Journal Editorial
If
an enormous mining operation was about to begin just outside
Albuquerque — and just outside the legal reach of state regulators
normally in charge of such things — wouldn't you expect an outcry? Or a
murmer, at least?
So far, the only sound in the Rio Puerco Valley west of the
volcanoes is the drone of drilling machinery. Deep wells are planned by
three different enterprises in search of one vast and untapped prize:
an underground reservoir of salty water.
As urban growth accelerates in the metro area's high desert, water — even brackish water — takes on the allure of gold.
Commonwealth Utilities owner Paul Powers intends to spend $500
million in investor money to sink 60 wells and build a desalination
plant that would produce 110,000 acre feet of water a year.
Sandoval County discovered deep brackish water last year in the Rio
Puerco Valley, and is considering its own desalination plant. Atrisco
Oil & Gas plans to pump 12,000 acre feet a year.
The mining of deep brackish water will inevitably become a statewide
issue; huge reserves have already been identified in the Tularosa
Basin.
It's a “free-for-all,” State Engineer John D'Antonio says of a
deep-water mining boom he finds himself nearly powerless to control.
Unfortunately, a free-for-all is what happens in a policy vacuum.
Because few people imagined deep brackish water would ever come to
the surface as anything but waste “production water” in oil and gas
drilling, state water law exempts it from the purview of the state
engineer, who administers water rights in New Mexico.
Existing law offers no tools to regulate deep pumping, though the
state could step in if it were shown the operations were threatening
fresh water aquifers, conventional wells or causing environmental
damage. That could well translate into after-the-fact, remedial action.
Before millions are invested in a California Gold Rush-style melee
in the Rio Puerco Valley or Tularosa, the Legislature should address
the issue. At the very least, lawmakers could lay the foundation for
rational policy governing the use of this untapped resource.
The state engineer has sought regulatory authority over this water
in the past two sessions, but lawmakers have never gotten the bills to
the floor for a vote.
The worst policy on deep-water mining would be a continuation of the
status quo: no policy at all. That would encourage the free-for-all to
continue, setting the stage for allowing public and private entities to
develop pumping and purification operations that could encourage
long-term patterns of unsustainably high water use coupled with high
energy use needed to drill, pump and treat.
If miles of new subdivisions are made possible by desalinated water,
what will sustain those subdivisions if the water runs out?
Perhaps more disturbing of all, however, is the possibility that
pumping the deep water could drain fresh-water aquifers above or
contaminate existing supplies.
The West's entire water-law tradition argues against unregulated, unlimited access by new claimants.
The Legislature cannot sit on its hands, ignoring an an issue that
could well shape the state's future. It shouldn't be too hard to write
an exemption for oil and gas drillers into a larger framework designed
to give policy makers — not water speculators — the final say over New
Mexico's precious water resources.
