The so-called strategic water supply is the opposite, like “produced water” as a name for toxic oil field waste. It is not beginning with the end in mind. It is not putting first things first. It is not informed by facts and science. It is unvetted. It is wrong.
Where did this come idea come from? Our Governor announced it from Dubai, located on the desert north Mediterranean shore of North Africa, that has no freshwater. The only irrigation is from municipal wastewater. All water comes from ocean desalination plants.
Water produced by an ocean desalination plant costs about $7.50 for a thousand gallons, or $2,450 per acre-foot. Ocean desal plants pump water from the limitless ocean and discharge their brine right back in. The waste disposal is free. In Dubai, a petroleum absolute monarchy, energy is free and carbon emissions are not a consideration.
A typical Albuquerque household uses about 11,000 gallons per month, on average. The average cost is $35 per month, or about $425 dollars per year. The raw water costs the water utility nothing, the costs cover operations and infrastructure.
What if the water itself required desalination at the ocean desal rate of $7.50 per 1000 gallons plus 50% for pumping the water from deep within the ground, pumping it to the desal plant, and costly disposal brine with no ocean handy. That would boost the cost to $11.20 per 1000 gallons. The Albuquerque resident’s bill would go up 356%, from $425 per year to $1,500.
Oil field waste, marketed by the oil and gas folks as “produced water” is incredibly more difficult to treat. Treatment for discharge to a large river reportedly costs $10 per barrel in Pennsylvania, which is about $78 per acre-foot.
If the cost were only $2 per barrel, the number New Mexico produced water boosters toss around currently, half a billion dollars would buy 32,000 acre-feet of water once. Why? Permian Basin produced water is 20% salt by weight, or more. Ocean desal technologies don’t work. “Thermal” treatment is required to boil the brine, capture the condensate (contains organic poisonous but unknown volatile compounds that also boil and condense) remove the poisons, and dispose of mind boggling tons and tons and tons of salt.
Precious or rare earth recovery? Nope. Not feasible or economic from this ancient salty waste, according to state data not yet made public to the best of my knowledge. New Mexico Environment Department officials said the opposite.
More reasons to put this idea aside for future research and demonstration are listed below.
- We need to face the facts our hydrologic and climate change water future and take productive action. We have no dollars or hours to waste on ideas that can’t pencil out.
- The desalination disruption by of the 2024 Legislature by the Governor’s half-billion dollar speculation comes simultaneously with the Legislature’s and the Governor’s neglect of basics required to secure New Mexico’s future. The Governor and the Legislature are not meeting the critical basic needs of New Mexico for water security. Without water security, there is no economic security.
- The Sovereign State of New Mexico is failing to Fund and Do the crucial water management work identified by a consensus of the 2022 Water Policy and Infrastructure Task Force.
- The State of New Mexico’s water administration consists of issuing permits in most areas of New Mexico and not looking back. New Mexico water governance is pushing paper, not dealing with wet water. Wet water scarcity is worsening and the State’s paper and data are in disarray.
- The Sovereign State of New Mexico watched without planning or action the draining of the Ogallala Aquifer by individual water rights owners maximizing their private benefit. Now we see that the externalized costs include the welfare of all of eastern New Mexico.
- That situation is playing out in other closed basin aquifers in New Mexico as you read this. New Mexico is ignoring the Portales/Eastern New Mexico canary in the coal mine, the canary desiccated by dairy (home to the largest Mozzarella cheese plant in the world!). Only the scientists are paying attention.
- The Sovereign State of New Mexico is failing to fund and staff the basics of 21st century water management for our much more arid future.
- Water Data – 2019 Water Data Act Implementation.
- Aquifer Characterization in a state that depends on groundwater more than any other state. We don’t know how much water we have left after a century of hard pumping.
- Regional water planning – 2023 Water Security Planning Act Implementation, which means the Sovereign State of New Mexico must fund regions and communities to begin appropriate self-organization of the Regional Water Planning Entities authorized and made responsible by the 2023 Act.
- The Sovereign State of New Mexico fails its employees by not prioritizing two essential things that successful enterprises always do.
- New Mexico water agencies fails to provide their workers with modernization – modern information technology, training, productive work processes, quality assurance, etc
- As a result, workers productivity and individual contributions are not what they could be and must become.
- Many New Mexico communities need help to replace failed existing infrastructure, like pipes that don’t leak so our water can be conserved.
- Desal has a huge carbon footprint. Produced water treatment has a MASSIVE carbon footprint. The energy required is enormous and the carbon load unacceptable
- The New Mexico Produced Water Research Consortium management tells half-truths and flat out lies. Professor’s are objecting their research findings are being twisted without scientific integrity by the Consortium’s public faces. The Consortium’s manager refuses to do a basic feasibility study that would show the utter infeasibility of the vision that the PWRC is publicly espousing and is dangerous to the public health. Some Oil and Gas Companies know this truth but remain silent. They require a complete release of liability.
- The potential for unknown adverse consequences is unacceptable. We know very little about New Mexico’s brackish water and saline aquifers or their interconnections to the legally protected aquifers above or beside. The NM Legislature appropriated millions last year to begin that characterization. The Sovereign’s huge capital investment plopped down without doing that basic science first is not the right way.
- It is just not right to neglect the basics – staff capacity in all water agencies, full-bore implementation of the 2019 Water Data Act, meeting our downstream water delivery obligations, accelerated aquifer research, regional water planning, watershed restoration, protection of our headwaters, replacing the clean water regulatory authority the US Supreme Court just stripped from over 90% of our waters – while spending wildly on speculative unplanned, infrastructure.
- It’s just not right for the Governor and Legislature from denying funding for New Mexico Environment to pursue New Mexico’s water quality protection and clean-up imperatives, and then demand they devote scarce professional staff resources to Governor’s badwater vision.
- It is shameful to have top state appointed officials, who know better because they are smart, educated people, to be purveyors of disinformation as they were during the 2024 legislature trying to get huge sums authorized for the Dubai badwater bad dream.
Only if we wake up NOW, will it be possible for future generations of New Mexicans to live in our beloved New Mexico, our home place, our querencia. Collaboration can get us where we need to be. Reaching Agreement. Nothing else will. Change–Big Change–is essential. We must change, or lose New Mexico for most of our descendants, forever.
/s/
Norm Gaume, P.E. (ret.)
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President, Water Advocates for New Mexico and the Middle Rio Grande
New Mexico Water Ambassador
Research Scholar, University of New Mexico
Former New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission Director
Former member, NM Produced Water Research Consortium Technical Steering Committee