89.9 FM Live From The University Of New Mexico
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

News Update Wednesday June 19th

Albuquerque Police Hold Water Drive For Magdalena - The Associated Press

The Albuquerque Police Department is holding a water drive for the village of Magdalena, whose well has gone dry.

The effort, which runs through Thursday night, will collect bottles and jugs of water at the Prisoner Transport Center, across the street from the main police station in downtown Albuquerque.

All of the donated water will be transported to the town of Magdalena in south-central New Mexico Friday morning.

The water table has dropped almost 20 feet since January due to the persistent drought that has plagued nearly all of New Mexico for the last three years. That combined with infrastructure problems caused Magdalena's well to collapse earlier this month, leaving about 1,000 residents and several businesses without water.

NM Disability Payments Jump By Nearly 66 Percent - The Albuquerque Journal (AP)

The number of people in New Mexico receiving disability payments through the Social Security system has exceeded even the increasing national trend.

The Albuquerque Journal reports that a review of data from the Social Security Administration showed that the number of former workers in New Mexico getting Social Security Disability Insurance grew by nearly 66 percent from 2002 to 2011.

During the same period, the growth nationally was nearly 55 percent.

According to the latest numbers, 60,803 New Mexicans were getting SSDI disabled worker benefits as of December 2011. Nationally, that figure was 8,575,544.

The national increase is variously attributed to demographics, economic factors, and the expansion of eligibility criteria in the 1980s, and there appears to be no clear consensus about the reason for the upswing.