Ahead of next week’s 60-day legislative session kickoff, two key political leaders from opposite parties squared off in our studios recently.
Majority leader in the state senate, Santa Fe Democrat Peter Wirth, and minority senate leader Bill Sharer, a Farmington Republican, came together on some issues and differed on others.
The discussion ranged from public safety and behavioral health to drug addiction and immigration.
They also touched on a big issue that inevitably arises in local political discourse—what to do about water.
Wirth, a long-time advocate for conservation legislation, plans to bring at least two water bills to the table.
One would allow New Mexico to implement the federal Clean Water Act; it is one of only three states in the country that haven’t yet adopted the national measure that allows for better management around water pollution.
The other would re-include intermittent streams as part of the regulatory picture under the Clean Water Act.
It remains to be seen whether the legislature will support the governor’s latest Strategic Water Supply proposal. Last year, state lawmakers rejected her $500 million plan to treat water produced by oil and gas drilling.
Wirth explains why he might back it this time.
“I'm more open to it because I think it's more defined and it's going to focus much more on brackish water, which is where I thought the original one was gonna go," Wirth said.
"Here's a huge amount of water that's coming out of the oil and gas country, and if it's treated, it can be used in cement for windmills and things of that nature.
"If it's the brackish water, then it's not even anything necessarily to do with oil and gas, and it's a question of treating it to the level that it could be used. For example, in data centers.”
Senator Sharer didn’t make clear whether he would support the water measures Wirth brought up, and instead raised a completely different approach.
“Because we don't manage our forests, what falls from the sky, whether it's rain or snow, doesn't make it to the water tank—so every mountain is a giant water tank if you think about it that way," Sharer said.
"We burned the forests down and so the water didn't make it to the water tank. It doesn't make it now because it runs off and just pollutes our rivers and fills up our lakes. We need forest management. If we had forest management, we would have a lot more water.”
You can hear the entire conversation featured on KSFR’s The Forum, with senators Sharer and Wirth on our website.
