Life After Deaths
State planting field to control deadly I-40 dust zone

A crew sprays fertilizer over seed and hay in a Milan field that has been causing dangerous dust clouds that blow over Interstate 40. The New Mexico Department of Transportation hopes planting the field will stop the clouds from forming and make that stretch of I-40 safer. [Photo by John A. Bowersmith/Independent]

By Tom Purdom
Staff Writer

MILAN — For the past three weeks the New Mexico Department of Transportation and a contract company from Arizona have been working in a field near here, and what they are doing there could very well save lives.

The work is being done on the 300 acres of private land from which huge clouds of dust blew across Interstate 40.

Crews from Recon, an Arizona firm, just this week finished up laying down a hay-mulch tack on the 300 acres after seeding the land with special plant seeds designed to grow and prosper in very arid conditions. It is the lack of plant life on the land which contributed to the problem in the first place. With no plants growing to hold down the dust, and with drought conditions existing, it all became too much for the land; so, when the winds picked up, which they do every April, the ground simply broke down in the wind, creating blinding dust storms.

When the dust storms crossed the interstate just to the north, chaos reigned on the highway as drivers of vehicles and trucks, going highway speeds, suddenly had their visibility go from miles to zero in an instant.

The dust storms virtually set the scene for destruction and death. In April 2004, 72-year-old Dwayne Hamilton and his 70-year-old wife Nancy were driving on the interstate when their vehicle became trapped in a boiling cloud of dust. They were suddenly in a chain-reaction accident involving 18 vehicles. The accident killed the Hamiltons and sent 13 others to the hospital with injuries, six of which were critical.

Six days later, the winds kicked up again, and the same scenario slammed into the interstate, this time killing a 56-year-old Ohio trucker in an accident on April 28. It was also on April 28, that Gov. Bill Richardson was traveling from Gallup to Grants for a town hall meeting when his motorcade was swallowed by the dust storm, scaring the governor. "The visibility was zero," Richardson said. "It was frightening and easy to see how the sheets of blowing sand could cause devastating accidents."

Caught by surprise, highway department officials last year discovered that the short-term solution was to put water on the parched ground, and to put up highway warning signs. At the same time it was known that more would have to be done, that the dry 300 acres of private land just south of Mile Marker 78 needed something else to keep the dust down.

Cooperative efforts from the department of transportation, the New Mexico State Police and various other law enforcement agencies brought emergency contingency plans for any dust storms in 2005, and when the storms did hit, the plans worked. The plans were to keep traffic from getting trapped in dust storms in the first place which meant minute-by-minute monitoring of the field when high wind warnings were issued. When the first signs of dust picked up, traffic on the interstate was diverted to nearby New Mexico 122.

Even the contingency plan was a short-term deal; so the state contacted the landowner, Wesley Adams, of Las Vegas, Nev., and got permission to do some work.

In April New Mexico Department of Transportation Secretary Rhonda Faught called the situation a public safety issue which needs attention. "We're glad that we were able to get on the property and improve our ability to open the interstate during the spring windy season. This measure should also help the smooth flow of interstate commerce that has taken a beating every time we close I-40 and reroute the traffic," Faught said.

The plan called for the land to be plowed, disked, seeded and then have a layer of mulch put over the seeds with a sticky solution, called tack, sprayed on top to keep everything in place.

New Mexico Department of Transportation Spokesperson Rosie Sais, said the plowing was done in April and crews have been disking and seeding the ground, as well as laying down the mulch and spraying on the tack this month. The tack contains fertilizer and other nutrients for plants.

On Wednesday, the last of the tack was sprayed on the land.

There are already signs that the project may be working. "There was a television crew that came out in their helicopter," Sais said. "When they landed it blew up dust where there was no tack down and there was no dust blowing from the places that had been tacked."