By SHERRY ROBINSON
All She Wrote
© 2024 New Mexico News Service
For the two sponsors of the Strategic Water Supply bill now before the Legislature, this is personal.
Rep. Susan Herrera, D-Española, said she gets asked frequently why she’s carrying the governor’s controversial bill. She explains that her district is rural and agricultural.
“Eighty percent of the people coming to me with problems have water problems,” she told the House Agriculture, Acequia and Water Resources Committee. “Climate change is real. I’ve seen things in the last five years I never thought were possible…
“This bill starts a bigger conversation about water. We know there will be 25% less water in the next 50 years. This is the only bill that tries to create a new water resource.”
Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, said he recently ran across testimony about water by his late father, who was mayor of Gallup. Fifty years later, his district and the state are still grappling with the water supply.
“We have to do something,” he told me. “Are we really putting produced water to best use? Can we use brackish water? That’s what will save cities and water systems.”
House Bill 137 would try to preserve surface water by using brackish water and produced water from oilfields for industrial development but not for drinking water, agriculture or nature. It would create the Strategic Water Supply Fund with a $75 million appropriation and a new tax on the oil and gas industry of 5 cents a barrel on some produced water. The money would be used to incentivize water treatment projects and send $28.8 million to New Mexico Tech for aquifer mapping and groundwater characterization and $4 million to NMSU to study potential projects for the program.
This bill is different from last year’s strategic water bill, said Rebecca Roose, the governor’s infrastructure advisor. The administration gathered more data about market mechanics, science, demand and potential use. While private industry is already doing some work, she said the state’s involvement “puts us in the position of moving projects forward faster.” And there’s an economic development angle in matching projects with industries like data centers that don’t need potable water.
New Mexico has some 650 trillion gallons of water sitting unused in deep, salty (brackish) aquifers, according to the New Mexico Environment Department. Oil and gas companies generate more than 80 billion gallons of produced water, although 60% is reused. That’s enough to make a huge difference to the state’s water supplies.
“New technology can clean deep brackish water and produced water for a range of uses, reducing pressure on our freshwater resources,” says an NMED fact sheet.
However, during hours of testimony, citizens and experts argued that assertion. Whether they were for or against, they all claimed that science supports their position.
On the pro side was Mayor Denny Herrera, of the Village of Cuba in Sandoval County. “We’ve had two water emergencies in two years,” he said. “People are hauling water daily because their wells went dry.” The village has been working with a company on a water treatment plant based on ion exchange technology.
On the other side were environmental groups like Wild Earth Guardians that said, “The state shouldn’t subsidize unproven technology that produces toxic waste.”
And the oil industry isn’t crazy about a new tax.
Rep. Angelica Rubio, D-Las Cruces, said she’s visited fracking sites and tried hard to learn about produced water. “There’s still not enough evidence that produced water can be treated,” she said, but she sees the potential of brackish water.
HB 137 was held for further discussion.
I can understand Rubio’s hesitation. Because I spent so many years covering business I have greater faith in industry to solve this, but more than that, I believe we don’t have time to waste. State Engineer-designate Elizabeth Anderson was right when she said, “The time is now to do this.”