Over the past few months, the Castelion Corporation has been quietly considering Sandoval County as the location for a new rocket motor manufacturing facility, which will contain several structures with the biggest one being over 200,000 square feet on more than 1,000 acres. Despite the scale of the project, the Californian company has kept its plans largely under wraps, only hosting a few meetings that were open to the public before the project was pushed forward by commissioners of Sandoval County, with backing from Senator Jay Block.
The secrecy around this project has sparked outrage among several council members, such as Nicole List, who expressed concerns about the lack of transparency and insufficient notice for residents to attend these meetings. As a concerned resident myself I became aware of the public meetings only through social media platforms such as Nextdoor and Facebook, just days before they occurred. Additionally, there are significant environmental issues that remain unaddressed, including the impact of the facility's projected use of 8 million gallons of water on local aquifers and the potential for soil and water contamination from chemicals like ammonium perchlorate. To say the least, the environmental concerns aren’t just being brushed aside, they are being deliberately ignored.
The implications for existing property owners and nearby tribal lands, particularly those of the Santa Ana reservation, have also not been adequately considered and left in the dark. While the Rio Rancho council claims to prioritize the interests of Rio Rancho residents, they could not assure that the limited job opportunities created by Castelion would be reserved for New Mexicans rather than out-of-state workers. Furthermore, the company has not clarified how it plans to safeguard national security in the event of a foreign threat targeting the facility, given the significant military presence in the area. New data released by WildEarth Guardians reveals that oil and gas waste spills in New Mexico jumped nearly 400% in the third quarter of 2025, and as of current times a toxic chromium plume from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is continuing to spread underground onto the land of San Ildefonso Pueblo. With the current spill threats currently ongoing in New Mexico, the Castelion corporation did not conduct a toxic plume study prior to the Rio Rancho council members advancing this project further driving more questions about the safety of this project. All and all the Castelion Corporation as well as Sandoval county and the city of Rio Rancho have failed to ensure trust from the residents of the area, resulting in a project that will more than likely have irreversible consequences. Until we have full transparency, real independent testing and iron-clad accountability, pushing this forward isn’t “innovation”, it's reckless. It’s gambling with our health, our water, our land and our future.
Submitted by Zachary Darden
