Fossil fuel ‘produced water’: Keep it out of waterways
There is intense and well-founded concern regarding the treatment and reuse of wastewater — known as “produced water” — created as a byproduct of oil and gas production. Fortunately, on Monday, New Mexico’s Water Quality Control Commission will begin a multiday hearing to consider a rule proposed by the New Mexico Environment Department to prohibit the discharge of produced water to ground and surface water. The proposed rule would also prohibit applying this wastewater to land because it can infiltrate and pollute groundwater.
We’ve participated in this rulemaking process from the start because the oil and gas industry’s wastewater contains oil, grease, suspended solids, dissolved solids, heavy metals, naturally occurring radioactive materials, dissolved gasses, microorganisms and a myriad of other known and unknown hazards to the health of people and other life. We are alarmed at the risk the oil and gas industry’s wastewater problem presents to our state’s rivers, streams and communities.
Problematically, we just know too little about the oil and gas industry’s wastewater problem because many chemicals added during the drilling process are considered trade secrets. Until there is full disclosure of the toxins used in produced water, we shouldn’t even be thinking about discharging this waste into the environment, which is why we strongly support Environment Department’s proposal to prohibit the discharge of produced water — whether treated or not — to New Mexico’s surface and groundwaters.
We also appreciate the Environment Department’s proposal to track demonstration projects and impose guardrails to assess the viability of cleaning up and reusing oil and gas wastewater, so long as those projects do not discharge into
the state’s waters. If the state and oil and gas industry believes produced water can be cleaned up and reused, it needs to prove it with empirical, publicly accessible evidence. Our state’s waters are simply too important to our economy and way of life to risk.
But we draw the line at the proposal to allow industrial projects that reuse produced water. While the Environment Department’s proposed rule subjects these projects to financial assurance requirements and spill prevention plans, the state has not provided scientific evidence that industrial projects are safe.
New Mexicans expect our state’s leadership to stand tall to the oil and gas industry and enact high standards to protect the health and safety of our state’s people, communities, lands and waters. We don’t want to follow in the footsteps of other states like Pennsylvania and Wyoming, where politically well-connected oil and gas lawyers and lobbyists convinced regulators to permit the discharge of oil and gas waste, and certainly not in the footsteps of Texas, which is poised to open the floodgates for oil and gas wastewater to “supplement” river and stream flows. Instead, we need to open new doors to a future where our rivers, streams and groundwater are protected as the foundation of our state’s future — not used as a dumping ground for oil and gas wastewater.
Next week, we hope you join us in our fight. Protecting water can’t wait. We need to speak up together and right now for clean water, before our waters become a dumping ground for toxic waste. Each day, the Water Quality Control Commission will provide you with an opportunity to voice your support for the Environment Department’s proposal to prohibit the discharge of produced water and opposition to their proposal to allow industrial reuse. Our state’s people and communities deserve no less.