Chemical company goes after activist.

• Author: Paskus, Laura
• Position: Helena Chemical Company on Arturo Uribe

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Around the turn of the twentieth century, Arturo Uribe's family settled in Mesquite, New Mexico, a small town in the Chihuahuan desert about thirty miles north of the border. Today, it hosts about 1,000 residents, 95 percent of whom are Latino. It also hosts a fertilizer warehouse and mixer that belongs to the Tennessee-based Helena Chemical Company.

For the last ten years, Uribe, executive director of the nonprofit Mesquite Community Action Committee, has lived in his grandmother's old house. The warehouse sits just thirty yards away.

Back in 2004, Uribe began complaining to the New Mexico Environment Department about Helena's impacts on the community.

Two days after Uribe's newborn son came home from the hospital in 2004, he went into respiratory arrest. After a few days, doctors sent the family home from the hospital with a nebulizer, a machine that administers medication and mist to help clear the lungs. He still uses a nebulizer occasionally.

"When we brought him home, and folks were coming over to see my son, when they would see the nebulizer, the ladies would say, 'My daughter has one of those, my son has one of those,' and that's when I started thinking: 'Why do all the kids have nebulizers?'" he says. "That's when I said [to a staff member at the Environment Department], 'Hey man, something is really happening. You need to come look and smell for yourself.'"

The state did investigate. Over the course of several years, it found many violations and fined the company for various infractions. Then the Helena Chemical Company turned around and sued Uribe for defamation. And amazingly, it won.

In 2004, the state first inspected Helena's facility, where chemical fertilizers are received in bulk, then mixed and sold to local farmers. It issued a notice of violation against Helena for operating the plant without an air quality permit. Under state law, the company had to install wells that monitor chemicals in the groundwater, submit an abatement plan, and comply with investigations into air and occupational health and safety issues.

Despite the fact that the state also levied a $233,777 civil penalty against the company for not complying with New Mexico's air quality laws and regulations, problems persisted: In September 2006, the company failed to promptly report a 500-gallon spill of a liquid fertilizer, even though state law mandates that spills be called in within twenty-four hours. It subsequently paid a $30,000...