If public safety legislation is Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s number one priority for the 60-day session, water bills must be a close second.
After all, it was just over one year ago when the governor announced her 50-year water action plan, a multi-tiered strategy to address estimates that New Mexico will have 25% less water in a half-century.
When one of her key legislative proposals last year, the Strategic Water Supply Program, was voted down in its first committee hearing, several senators and commenters said the measure lacked clarity.
Bill sponsor this year and last, Representative Susan Herrera, said she spent much of last summer consulting with experts and made several changes.
Like last year’s bill, it aims to harvest deep brackish water, and wastewater produced by oil and gas drilling, treat it, and then, safely use it or reuse it.
At the start of yesterday morning’s House Agriculture, Acequias and Water Resources Committee meeting, Herrera made her case for House Bill 137, the Strategic Water Supply Act.
“ This is the only bill we have before us in this legislature that is trying to create new water resources. We need to figure out as a legislature, as a state, as a community, how can we reuse or use what precious little water we have?”
According to the governor’s infrastructure advisor, Rebecca Roose, the bill’s $75 million appropriation in general funds would be invested on projects in aquifer mapping and research into brackish water and produced water.
The measure would also institute a five cents per barrel produced water fee for oil and gas companies.
Last year, those fuel industries generated about 2.4 billion barrels of produced water, which could amount to more than a $100 million under the bill.
During the public comment period, Terry Cole, head of the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, said that the chamber opposes the bill because it would place what she called a tax on oil and gas production.
East Albuquerque farmer Zach Withers said he opposed it partly because it was too beneficial to oil and gas.
”Deeply concerned about the possibility of the oil and gas industry moving towards reusing the produced water fracking waste in any context without having appropriate standards established and vetting the process by which they clean that water up. It funds the oil and gas to clean up their own waste.”
After hearing a lot of that kind of feedback on the measure, bill sponsor Herrera, also a member of the committee, said at the end of the meeting that her team would pull back the measure, make some additional changes, and try to return to the committee later in the session.
Reporting from the Roundhouse, I’m Rob Hochschild for KSFR News.
