OPINION: The WATR alliance petition must be rejected

After an 18-month regulatory battle, the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission issued a science-based ruling in May 2025 that unequivocally rejected the dangerous idea of discharging oil and gas industry “produced water” into our environment. After exhaustive expert testimony and public input, the commission found that “there is insufficient scientific support for the proposition that any discharges of treated or untreated produced water would be protective of ground or surface water.”

However, a new group calling itself the “Water Access Treatment and Reuse Alliance” (WATR) has filed a new petition seeking to reconsider the WQCC’s rule. WATR is nothing more than a rebranded mouthpiece for the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association (NMOGA) and the New Mexico Produced Water Research Consortium — entities that already litigated this case and lost. They are forcing a do-over through a proxy, a tactic the law explicitly forbids. They argue that maybe … someday … science will prove that toxic, radioactive fracking waste can be treated and safely discharged into our lands and waters. But the law requires evidence before policy — not speculation after pollution.

The WATR Alliance’s board includes representatives from Chevron, Occidental, ConocoPhillips, and has deep connections to ExxonMobil, Shell and out-of-state corporations with ties to environmental disasters like the Flint, Michigan, water crisis.

Since December 2023, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has pushed the “Strategic Water Supply” to buy “treated” produced water to help her oil and gas campaign contributors with their enormous industrial waste disposal problem. Treated produced water discharge and reuse has been rejected several times by the New Mexico Legislature and so after the WQCC also rejected the idea as unsafe in the first go-round, she welcomed her friend, Jennifer Bradfute’s revived WATR petition. (They traveled together, see governor.state.nm.us, “Governor Lujan Grisham to lead clean hydrogen trade mission to Australia).

Bradfute was formerly employed by Exxon and Marathon Oil and is now WATR’s attorney. This go-round the governor wasn’t taking any chances on independent board members that based their decision on the state of the science via expert testimony. She installed brand new WQCC members to do her bidding, led by Secretary of the Environment James Kenney. In the former hearing, all five scientific experts working for the Environment Department testified unequivocally against treated produced water discharge: “Without defensible, scientific evidence that produced water treatment is reliably safe and treatment technologies are effective at removing all known and unknown constituents, the Department is left with only one option which is to develop and propose a regulation that is restrictive and does not allow for the discharge of treated produced water in any manner.”

Yet in this illegal re-do, Kenney won’t make his experts available to testify and provide their opinions about WATR’s discharge plans. He even asked his attorney to come before the WQCC to answer a question about the Environment Department’s scientists’ availability to testify. Kenney’s attorney promptly complied and informed the WQCC that it had no subpoena powers to compel those scientific experts to advise them on whether WATR’s discharge proposal will pose a threat to the public and the environment.

All the new commissioners fell in line, complying with her directive to get the job done: Consider WATR’s petition to authorize fracking waste to be treated and discharged/reused whether that be in car washes or manufacturing plants. This is all contrary to the will of the people and science.

Our governor’s actions are Trump-like: Science and the rule of law don’t matter; loyalty and oil and gas money do.