Joseph Cervantes
Role at the time: New Mexico state senator, District 31
Response to this claim
Wells drilled to supply border wall construction in New Mexico were improperly built and create a risk of contaminating the aquifer.
“When somebody is contaminating our water openly and really just defiantly, thumbing their nose at us.”
Report by Julia Gentin for The Las Cruces New Mexican, The Santa Fe New Mexican and Searchlight New Mexico on the waiver, the state's August 26 lawsuit and the October 6 committee hearing, with quotes from Nat Chakeres, Rep. Tara Lujan and Sen. Joseph Cervantes. It also summarizes the federal government's arguments for the waiver.
Why we used this label
The reference point is DHS's October 2 waiver of New Mexico water law and the federal use of wells drilled without state permits for border wall construction. Cervantes describes the federal work as "contaminating our water openly" and "thumbing their nose at us", so we labeled it Condemned. The closest competing label is Mixed or conditional; it loses because his criticism of the state's pace is a call for stronger action against the wells, not support for them.