DISQUS

Jeeter · 11 months ago

The article said: "State Engineer John D’Antonio tried earlier to get the Legislature to close a loophole in state law and give him authority over the brackish water, but legislators balked. Now he has little say over the competing projects, which has led some to suggest there could be a Klondike-style gold rush for water."

Because of dated water regulations in New Mexico, it seems that the State may have no jurisdiction over the extraction of these salty waters. A trillion gallons of brackish water is a lot of water. But after the expensive magic has squeezed a few gallons out of a thousand gallons of brine there is the matter of all that concentrated, nasty brine. This highly soluble, semi-toxic crud is not something you can just dump into a landfill for a few bucks. In whose backyard or whose aquifer will it be injected into? How much will it cost to handle, transport, and dispose of these wastes, given that they will always exceed what "clean" water you are able to squeeze out of the brine?

Deep extraction, while expensive, is only one stage of the whole life cycle of these salty waters. Apart from the greedy county commissioners with dreams of uncontrolled sprawl, are there any actual engineers who have analyzed how the development of all this miraculous water will affect the rest of us? Fortunately, at the waste disposal stage the State will have some jurisdiction - and inject some reality - into this gold-rush mentality scramble. Anyone investing in this possible scam will need to know the full costs involved in this "brackish-water boom."

babyfatt · 11 months ago

Water is the limiting factor, we mismanage this resource at our peril. We need government regulation of our water and energy resources, in order to be good stewards of the environment. If the government doesn't take over control of our water resources, then big business will, and we'll be buying our water from corporations, and transferring wealth from working people to the economic oligarchy. Same as it ever was.