The governor's plan to use treated water from oil and gas drilling is in limbo while public safety questions swirl.
This story was originally co-published by Undark Magazine and the Santa Fe Reporter. This year, the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission held a hearing in Santa Fe to seek public input on regulating wastewater discharge from the oil and gas industry. It ended up dealing a blow to Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham's ambitious proposal to reuse the water for alternative energy development. Under the proposal, which was announced a few months earlier at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference and dubbed the "Strategic Water Supply," the state would buy both natural brackish and oilfield-produced water, contract with private companies for treatment or cleaning, and then provide the cleaned water to so-called green industries like solar and wind energy and electric vehicle manufacturing. The $500 million investment, Lujan Grisham said at the U.N. conference, would help "strengthen our climate resiliency and protect our precious freshwater resources." But the majority of the public who attended the hearing or submitted written comments opposed any discharge of either treated or untreated produced water, with some calling the water toxic and contaminated. New Mexico Water Quality Control Commissioner Katie Zemlick summarized the concerns of many citizens: Given the lack of reliable data on the chemicals found in the industrially produced water, "Why would we want to move forward with applications that could potentially interact with ground or surface water?" Some environmental and Indigenous activists also panned the proposal, with activists calling it a "false solution" that funnels money to the oil and gas industry. And during the 2024 legislative session, a bill to fund the project received little support from lawmakers, and died in committee. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. Here's How Members of the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission listen to testimony…