The Strategic Water Supply Act, in its third substitute form this session, squeaked by in a 5-4 vote in the House Agriculture, Acequias, and Water Resources Committee.
The bill aims to harvest deep brackish water, and wastewater produced by oil and gas drilling, treat it, and then, safely use it or reuse it.
Committee chair and Taos state representative, Kristina Ortez, though she voted yes to pass it on to the next committee, made clear that she has mixed feelings about the measure in its current state.
“ You've heard a lot of my concerns. This is so far from a perfect bill. I love like 40% of it, just wholeheartedly can champion it," Ortez said.
The biggest concern I have is around the produced water. I don't like to put the cart before the horse. I don't like to even reference it at all until we're done with the rulemaking.”
The measure would allocate $108 million to safely develop treated brackish and treated produced water to help address the state’s growing water shortage.
Most of the money in the measure would go toward finding and extracting brackish water, which is saltier than fresh water, via extensive mapping of aquifers far below the earth’s surface.
The bill is less clear about how the process of making produced water re-usable would ultimately go, allowing for future decisions about it from the state water quality control commission and the state’s environmental regulators.
Bill sponsor Susan Herrera and the governor’s infrastructure advisor, Rebecca Roose, explained the latest changes to the bill, including a lower per-barrel fee that oil and gas companies will have to pay for generating produced water.
One of the "nay" votes came from Lovington, New Mexico representative Randall Pettigrew, who evoked the name of a national lawmaker when explaining his vote.
“ I do not believe that we should pass along legislation that so many people understand has so many problems to it," Pettigrew said.
"I do not believe, Madam Chair, in the Nancy Pelosi philosophy that we have to pass it to fix it, and that, Madam Chair concerns me.”
The bill heads next to the House Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources Committee.
