From the President’s Desk: The Governor’s ‘Strategic Water Supply’ and the Million Dollar Contractor’s ‘Feasibility Study’

Abstract

This essay criticizes the New Mexico Governor’s “Strategic Water Supply” concept and the deceptive ‘feasibility study’ draft prepared by Eastern Research Group, Inc. (ERG). The Governor’s concept is fundamentally flawed. The ‘feasibility study’ fails to disclose key challenges, such as the massive energy and carbon footprint required to desalinate Permian Basin produced water to meet the Governor’s goal of 100,000 acre-feet of new water by 2028.

Desalination would require the energy output of multiple San Juan Generating Station-sized power plants to produce much less new water than the Governor’s arbitrary goal of 100,000 acre-feet per year of new water by 2028, while also producing an equal volume of highly concentrated waste requiring safe disposal. The feasibility study merely hints at the energy and carbon footprints . It omits critical analysis of the great difficulty and expense of the infrastructure that would be required to extract large volumes of water, brackish or not, from deep aquifers below 2500 feet. The study merely assumes the voluminous concentrated waste can be safety disposed forever.

The essay highlights concerns about the lack of transparency and potential conflicts of interest surrounding the ERG’s $1 million sole-source contract, as well as the political origins of the project. Drawing parallels with the Gila Diversion Project boondoggle, the essay illustrates how political motives and self-interest override ethical behavior and honest determination of feasibility, resulting in wasted public funds and resources.

The NM Produced Water Research Consortium since its 2019 creation by the Environment Department and New Mexico State University has not yet begun a scientific research program of field pilot testing. Environment Department experts testified in August 2024 that NMED has no produced water field testing results yet from the Consortium and that its database contains not a single produced water data characterization data point. The feasibility study ignores that without data, the Environment Department and Water Quality Control Commission have no basis for the effluent and discharge standards and the regulation of all off-oil-field existence and use of treated or untreated produced water and its byproducts. Permits for off-oil-field transportation, handling, storage, and use are based on regulations, which are based on scientific standards.

The essay underscores the opportunity costs and ethical considerations of focusing on desalination over more urgent water management issues, such as full implementation of the 2019 Water Data Act and the 2023 Water Security Planning Act, coming into compliance with Rio Grande Compact water depletion legal limits routinely exceeded in the Middle and Lower Rio Grande, and providing incentives to slow New Mexico’s ruinous overuse of groundwater. The author argues that the Governor’s plan diverts legislative and agency attention from these pressing matters, thereby jeopardizing the long-term water and economic security of New Mexicans and the needs of future generations.

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Introduction: A Fatally Flawed Concept

The so-called ‘Strategic Water Supply’ concept is fundamentally flawed. The evidence is clear and compelling, but you won’t find it in the New Mexico Strategic Water Supply Feasibility Study Review Draft, released by New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) Cabinet Secretary James Kenney at the September 18, 2024, Legislative Finance Committee meeting. The Governor’s explicit goal is to treat produced water and deep brackish groundwater to produce 100,000 acre-feet of “new water” by 2028 for new high water use factories. 

You won’t learn from the Feasibility Study Review Draft that desalination of Permian Basin fracking wastewater, the explicit 2028 goal of the Governor’s 50-Year Water Action Plan, would require all the energy from multiple San Juan Generating Station-sized power plants to produce a maximum of 65,000 acre-feet of treated water and an equal amount of concentrated, hazardous waste. You also won’t learn that desalination of 100,000 acre-feet per year of deep brackish water would require the equivalent of building three and a third El Paso Kay Bailey Hutchison desalination projects.  According to the Review Draft, the El Paso project is the largest inland desalination plant in the world. Its capacity is 30,000 acre-feet per year. The source water in the Hueco Bolson, is in near-surface aquifers, not the unknown deep brackish aquifers below 2500 feet. 

The Draft Review Report is not a Feasibility Study

The draft review report was prepared by Eastern Research Group, Inc. (ERG) following its eyebrow-raising $1 million sole-source contract award by James Kenney. The report cover says, “Developed By: New Mexico Environment Department (&) Eastern Research Group, Inc.” It’s unlikely this report was written or edited by NMED’s top five experts on produced water. Their science and opinions are conspicuously absent from the draft review report. I have read all their sworn written testimony and listened in-person to their oral testimony, including days of their cross-examination at the Water Quality Control Commission produced water reuse rules hearing, May 13-16, 2024. 

The ERG report fails to tell the whole truth or provide any critical review of the evidence. Readers will find some true statements in the report, but the evidence is presented without objective evaluation. The section on deep brackish water aquifers is either embarrassingly misinformed and uncritical or intentionally misinforms. Other critical issues are completely omitted, such as the energy requirements for desalination of produced water and its significant carbon footprint. 

My opinion of the ERG report changed as the one month review period was ending. The report didn’t analyze or quantify energy requirements and the carbon footprint. Using identical language in three places, the report implies the emissions would be large enough to conflict with the State’s carbon emissions goals.  I decided to investigate.

The Energy Reality of Desalination: What the ERG Report Doesn’t Tell You

I spent an afternoon the day before public comments were due estimating the energy required to desalinate 100,000 acre-feet per year of Permian Basin produced water using ‘thermal methods.’ Think of ‘thermal methods’ as fancy methods of distillation. First, I calculated the latent heat of vaporization of 100,000 acre-feet of water at atmospheric boiling temperature as an estimate of the energy required for atmospheric distillation. As an alternate approach, I calculated the energy required to heat the water under very high pressure to around 650 degrees Fahrenheit, where the latent heat of vaporization becomes very small. I dug further into references and checked and rechecked my calculations. My rough bracketing estimates, based on equations and constants of physics and thermodynamics, didn’t change.

Before going public with my conclusion of immense energy requirements, I verified it by calling an expert in New Mexico produced water issues who is NOT a member of the Water Quality Control Commission. Because its produced water rules decisions are pending; ex parte communications with Commissioners is forbidden until the case is over. The expert I called was already aware of the issue and readily agreed with my conclusion: desalinating the Permian Basin produced water that has been pumped down saltwater disposal wells annually in New Mexico, one billion barrels a year, would require as much energy as multiple San Juan Generating Station-sized base load power plants. 

Desalinating all the produced water pumped down saltwater disposal wells annually since 2019, one billion barrels a year (alternate units of 159,000,000,000 liters per year or 129,000 acre-feet per year) would only yield 64,400 acre-feet of treated water while producing an equal amount of concentrated, extremely hazardous waste.  That’s because the expected maximum possible recovery is 50%.

Disinformation and Omission: Manipulation in the Report

Given the number and importance of striking errors and omissions, an informed reader of the ERG draft review report must conclude that the authors are either lacking expertise or deliberately omitting key information. Given the report’s tone, half-truths, and other evidence, I believe the latter is more likely.

This is disinformation, as defined in the Scientific American September 2019 issue, “Truth, Lies, and Uncertainty.” Disinformation is the deliberate spread of false information with the intent to harm.  

From Scientific American September 2019 issue entitled “Truth, Lies, and Uncertainty”, in this article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/misinformation-has-created-a-new-world-disorder/

The Gila Diversion Project: Wasteful Largess That Legislative Leadership Remembers

In that vein, the ERG draft review report resembles the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission/Bureau of Reclamation’s fraudulent draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Gila Diversion Project, formally known as the New Mexico Unit of the Central Arizona Project. The Gila Diversion Project wasted over $17 million in state funds and soaked up scarce human resources over more than a decade, all while avoiding a feasibility study or full disclosure of data and models. An honest feasibility study at the outset would have prevented years of waste and profiteering by consultants, lawyers, and revolving door state agency executives, who fed at this project’s public money trough.

It’s important to note that the “New Mexico Unit” was authorized through a Washington, D.C., political horse trade in 1968 and then revived by a similar deal in 2004. New Mexico Senator Pete V. Domenici was the NM 2004 dealmaker, and his son, Pete V., Jr., made about half a million dollars keeping this fraudulent project alive as attorney for local project boosters, funded by the Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) from 2014 through 2020. The ISC finally ceased wasting money on the Gila Diversion Project in 2020 after my colleague Peter Coha and I exposed that the draft Environmental Impact Statement materially misrepresented and omitted what Reclamation’s computer model simulations showed, and that the model itself was intentionally biased. He and I later published this NM Water Resources Research Institute annual conference poster which summarized the facts, our work, and our irrefutable conclusions.

Now we have the Governor’s ‘Strategic Water Supply.’ Like the Gila Diversion, its,

• origins are political and politically declared goals are unvetted,
• powerful proponents are deceptive, 
• feasibility is an important initial question, but is not fairly addressed,
• contractors tailor their work to support their customers desires, and
• proffered data and contractor explanations are not trustworthy.

The Consortium Won’t Address Feasibility

The NMSU Board of Regents and the Environment Department have repeatedly agreed by their signatures in 2019, 2021 and 2022 that the New Mexico Produced Water Research Consortium, as their joint creation, will use the framework of Module 3: Produced Water Reuse and Research Needs Outside Oil and Gas Operations of the Groundwater Protection Council’s authoritative and peer reviewed Produced Water Report Regulations, Current Practices and Research Needs. This manual of best practices recommends starting with a feasibility study.  Module 3 begins as follows:

“The phases of the framework include: 

Phase I: Preliminary assessment of the proposed program to determine whether the reuse scenario is likely to be feasible and if additional analysis is worth investment. A basic screening compares known characteristics of the produced water to expected water quality needs and reviews practical considerations such as public perception, regulation, logistics, economics, and benefits, to decide whether the program merits further in-depth analysis.” 

The Consortium Director has been promising a feasibility study since January 2020.

NMED’s produced water webpage links to three letters instructing and warning the Consortium that any discharge of produced water, treated or not, is forbidden. The letters are increasingly blunt. The 2019 and 2022 versions of the NMED and NMSU Board of Regions agreements linked on the NMED produced water webpage have a totally different tone, with the last signed version requiring explicit steps and corrections by NMSU.

Independent Review Committee Slams Consortium Operations Management

What we have instead of a feasibility study from the Consortium is documentation of the Consortium’s systematic failures from the until-recently-secret NMSU Independent Review Committee’s scathing report. NMED expert witnesses’ and the Consortium Director’s sworn testimony at the May 13-17, 2024, produced water reuse rules hearing confirmed that the Consortium has provided NMED no reliable data on produced water sampling and analysis. Scientifically valid field pilot testing has not begun. The testimony also revealed that the Consortium has not responded to the NMSU Independent Review Committee’s corrective recommendations. 

The record shows that the NMSU Independent Review Committee, a highly qualified group of three, was commissioned by a written agreement between NMED Secretary Kenney and the NMSU Board of Regents and given its mission to address NMED’s core concerns. The ERG Review Draft either ignores or is wrong about the core issues identified by the Independent Review Committee.  The committee’s December 23, 2022, report says the Consortium is not doing what it was created to do: conduct the research to show the treated water is safe and require stringent quality control of all research conducted by the public-private organization to establish credibility and support sound regulations and public trust.

“Some don’t appreciate the difficulty that NMED will have regulating this. Produced water is a contentious issue. The public will complain no matter what NMED does, so they (NMED) have to have air-tight science with chain-of-custody, peer review, no conflicts of interest, etc., to back up the regulatory process.”

This report that falsely calls itself a feasibility study is rife with errors and omissions. The report’s coy hint regarding energy and carbon footprint is ERG’s admission they know about energy and carbon footprint problems but chose to overlook them. NMED’s actions raise distrust. Why did NMED commission ERG to produce this report? Why is the report’s theme essentially the opposite of the internal review committee’s expert observations and advice that the regulators strive for credibility. Why does the report ignore recent sworn testimony before the Water Quality Control Commission about NMED’s proposed produced water reuse rule that revealed the status quo of statutory prerequisites?

The Role of Eastern Research Group: Questions of Influence and Ethics

The Eastern Research Group has unusual credentials and influence, raising questions about how it came to write the report and if its report supports public trust. After the 2023 Legislature, former Deputy Secretary of the Environment Department Rebecca Roose resigned from state employment and was later hired or contracted by ERG. Shortly afterward, Governor Lujan Grisham appointed Roose as her water policy advisor and infrastructure program director. 

Roose, an attorney, wrote the Governor’s 50-Year Water Action Plan. She and Secretary Kenney were the Governor’s key spokespeople throughout the 2024 Legislature for the Governor’s demand that the Strategic Water Supply be authorized to borrow $500,000,000. A last-minute “dummy” bill SB294 to fund the Strategic Water Supply appeared, died, was resurrected, and died again in the final two days of the session, reportedly motivated by the Governor threat to veto all capital outlay funding unless her funding bill was heard. I attended that hearing, and a do-over the next day. I was appalled by Kenney’s and Roose’s presentations and answers to Committee members questions. That month, Kenney signed a no-bid $1 million sole-source contract with ERG. 

This history raises ethical concerns. Why is the NMED sole-source contractor, Eastern Research Group, writing a report that misinforms New Mexicans and contradicts what our state’s own experts know? What makes ERG so uniquely qualified to win a $1 million no-bid contract? Why does their so-called feasibility study cover up the most critical facts? 

[At the time this essay was in final review and editing, I received a copy of the ERG million dollar agreement signed in February 2024. The scope of work description in ERG’s contract is to help NMED establish the New Mexico’s surface water wastewater effluent discharge permit system. It does not include the preparation of the feasibility study ERG wrote for NMED. This emphasizes concerns about ERG’s sole-source services procurement, and illustrates dilution of needed effort to pursue this boondoggle.]

The Governor’s 50-Year Water Plan Dances Around Core Issues

To be fair, the Governor’s 50-Year Water Action Plan does include two essential focus areas: conservation and watershed health, both of which are crucial for the state. However, these alone are insufficient. What’s missing are strong initiatives that are prerequisites to or essential for wet water management, such as the full implementation of the 2019 Water Data Act and the 2023 Water Security Planning Act, and New Mexico’s compliance with the Rio Grande Compact.

It doesn’t call for action to limit depletions in the Middle Rio Grande, which should be among the State’s highest water priorities. The State Engineer’s ongoing lack of wet water administration in the Middle Rio Grande leaves the state vulnerable to another lawsuit from Texas for new violations that with emergency attention now can be avoided. Such a suit could begin, without immediate state action to limit diversions in the Middle Rio Grande, while the 2012 Texas lawsuit pertaining to New Mexico’s groundwater overuse in the Lower Rio Grande remains undecided. The United States Supreme Court has original jurisdiction. That is an ugly scenario neglected by the Governor’s “50-Year” priorities.

Another critical gap in the Governor’s plan is not addressing overuse of groundwater, which leads to drained aquifers like the Ogallala Aquifer. Conservation efforts alone will not reverse this trend. To illustrate where this issue stands, a legislator asked if New Mexico administers groundwater according to the volume of water remaining in the aquifer or to not allow pumping below a certain depth. The answer is neither. We don’t even know the volumes of groundwater remaining after more than a century of use. Existing groundwater policy is in reality, first in time is first in right; if you’ve pumped, you can keep pumping that amount, and pump it till it’s gone. No state law protects aquifer remnants from any type of use except the 1930s law that protected the Roswell artesian aquifer system. Legislators then knew that overuse and waste would ruin the artesian aquifer. What they didn’t know, but we do now, is that unregulated waste and overuse will ruin any aquifer, especially where recharge is minimal or none.

Opportunity Costs: The Real Impact of the Governor’s Badwater Emphasis

One thing is clear: the Governor’s “new water” emphasis, announced at the 2023 Dubai climate conference, is based on uninformed or misinformed opinions. Her ideas are causing significant opportunity costs by diverting scarce legislative attention and agency resources from addressing the most critical water laws, policies, and actions that will have long-lasting positive impacts on New Mexico’s water future.

The opportunity cost of the Governor’s misplaced priorities is that these critical needs are not being addressed quickly enough. Her plan consumes too much of the Legislature’s limited capacity to address water governance and does not prioritize essential actions to adapt to New Mexico’s growing aridity. Furthermore, the plan fails to modernize and equip state water agencies with essential capacity including providing agency staff with modern business practices and information systems and computer tools capacity that would dramatically improve their efficiency and the quality of their work.

Additionally, scarce NMED resources are being diverted from essential tasks, such as implementing a state surface water discharge pollution prevention permitting system, which is urgently needed after the US Supreme Court ruled that many of New Mexico’s rivers and streams are no longer subject to federal protection.

These opportunity costs will ultimately lead to water and economic insecurity if left unaddressed. The current path, if continued, sets New Mexico on a course toward a future of increasing vulnerability. The state has time to correct its course, but every year that passes without action reduces what would be possible if we acted now.  Phil King, a NM water resources expert, retired NMSU civil engineering professor for 31 years, and now senior advisor to the Office of the State Engineer and Interstate Stream Commission, says we face boundless opportunity. What he means, is if we tried as hard as we could, we couldn’t take all the positive steps available. Worse, he points out, our opportunities diminish each year the status quo continues.  Thus, the opportunity cost of this political initiative is a forever-lost part of New Mexico’s more resilient water future.

Ethics

The Water Security Planning Act requires scientific integrity in water regional water planning. New Mexico needs that legal requirement to apply to all state-funded water planning and water projects.  The Legislature should require vetting of concepts including a rational and honest showing of feasibility and a realistic plan of any concept requiring the state’s massive funding.

The people deserve the whole truth ethically delivered from their Environment Department Secretary and other top water officials.

The Legislature must prioritize scientific rigor and integrity of decision-making over unfounded assumptions without rational plans in its water policy and water program funding decisions.

The Legislature should have the integrity to fund implementation of recent badly needed and great laws that it has passed or authorized. In my view, these include,

• active administration of wet water on the Rio Grande (2003 law compiled at Section 72-2-9.1 that is the statutory authority for Active Water Resources Administration, General Rules unanimously upheld by the NM Supreme Court, 2012), 
• water data from every state-funded endeavor is available publicly with metadata (2019 Water Data Act), 
• water planning regions throughout NM must understand their region’s water future without action and determine what they want their region’s water future to be, and prioritize the vetted programs, policies and infrastructure projects to get there (2023 Water Security Planning Act).

It is these priorities that are missing from the Governor’s priorities. The ‘Strategic Water Supply’ emphasis as I have reported it it here I believe is unethical. The neglect of providing the resources necessary for good progress toward goals already set and authorized is not right. The false feasibility study and the neglect of the basic fundamentals of better wet water governance require legislative leadership and members’ attention.

Closing

These are my professional conclusions and opinions and I alone am responsibile for them. This essay summarizes my detailed public comments submitted on October 18, 2024, regarding the ERG draft review report. I sent them via the NMED webpage and directly by email to Secretary Kenney, since the webpage didn’t confirm receipt. Secretary Kenney acknowledged receipt before 6 a.m. on October 19, for which I thank him. I look forward to the Environment Department’s response.

/s/ Norm Gaume, P.E. (ret.), Licensed Water Engineer, President, New Mexico Water Advocates.

Glossary (Alphabetical Order)

1. Acre-Foot: A unit of volume commonly used in the United States to measure large-scale water resources, particularly in agriculture and water management. One acre-foot equals approximately 325,851 gallons (1,233 cubic meters) and represents the amount of water needed to cover one acre of land to a depth of one foot.
2. Badwater: As used in this essay, badwater means oilfield produced water or deep brackish groundwater below 2500 feet.
3. Brine: A highly concentrated solution of salt in water. Brine management is a major environmental challenge in desalination. 
4. Concentrated Waste Streams: The byproduct of treating produced water or brackish water during desalination and other purification processes. These waste streams contain high levels of hazardous contaminants that require special handling and disposal.
5. Desalination: The process of removing salts from brackish or seawater. Desalinating highly saline produced water from the Permian Basin requires extensive additional treatment before and after desalination to produce safe water.
6. Disinformation: The intentional spread of false or misleading information to deceive or harm. 
7. Eastern Research Group (ERG):
   A private multidisciplinary consulting firm headquartered in Massachusetts.
8. Energy Footprint: The total amount of energy consumed by a process or system. In the context of desalination, the energy footprint refers to the amount of energy required to treat water.
9. Groundwater Protection Council: A nonprofit organization that brings together state groundwater regulatory agencies across the U.S.
10. Latent Heat of Vaporization:
    The amount of energy required to convert water from a liquid at its boiling point to a gas. 
11. Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant:
    The world’s largest inland desalination plant, located in El Paso, Texas. 
12. NM Produced Water Research Consortium: A Public/Private partnership established by a 2019 agreement between NMED and the New Mexico State University Board of Regents to perform and report research to serve as the scientific basis for produced water reuse standards, regulations, and permits.
13. NMED (New Mexico Environment Department): The New Mexico Environment Department is a state regulatory agency responsible for overseeing pollution prevention and environmental quality regulations. 
14. NMSU Independent Review Committee: An committee of three national laboratory and academic experts formed by a November 10, 2022, agreement between NMED and the NMSU Board of Regents to evaluate the effectiveness of the New Mexico Produced Water Research Consortium,reports its findings, and disband.
15. Ogallala Aquifer: One of the largest aquifers in the world, underlying parts of several U.S. states, including eastern New Mexico. The aquifer has been mined to the point that 
    Eastern New Mexico municipalities and Eastern New Mexico University have run short of water.
16. Permian Basin: A large oil-producing region in the southwestern United States relying on unconventional wells to produce over 98% of New Mexico’s oil and produced water.
17. Produced Water: Contaminated, saline water brought to the surface during oil and gas extraction processes. Permian Basin produced water is highly saline and heavily contaminated with hydrocarbons salts, chemicals, and other pollutants, known and unknown, with dangerous concentrations of acutely toxic carcinogens and radionuclides.
18. Reverse Osmosis (RO): A common desalination technology that uses a membrane to remove ions, molecules, and larger particles from water by applying pressure to the water on one side of the membrane. RO is often used for lower-salinity brackish water and seawater desalination.
19. Rio Grande Compact: An interstate agreement governing water allocation from the Rio Grande among Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and the United States for delivery to Mexico. It requires sharing shortages and allocates water in years of plenty. The agreement is enforced by the US Supreme Court, where 2012 litigation brought against New Mexico by Texas and the USA continues.
20. San Juan Generating Station: A coal-fired power plant in New Mexico with 850-megaWatt capacity, .
21. Strategic Water Supply: A concept used by the New Mexico Governor’s 50-Year Water Action Plan, referring to desalinating deep brackish groundwater or treating fracking wastewater for use by high tech, water intensive factories like chip factories, solar cell manufacturing, and data centers.
22. Thermal Desalination: A process used to remove salts from water by heating it to produce water vapor, which is then condensed to form freshwater. Thermal desalination is energy intensive. Thermal desalination of produced water requires extensive pre- and post-treatment and produces a concentrated waste stream.
23. Vacuum Membrane Distillation (VMD): A desalination technique where water is heated, and the vapor is passed through a membrane under vacuum conditions. This method is often used for highly saline or contaminated water and is more energy-efficient compared to traditional distillation, although still energy-intensive compared to other processes like reverse osmosis.