OPINION: OPINION: New Mexico needs a strategic water supply for development of non-traditional water
Feb. 24—A 2014 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office gave a wake-up call to U.S. water planners, highlighting that 45 states, including New Mexico, were on a trajectory to experience regional and state-wide fresh water supply shortages by 2024. In response, many states initiated improved water supply planning.
For the past few years, New Mexico has worked with water management agencies, academia, communities, and the public to study our water resources and future supply challenges. The results are sobering: New Mexico can expect a 25%-30% reduction in fresh water availability by 2070. This requires a major shift in water planning and infrastructure development, with more reliance on using nontraditional waters, such as municipal and industrial wastewater, and brackish and produced water.
The Environmental Protection Agency recognized that the development and use of nontraditional waters is important and in 2020, established a National Water Reuse Action Plan (WRAP) to assist states in conducting the research to demonstrate safe, fit-for-purpose treatment and reuse of five major waste waters: industrial, municipal, agricultural, produced water, and storm water.
New Mexico's 50-year Water Action Plan, developed in 2023, acknowledges that New Mexico has significant brackish groundwater and produced water resources that can be treated and used for designated uses to reduce future water shortfalls. The proposed Strategic Water Supply initiative is one of several important efforts identified in the 50-year water plan and focuses on creating funding to purchase treated brackish and produced water, encouraging construction of treatment plants, and providing water for new economic development initiatives. Two bills proposed in the NM Legislature will provide funding to establish and develop the Strategic Water Supply (House Bill 137 and Senate Bill 342).
In a February 10, 2025, Albuquerque Journal op-ed, Mariel Nanasi claimed that "the science needed to ensure safe reuse of produced water simply does not exist," that "current treatment technologies struggle to address the vast array of contaminants, let alone the new toxic byproducts that can form during treatment processes," and that "we lack the scientific knowledge to ensure its safety." However, those claims are not true.
Produced water has been treated, permitted, and safely discharged to the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania since 2014. In California, brackish water and produced water have been treated and blended with surface water for over 25 years and permitted for agricultural irrigation in California's Central Valley. Wyoming permitted a produced water facility to treat and discharge coal bed methane-produced water for almost 10 years.
Since 2020, New Mexico State University has supported the EPA's research efforts on the health, safety, and environment toxicology of using treated produced water. NMSU's research has been done in cooperation with industry, academia, and state and federal agencies, and has included evaluation of over a dozen produced water treatment technologies. This includes sampling and state-of-the-art analysis of treated produced water for over 400 targeted chemical compounds and non-target analysis for thousands of potential trace chemicals along with risk and toxicology analysis on aquatic species, human cell lines, and vertebrate species.
The data and results have been peer-reviewed and are publicly available. Conclusions from full-scale produced water treatment plants and large-scale treatment demonstrations are clear and overwhelming: Produced and brackish water can be treated and safely put to beneficial use with no adverse impact on the public or environmental health and safety.
Creating and funding the Strategic Water Supply is an innovative approach to new water resource development through public/private funding. It should be supported by all New Mexicans, offering a bold vision of 'water stewardship,' supporting long-term economic growth and future water supply sustainability.
John D'Antonio is president of the New Mexico Desalination Association, and Mike Hightower is an association board member.
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Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump aides want Texas to redraw its congressional maps to boost the GOP. What would that mean?
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32 minutes ago
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Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
EPA moves to repeal rules that limit greenhouse gas emissions from US power plants
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'They wanted to make sure that ... no matter what agency anybody might be confirmed to lead, we are finding opportunities to pursue common-sense, pragmatic solutions that will help reduce the cost of living ... create jobs and usher in a golden era of American prosperity." Environmental and public health groups called the rollbacks dangerous and vowed to challenge the rules in court. Dr. Lisa Patel, a pediatrician and executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health, called the proposals 'yet another in a series of attacks" by the Republican president's administration on the nation's 'health, our children, our climate and the basic idea of clean air and water.' She called it 'unconscionable to think that our country would move backwards on something as common sense as protecting children from mercury and our planet from worsening hurricanes, wildfires, floods and poor air quality driven by climate change.' 'Ignoring the immense harm to public health from power plant pollution is a clear violation of the law,'' added Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council. 'If EPA finalizes a slapdash effort to repeal those rules, we'll see them in court.' The EPA-targeted rules could prevent an estimated 30,000 deaths and save $275 billion each year they are in effect, according to an Associated Press examination that included the agency's own prior assessments and a wide range of other research. It's by no means guaranteed that the rules will be entirely eliminated — they can't be changed without going through a federal rulemaking process that can take years and requires public comment and scientific justification. Even a partial dismantling of the rules would mean more pollutants such as smog, mercury and lead — and especially more tiny airborne particles that can lodge in lungs and cause health problems, the AP analysis found. It would also mean higher emissions of the greenhouse gases driving Earth's warming to deadlier levels. Biden, a Democrat, had made fighting climate change a hallmark of his presidency. Coal-fired power plants would be forced to capture smokestack emissions or shut down under a strict EPA rule issued last year. Then-EPA head Michael Regan said the power plant rules would reduce pollution and improve public health while supporting a reliable, long-term supply of electricity. The power sector is the nation's second-largest contributor to climate change, after transportation. In its proposed regulation, the Trump EPA argues that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuel-fired power plants 'do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution' or climate change and therefore do not meet a threshold under the Clean Air Act for regulatory action. The Clean Air Act allows the EPA to limit emissions from power plants and other industrial sources if those emissions significantly contribute to air pollution that endangers public health. If fossil fuel plants no longer meet the EPA's threshold, the Trump administration may later argue that other pollutants from other industrial sectors don't either and therefore shouldn't be regulated, said Meghan Greenfield, a former EPA and Justice Department lawyer now in private practice. The EPA proposal 'has the potential to have much, much broader implications,' she said. Zeldin, a former Republican congressman of New York, said the Biden-era rules were designed to 'suffocate our economy in order to protect the environment,' with the intent to regulate the coal industry "out of existence" and make it "disappear.'' Dr. Howard Frumkin, a former director of the National Center for Environmental Health and professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Public Health, said Zeldin and Trump were trying to deny reality. 'The world is round, the sun rises in the east, coal-and gas-fired power plants contribute significantly to climate change, and climate change increases the risk of heat waves, catastrophic storms and many other health threats,'' Frumkin said. 'These are indisputable facts. If you torpedo regulations on power plant greenhouse gas emissions, you torpedo the health and well-being of the American public and contribute to leaving a world of risk and suffering to our children and grandchildren." A paper published earlier this year in the journal Science found the Biden-era rules could reduce U.S. power sector carbon emissions by 73% to 86% below 2005 levels by 2040, compared with a reduction of 60% to 83% without the rules. 'Carbon emissions in the power sector drop at a faster rate with the (Biden-era) rules in place than without them,'' said Aaron Bergman, a fellow at Resources for the Future, a nonprofit research institution and a co-author of the Science paper. The Biden rule also would result in "significant reductions in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, pollutants that harm human health," he said. ___ Associated Press writers Michael Phillis and Seth Borenstein contributed to this story. Matthew Daly, The Associated Press Melden Sie sich an, um Ihr Portfolio aufzurufen.
