Posted on 12/27/2025 3:02:49 PM PST by CedarDave
I see stupid people. Not the harmless kind who get lost in the Walmart parking lot, but the ones who descend on public hearings like a flock of caffeinated pigeons, clutching reusable water bottles and muttering dark omens about “produced water” as if it’s the name of a demon summoned from an oilfield hellmouth. These are the people who read three paragraphs of a conspiracy blog and suddenly believe the periodic table is a government psyop. The sight of a chemistry diagram sends them into full fight-or-flight, usually choosing “rant.”
Meanwhile, outside their fluorescent echo chambers, New Mexico is cooking like a cheap steak in a roadside diner. The aquifers are shrinking faster than political promises, the rivers are fading into memory, and the state’s future is tied to water we no longer have. You would think, in times like these, that people would cling to solutions. Science. Technology. Common sense. But no. That would be too reasonable. Instead, we get a chorus of anti-science naysayers who treat “produced water reuse” like it’s a government plot to poison their houseplants.
Let me clarify one thing, loudly, for the people in the back row who keep clutching their pearls: all water is recycled. Every molecule you’ve ever swallowed has been through a dinosaur’s kidneys, a Roman aqueduct, a medieval cesspit, a cow pasture, and probably the wrong end of a thousand septic tanks. Water is the originalhitchhiker—it’s been everywhere and inside everything. The only reason it’s remotely drinkable today is because humans treat it. Filter it. Zap it. Scrub it like a crime scene until it’s safe to use again. That’s the entire concept of civilization.
So when we talk about produced water—the salty, gnarly, oilfield byproduct dragged out of the earth like a screaming troll—we’re not talking about something magical or unknowable. We’re talking about water that can be treated. In fact, national labs, universities, and more scientists than you can fit in the Lea County Event Center have demonstrated that produced water can be cleaned to meet whatever standard we choose. Agriculture? Yes. Industrial processes? Absolutely. Environmental restoration? It’s already been done elsewhere.
But in New Mexico, some folks would rather shove their heads deep into the desert sand and declare the sky is falling. They march into hearings waving fear like a flag, shouting reuse will turn the whole state into a chemical wasteland. Never mind that they have no evidence. Never mind the technology already exists. Never mind we are running out of water. Their crusade has nothing to do with science or safety. It is pure, uncut politics.
Let’s dispense with the polite fiction: The opposition isn’t about protecting the environment—it’s about attacking the oil and gas industry at any cost. Even if that cost is the future of New Mexico.
These folks would rather keep billions of gallons of reusable water buried in deep injection wells—gone forever—than admit something good could come from an industry they’ve decided is irredeemably evil. They hate oil and gas so much they’re willing to let the state run dry to prove a point. That isn’t activism. That’s ideological fanaticism dressed up Patagonia fleece jackets.
The Water Quality Control Commission, bowing to this theater, has ruled treated produced water cannot be used for any purpose outside the oilfield. Not for crops. Not for manufacturing. Not for environmental restoration. Not for anything. Even if the water meets the quality standards. Even if it exceeds them. Even if it’s cleaner than what flows down the Rio Grande on a good day.
Think about the staggering absurdity of that: We live in a desert. We are in a megadrought. We have the technology to recycle billions of gallons.
And regulators have said, “No thanks, we’d rather inject it into oblivion.”
This is the kind of logic that should come with a surgeon general’s warning. Weapons-grade stupidity.
If we keep going down this path, New Mexico will be importing water the way we import avocados—expensively, reluctantly, and with endless political bickering. Maybe we can get a bulk discount from Wyoming. Or build a 600-mile pipeline from somewhere that still believes in science. California, perhaps—though by the time their permitting process is complete, we’ll all be speaking in dust.
Here’s the truth nobody on the anti-science circuit wants to admit:
If we treated and reused just a fraction of the produced water already coming out of New Mexico’s oilfields, the entire state would have a new, reliable, drought-resistant water supply.
A safety net. A backup plan. A path to survival.
But instead, we get fearmongering. Magical thinking. Ideology dressed in hemp clothing. A refusal to acknowledge water doesn’t care about your politics, your theories, or your favorite Facebook group.
So yes, I see stupid people. They’re fighting technology that works. They’re rejecting solutions supported by scientists, engineers, and every sober water expert in the Southwest. They’re shouting down the very thing that could keep New Mexico alive for the next century.
And while they panic about imaginary dangers, the real danger creeps closer:
A dry, cracked, empty future. We can clean this water. We can reuse this water. We can save this state. But only if we stop letting the stupid people set the rules.
John R Grizz Deal is the CEO of IX Water. IX Water is a spinout from Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico Tech, the University of Texas, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Funny thing about clean water, it’s energy dependent event. They don’t want energy, but they want clean water. The author is right to be frustrated.
Water in New Mexico isn’t universally poisonous, but specific areas and sources have known contamination issues, primarily Arsenic (naturally occurring, affecting smaller systems/wells) and PFAS (”forever chemicals” from military/industrial sites like near Holloman AFB), posing serious health risks, requiring residents to rely on tested community systems or bottled water in affected zones like Sunland Park or La Cieneguilla. The state health department monitors water quality, but some private wells and smaller systems struggle to meet standards for these contaminants.
There is a statewide program underway to treat brackish water for various uses such as agriculture. In general for alluvial aquifers water quality decreases with depth and treatment for various uses is required. In SE NM it naturally occurs in the Capitan confined aquifer with water quality decreasing to the southeast. The irony is that oilfield produced water is excluded from the program.
I’ve seen maps of NM brackish water deposits. And it looks like brackish water underlays most of the state.
That said, desalinating brackish water is much cheaper than desalinating sea water. Maybe half the cost.
Why wouldn’t the oil companies treat brackish water —not as a waste but rather as a source of revenue?
There is a water desalination plant in El Paso TX which may be one of the largest brackish water desalination plants in the world.
There is brackish water under nearly all of west Texas.
Why wouldn’t NM have these kinds of plants all over the places in NM where water is in short supply.
Yes water can be dangerous care is requirtd in AZ NM Utah
“Stripper wells produce more saline than crude.”
Shale wells produce 6-10 bbl of saline water for every bbl oil equivalent the long term average in the Midland Basin is six to one.
I know a couple of the UT Austin geos that worked on this type of produced water recycling, I am a Hydro Geo myself who is a state.licenced PG and can sign off on SWD injection wells or brine production wells or brackish water wells too.
“Not exactly true. “New”water molecules are created by burning fossil fuels.”
The hydrogen in those hydrocarbons was originally seawater, when the micro algae that most “fossil fuels” was growing in shallow seawater depth it absorbed CO2 from the seawater and seawater itself to photosynthesis it’s algae lipids. When this algae died it sank into the basin it was floating above taking it’s lipids with it to the geological cycle. From there is was buried under more sedimentary organic mass falling from the water column above it. Then as more and more mass over millions of years compressed this now kerogen it enters the oil window and petrogenesis took place. This is the source of virtually every liquid hydrocarbons on earth the geochemical signatures are conclusive as are the isotopic ratios.
So even this “new” water from combustion is still hydrogen atoms that were once H2O in seawater. Very little liquid hydrocarbons are going to have mantle hydrogen in it, dry gas and gold hydrogen would show via isotopic ratios the different hydrogen source of biosphere,hydrosphere, vs mantle thermogenic hydrogen.
Comets add some water either through direct hits or fragments entering the atmosphere.
The amount after the great bombardment in the 3.8-4.1 billon year ago epoch is negligible relative to the hydrosphere at that point and today the mass has not largely changed. Even water in the sediments in a descending oceanic trench plate is returned to the hydrosphere via volcanoes along the ring of fire and volcanic hot spots return mantle waters too.
NASA has been studying comet isotopes they differ.From earth’s ocean based on where the comet is from in the solar system.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/comet-provides-new-clues-to-origins-of-earths-oceans/
The atoms are old. The molecules are new.
That’s why I said some.
See the attached link for a story where NM announced $26 million for brackish water projects:
https://sourcenm.com/briefs/nm-announces-26m-in-grants-for-brackish-water-projects/
The money that NM spends on brackish water R&D is probably the best money they spend. Too bad they can’t do more.
Yes water can be dangerous care is requirtd in AZ NM Utah
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There is a brackish water desalination plant in El Paso which is said to be the largest in the world. Desalinating brackish water is much cheaper than desalinating seawater.
There is brackish water under nearly all of West Texas and New Mexico. Cedar posted that New Mexico is deploying a little capital to increase their fresh water supply from brackish water.
what’s strange is that it has taken so long. The federal labs in New Mexico are some of the best in the world. They have been researching desalination since the 1960’s. There is even a federal test bed facility for desalination in New Mexico that went into operation 20 years ago.
So. Yeah, better late than never.
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