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Shirley \u201cSug\u201d McNall has become the black sheep among not only her family, but also the community in which she lives, and it\u2019s not hard to see why. Her \u201cToxic Tour of Hell\u201d exposes the ugly side of an industry her neighbors in San Juan County, N.M., desperately rely on to put food on the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy family gives me hell,\u201d McNall said while navigating the high desert of Aztec, New Mexico, in a blue pickup truck covered with \u201cBernie Sanders for President\u201d and \u201cBread Not Bombs\u201d bumper stickers.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of them depend on the oil and gas industry. But I\u2019m doing it for them too. They breathe the same air I do. They drink the same water. Their kids and grandkids are being raised in this toxic environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not trying to shut oil and gas down. I just want them to do the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
McNall, 71, is more affectionately known as \u201cSug\u201d \u2013 short for sugar. For almost a decade, McNall has led her tour for anyone interested, and in the process, has attracted researchers, scientists, elected officials and a slew of journalists from all over the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always that one key person who makes it their job to expose the industry and tell as many people as they can, and that\u2019s her,\u201d said Josh Fox, whose critically acclaimed 2010 documentary \u201cGasland\u201d features McNall.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always that one community activist slash storyteller slash witness with their whole body. You can\u2019t overstate the importance of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
McNall\u2019s inattention to the impacts of oil and gas ended in 2005 when she was hit with hyrdogen sulfide poisoning from a gas well about a three-quarters of a mile uphill from her home east of Aztec while going to get the mail.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was absolutely frightful because I really thought I was going to die, and I didn\u2019t know why or what was going on,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
After the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division and BP American Production Company conducted an investigation, a well was found leaking and immediately shut down. But McNall\u2019s involvement was only just beginning.<\/p>\n
She attended a summit on energy industry accountability in Farmington, where she started showing people the worst polluted sites around her hometown.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I really opened my eyes and started paying attention, I was appalled at what I was seeing,\u201d she said. \u201cI just started finding more and more sites in neighborhoods, and it just built. I said, \u201cWell this grandma needs to get busy and do what she can to educate.\u201d<\/p>\n
McNall\u2019s tour, which lasts about four hours, takes visitors through an intense industrial landscape: wells behind an elementary school and in the middle of neighborhoods, a landfill of contaminated soil kicking up dust toward a mobile home park, a massive refinery towering over a historic Catholic cemetery.<\/p>\n
In a nearby neighborhood, McNall spots a well leaking a noxious liquid, and immediately reaches for her phone to file a complaint with New Mexico\u2019s Oil Conservation Division.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey know me by now,\u201d McNall said with a sense of satisfaction that is quickly numbed by a disappointment the industry seemingly doesn\u2019t care for nearby residents. \u201cI\u2019ve heard, \u2018Oh well, they are just trailer trash.\u2019 But they are human beings and this is probably as good as it gets, and they deserve quality of life too.\u201d<\/p>\n
McNall was born and raised in Aztec, on a 720-acre ranch her family homesteaded since the early 1940s. Her own property east of town is surrounded by 20 wells in less than a mile radius.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe used to run cattle, and it was gorgeous,\u201d she recalled sadly, pointing to a patch of untouched juniper and pi\u00f1on trees adjacent to an oil refinery. \u201cIt used to be all like that. Every bit of it \u2013 before the hell hit.\u201d<\/p>\n
During President Nixon\u2019s \u201cProject Independence\u201d in the 1970s, a report by the National Academy of Sciences deemed the entire Four Corners a \u201cnational sacrifice area\u201d for energy production.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time they were looking at energy corridors,\u201d said the San Juan Citizen Alliance\u2019s Mike Eisenfeld. \u201cThe rhetoric was: because this area receives so little precipitation and the energy values were so high, we might as well designate this zone and never have to reclaim it since there\u2019s nothing there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The San Juan basin, with its rich deposits of coal, uranium and natural gas, became one of the largest producers of fossil fuels in the country.<\/p>\n
But the stark difference in the landscape of Southwest Colorado and Northwest New Mexico\u2019s overlap in the basin isn\u2019t accidental, said La Plata County Commissioner Gwen Lachelt. Concerned citizens, environmental groups and elected officials in Colorado were able to mobilize almost immediately, and modernize regulations on development.<\/p>\n
\u201cFolks weren\u2019t able to get that kind of organizing going until many years after their boom,\u201d Lachelt said of San Juan County, New Mexico. \u201cSug really helped get other people involved in that effort.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s home<\/p>\n
For McNall, northwest New Mexico isn\u2019t a dumpsite for national interests \u2013 it\u2019s home.<\/p>\n
When she\u2019s not touring the less than scenic industrial wasteland, the retired rancher finds respite in bird watching, playing African drums in an ensemble and spending time with her only daughter.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s never thought about leaving. \u201cWhere would I go?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
Having witnessed more than six decades of booms and bust, her heart is with the workers most impacted, the people who don\u2019t have the option to find work in other parts of the country. A recent report estimated 6,000 jobs in the energy industry were lost since 2009 in San Juan County.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople used to go somewhere else, but this thing is worldwide,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of despair this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her anger lies with the energy companies who cut corners and don\u2019t make good on promises to clean up their mess, the local government that lived gluttonously in boom years and failed to diversify the economy, and the helplessness of losing the landscape.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question I get asked the most on this tour is: \u2018Is there any hope?\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cI know there\u2019s hope. I don\u2019t know what it is. But you can\u2019t ever give up hope.\u201d<\/p>\n