NM Water Protection Bills Flow Through First Committee
Oil and gas, big business oppose both bills.
Two bills that together would restore and expand protection for New Mexico’s waterways passed their first legislative hurdle on Thursday morning.
The Senate Conservation Committee passed Senate Bill 21 and Senate Bill 22 in 6-3 party-line votes, with Republicans in opposition. They still must go through the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee before they can reach the Senate floor.
SB 21 would allow New Mexico environmental regulators to take over permitting, compliance and enforcement duties under the federal Clean Water Act currently handled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 6 Office in Dallas, Texas.
If passed and signed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, the New Mexico Environment Department would work with the EPA to apply for “primacy” over water protection, said Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth (D-Santa Fe), who is sponsoring both bills.
“With precipitation becoming more variable and extreme, snowpacks and runoff, we’re seeing the effects of climate change, and certainly a hotter, drier climate with higher temperatures,” Wirth said. “Experts predict that 25% of our water is going to be gone in the next 50 years. Therefore, it’s absolutely essential that we conserve and protect the resources that we have.”
Rep. Kristina Ortez (D-Taos) is co-sponsoring both bills, and Sen. Roberto “Bobby” J. Gonzales (D-Rancho de Taos) is co-sponsoring SB 21, Wirth said.
SB 22 would establish a statewide water quality permitting program at NMED and include $50 million for investigation and clean up of water pollution sites.
Under a September 2023 EPA regulation, the legal definition of waters of the United States and adjoining wetlands was pared down, following the ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Sackett v. EPA earlier that year.
Wirth argued SB 22 would return New Mexico back to the way the law was interpreted before the Sackett decision.
Wirth was joined by Shelly Lemon, who leads the Surface Water Quality Bureau at NMED, and the department’s General Counsel Zachary Ogaz.
Other states that have already taken control of water regulation pay for their enforcement with a mix of up-front permit application fees and fines for violations, Lemon said. There will be a “robust” discussion of the fee structure in the Senate Finance Committee, Wirth said.
The bills are the highest priority for Pueblo of Laguna Gov. Harry Antonio Jr., said lobbyist J.D. Bullington.
“We’ve lost federal protections over surface water that flows all throughout our Native lands here in the state of New Mexico,” he said.
Last April, a national report deemed the more than 108,000 miles of river in New Mexico the most endangered in the country.
Sen. Angel Charley, a Democrat who is a registered member of Laguna Pueblo, said Indigenous communities are the original stewards of land, water, air and animals.
“As we’re experiencing all of the chaos that’s happening at the federal level with various exemptions and rollbacks around federal protections, I think it’s incumbent upon us at the state level to create protection against what’s happening on the national level,” Charley said.
SB 22 would protect communities downstream from sources of pollution by requiring NMED to deny any discharge permit application that would allow pollution that would exceed another jurisdiction’s standards, Wirth said.
The bills are opposed by the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association, the Albuquerque Metropolitan Arroyo Flood Control Authority, the Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico, the New Mexico Oil & Gas Association, the New Mexico Chamber of Commerce, the New Mexico Farm Bureau, the San Juan Water Commission and Freeport-McMoRan, a mining company with copper mines in New Mexico.
Austin Fisher is a journalist based in Santa Fe. He has worked for newspapers in New Mexico and his home state of Kansas, including the Topeka Capital-Journal, the Garden City Telegram, the Rio Grande SUN and the Santa Fe Reporter. Since starting a full-time career in reporting in 2015, he’s aimed to use journalism to lift up voices that typically go unheard in public debates around economic inequality, policing and environmental racism.
Source New Mexico is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
This Week In Energy republishes their articles, features and stories online and/or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
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