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Desalination advocates urge Taos to study treated brackish and produced water; council seeks more data and hearings
Summary
Presenters from the New Mexico Desalination Association and local stakeholders told the council that brackish groundwater, municipal wastewater reuse and treated produced water could help address New Mexico’s projected freshwater shortfall; attendees pressed for peer-reviewed data, disclosure of proprietary chemicals and formal hearings before broader reuse.
Mike Hightower and John D’Antonio of the New Mexico Desalination Association and local farmer Luis Herrera presented a technical and policy overview on April 28 of using nontraditional water sources — brackish groundwater, treated municipal wastewater and produced water from oil-and-gas operations — as fit-for-purpose resources for industrial or other nonpotable uses.
Presenters summarized national and state context (EPA’s National Water Reuse Action Plan; New Mexico’s 50-year water plan), pilot- and commercial-scale desalination technologies (reverse osmosis skids that can scale bay-by-bay), and cost and scale examples. Hightower said brackish and treated municipal wastewater technologies have matured and can be commercially scaled (pilot plants at thousands to tens of thousands of gallons per day); he estimated large inland desal plants can cost tens of millions to low hundreds of millions depending on scale and source. D’Antonio, a former state engineer and former environment secretary, explained how using treated alternative waters could help statewide compact and delivery pressures and stressed the need for standards, hearings and transparent data on contaminants.
Public and council concerns: Councilors and residents pressed for peer-reviewed, third-party data and asked about testing for proprietary fracking chemicals and radionuclides. Presenters said independent certified-lab data and multi-year datasets exist for several projects, and described efforts to obtain safety-data sheets and non-target analyses for proprietary chemicals; they proposed more public hearings before rulemaking or broader reuse.
Why it matters: New Mexico faces a projected shortfall of hundreds of thousands of acre-feet over coming decades. Presenters framed treated nontraditional water as one complement to conservation and other supply options, but said fit-for-purpose uses and rigorous monitoring are prerequisites.
Quote: "We're not trying to propose anything that's unusual — we're trying to support the state of New Mexico in looking at opportunities for nontraditional resources to support freshwater stewardship," Mike Hightower said.
