A new documentary aims to shed light on alleged harms the oil and gas industry in New Mexico causes residents as a novel pollution case looms before the state’s Supreme Court.
The film, called “The Land of Sacrifice,” focuses on the effects that emissions and other activities associated with oil and gas production have amid New Mexico’s fracking boom.
It highlights plaintiffs in Atencio v. State, a lawsuit filed by a group of Native Americans, environmental groups and other residents who live near the state’s oil-producing regions. New Mexico, which includes part of the massive Permian Basin, is now the second-largest oil-producing state in the United States.
“We had a tsunami of oil and gas development,” Daniel Tso, a former Navajo Nation Council delegate and a plaintiff in the case, says in the film. “No place to run, no place to take shelter. It’s here.”
