for other enterprises often create an "Upas Tree" effect. The analogy is particularly apt for a nuclear weapons plant which uses and disposes toxic materials in the service of international domination, with the risk that implies for the workers and everyone else. With your indulgence, I want to leave prose for now and copy here Pushkin's poem, "The Upas Tree," in translation. 

Deep in the desert's misery,
far in the fury of the sand,
there stands the awesome Upas Tree
lone watchman of a lifeless land.

The wilderness, a world of thirst,
in wrath engendered it and filled
its every root, every accursed
grey leafstalk with a sap that killed.

Dissolving in the midday sun
the poison oozes through its bark,
and freezing when the day is done
gleams thick and gem-like in the dark.

No bird flies near, no tiger creeps;
alone the whirlwind, wild and black,
assails the tree of death and sweeps
away with death upon its back.

And though some roving cloud may stain
with glancing drops those leaden leaves,
the dripping of a poisoned rain
is all the burning sand receives.

But man sent man with one proud look
towards the tree, and he was gone,
the humble one, and there he took
the poison and returned at dawn.

He brought the deadly gum; with it
he brought some leaves, a withered bough,
while rivulets of icy sweat
ran slowly down his livid brow.

He came, he fell upon a mat,
and reaping a poor slave's reward,
died near the painted hut where sat
his now unconquerable lord.

The king, he soaked his arrows true
in poison, and beyond the plains
dispatched those messengers and slew
his neighbors in their own domains.

Thank you all for reading and we hope to see many of you on Thursday. I will send further updates if there are any. 

Greg, Trish, Madi, Ella, and gang

Permalink for this letter (tomorrow); prior activist letters. 

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