By Hannah Grover
The Water Quality Conservation Commission is set to vote on a rule that will allow pilot projects to seek groundwater discharge permits for produced water — a byproduct of oil and gas extraction. Under the terms the commission agreed upon during a meeting this week, other discharges of produced water would not be allowed, at least not until after 2030.
Discharge permits allow for wastewater to be disposed of in ways that are intended to protect water resources.
While most of the discussion during deliberations this week focused on produced water, the final rule encompasses other forms of wastewater reuse as well.
The rulemaking stems from a petition by the New Mexico Environment Department that initially called for a prohibition on discharge permits for produced water. The commission considered a full ban on discharging produced water, but that motion failed on a 4-4 vote.
During deliberations, the commission debated whether in the future there may be ways to safely treat produced water for use outside of the oilfields. Because of that, the commissioners chose to set a December 2030 sunset date for the rulemaking.
During deliberations, Commissioner William Brancard advocated for the sunset date, which he said would allow the department and the commission to evaluate in a few years if the technology has reached the point to allow for regulations of produced water.
“The petitioner in this case, New Mexico Environment Department, has been pretty consistent in their testimony that there simply is not enough information out there at this point to adequately characterize and understand produce water, to develop standards about produced water,” Brancard said. “In other words, to develop good regulations about how to regulate that. And if they didn’t have a prohibition on discharge permits, they would be forced, case by case, to evaluate each situation, with lacking really the data and possibly have inconsistent results.”
Commissioners further said pilot projects are needed to determine if produced water can safely be treated and used outside of the oilfields. While prohibiting discharge could still have allowed pilot projects such as one that is using treated produced water in a greenhouse setting, it would have prevented some other types of experiments.
The commissioners set a cap of 84,000 gallons of produced water per day that a pilot project could discharge. Environmental advocates decried this decision and said it goes against the scientific evidence presented during the rulemaking process.
“While we are pleased that the Commission plans to adopt a ban on the discharge of oil and gas wastewater to New Mexico’s surface waters, we are dismayed that the Commission ignored the extensive record on the harms and toxicity of this wastewater and is proposing to allow its discharge to our precious New Mexico groundwater resources,” Rachel Conn, deputy director of Amigos Bravos, said in a statement. “Issuing discharge permits for these large-scale pilot projects using inadequate water quality standards will not protect public health and the environment, and could result in unsafe levels of toxic pollutants being discharged into our groundwater.”
A final vote on the rulemaking is expected in May. That will give the commissioners time to review the language they agreed upon during this week’s deliberations.
Advocates are continuing to push for a full ban on produced water discharge permits.
“Produced water is a toxic soup,” Tannis Fox, a senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center, said in a statement. “We don’t now know how to effectively treat this wastewater at scale so it is safe for our communities and the environment. A prohibition against discharge of produced water to our state’s most precious resource–our surface and groundwater–is supported by the best available science.”
Fox said the commission allowing pilot projects to apply for discharge permits “has no basis in the science or in the record before the Commission and was not supported by NMED’s own experts.”
“Once an aquifer is polluted, it is difficult, costly and sometimes impossible to clean up,” she said. “The Commission is playing Russian roulette with New Mexicans’ drinking water.”