By LISA PARLATO
Albuquerque

The Strategic Water Supply Act (SWS), HB 137, is a false solution that will exacerbate the projected water shortage in New Mexico. The SWS is asking New Mexico taxpayers to shell out $75M every year to buy the oil and gas industry’s toxic fracking fluid waste, aka produced water. 

Produced water is a by-product of oil and gas extraction that contains significant amounts of radioactive radium, toxic organic and inorganic heavy metals, and PFAS. While SWS calls for this fracking waste to be “treated”, Governor Lujan Grisham’s own New Mexico Environmental Department and the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association both admit that there is no proof that produced water can be safely treated for reuse or discharge at the scale proposed by the SWS.

The SWS is an expensive, unproven, and dangerous proposal that sounds good but fails to provide any solution to render contaminated produced water safe for reuse. 

Costs for disposal or treatment of fracking waste should be borne by the prosperous private oil and gas industry creating the issue and making billions off this resource, not the residents of New Mexico.