By MARGARET O’HARA
The Santa Fe New Mexican

The Senate Conservation Committee on Tuesday tabled Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s high-profile plan to tap and treat brackish water to create a “strategic water supply,” potentially killing the effort this session.

Committee members agreed Senate Bill 294 needed more work before the state can proceed with what began as a plan to use $500 million in severance tax bonds to boost long-term water supplies for industrial uses. The committee slashed that amount to $100 million in a substitute bill before voting to table it.

“We know we’re going to go in this direction; we know the needs of our state,” Sen. Harold Pope, D-Albuquerque, said after the vote. “But I’m just concerned with what we have here. … We really have to get this right.”

Maddy Hayden, a spokeswoman for the governor, indicated in an email the stalled bill won’t end the governor’s push to build a strategic water supply.

“We are disappointed the bill was tabled in Senate Conservation this morning,” Hayden wrote. “However, we are continuing to negotiate with legislative leadership to move the Strategic Water Supply forward.”

The effort was a major piece of the governor’s 50-year water action plan, released during the session and aimed at diminishing the effects of climate change on New Mexico’s surface and groundwater supplies while bolstering industry.

Lujan Grisham announced the water supply proposal in early December at COP28 in Dubai, the United Nations’ 2023 climate change conference.

She said at the time she would look to the Legislature to earmark $500 million in severance tax bonds to buy treated brackish water and what’s known as “produced water” from hydraulic fracking operations for use in manufacturing and other industrial work. The plan met criticism from Indigenous and environmental activists, who saw it as a boon for the fossil fuel industry.

“The bill is brought to you today as part of a vision that the executive branch has for attracting industry to our state,” said Sen. Liz Stefanics, D-Cerrillos, a sponsor of SB 294, while introducing it to the Senate Conservation Committee on Tuesday.

Supporters framed the proposal as a public-private partnership that would develop local infrastructure and industry to treat contaminated water without further stressing the state’s freshwater resources.

“Being bold, being brave and forging new pathways in protecting freshwater while diversifying our economy is what we’re doing here today,” State Environment Secretary James Kenney told the committee. 

The committee’s substitute bill, which lowered the funding to $100 million, also removed Lujan Grisham’s original plan to reuse fracking wastewater. The change limited the bill’s water treatment market to brackish water, which SB 294 defined as water sourced from aquifers with a certain concentration of dissolved solids. 

Even with these changes, members of the Senate Conservation Committee resisted the bill, noting ambiguities and points of confusion. 

Stefanics was the sole committee member to vote against a motion to table the bill, effectively killing it. 

“I think we all know where this bill’s going — train station’s what we call it in my committee,” said Sen. Joe Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, anticipating the bill’s fate.