New Mexico has banned oil and gas companies from discharging their treated wastewater to ground and surface waters.
The state's Water Quality Control Commission made the decision during a May meeting, Inside Climate News reported. The ban comes after the commission previously allowed for pilot projects that permitted 84,000 gallons of the water to be released each day.
The wastewater, known as "produced water," is created during fracking and oil drilling. It contains chemicals used during those processes and other toxins such as arsenic.
"We thank the Commission for protecting our clean water, of which we have so little," Rachel Conn, deputy director of the water conservation nonprofit Amigos Bravos, told Inside Climate News. "This decision could not be more prudent."
Nationally, more than 20 billion barrels — or 840 billion gallons — of produced water are generated each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. New Mexico, one of the top-producing states for oil and gas, generates about 2 billion barrels annually.
The vast majority of produced water is disposed of by injecting it underground. In Texas, specialized "injection wells" are separated from other water sources, but some farmers believe there have been leaks and that the chemicalized water has ruined some crop yields. And there have been more than 10,000 produced water spills in Texas, totaling more than 148 million gallons.
New Mexico's pilot project program was launched in the hope that the state could find a way to reliably and consistently get the water clean enough to be used for surface-level purposes such as irrigation.
Our warming climate has New Mexico searching for new water sources, as the state projects it will lose 25% of its ground and surface water over the next 50 years.
Although the state's ban should keep surface waters safe from chemicals for now, officials hope that new projects and research will one day allow them to turn this toxic wastewater into something beneficial.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham "fully supports finding science-based ways to safely reuse produced water, as it's essential to protecting New Mexico's limited freshwater supplies," the New Mexico Environmental Department said in an email to Inside Climate News.
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