New Mexico to buy $500 million worth of brackish and treated water - KRQE News 13

New Mexico governor wants to buy $500 million worth of brackish and treated water

NEW MEXICO(KRQE) – New Mexico’s governor is looking to invest in expanding the state’s water supply. The idea is to guarantee a $500 million purchase of water – the guarantee should be enough to spur private investment in water treatment, the governor’s office says.

“In arid states like ours, every drop counts. A warming climate throws that fact into sharper relief every day,” Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a press release. “This is innovation in action: We’re leveraging the private sector to strengthen our climate resiliency and protect our precious freshwater resources.”

Underground in some parts of New Mexico are brackish aquifers. Those underground sources of water are potentially usable if someone makes the effort to remove dissolved solids, like salt, from the water. Brackish water can be found near Albuquerque, Raton, Las Vegas, Roswell, Tularosa, and several other spots around the state, according to the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources. The governor says ‘produced’ water (used water) from the oil and gas industry could also be treated.

So, the governor plans to convince a private contractor to treat brackish or produce water in New Mexico. The New Mexico Environment Department will seek proposals in 2024, the governor’s office says. The state will then commit to purchasing clean water for use in projects such as water-intensive manufacturing.

The $500 million for those purchase commitments will come from legislative appropriations in the next two years, the governor’s office says. The cash will come from severance tax funds, the taxes collected from extraction industries such as the oil and gas industries.

The New Mexico Environment Department is also working to boost water reuse in the state. New statewide rules on water reuse are currently under consideration. You can learn more about those proposed rules and find documents for public comment at this link.

The latest news isn’t the first time the state has considered tapping into its brackish water supply. In 2004, the state created a Brackish Water Task Force to research the availability of brackish water. The key factor that’s limited the development of the resource has been cost. The New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources notes that there are high energy costs for pumping and treatment as well as waste disposal for brackish water treatment.