Strategic Water Supply vote delayed after questions raised! Tomorrow critical bills to protect against Biogas and PFAS

Yesterday after receiving all your calls, cards and emails about HB 137, the Strategic Water Supply, and hearing powerful public comment from across the state, members of the House Agriculture, Acequias and Water Resources Committee asked hard questions of the sponsor and expert witnesses, raising many of your concerns about scientific certainty, lack of standards and residual waste. The bill Sponsor ultimately opted to roll the vote on the bill in order to provide more time for discussion. Thank you! Your activism is working.

NOW ON THE DOCKET FOUR CRITICAL BILLS RELATED BIOGAS AND PFAS

TOMORROW THE METHANE EMISSIONS REDUCTION ACT WILL BE HEARD IN SENATE CONSERVATION

SB 99, the Methane Emissions Reduction Act, (aka the No Fuel Less Than Zero Carbon Intensity Act) sponsored by Senator Sedillo Lopez and Rep. Tara Lujan will be heard in Senate Conservation tomorrow at 9:00AM. This bill will limit the “carbon intensity” score for alternative fuels under the Clean Transportation Fuel Standards Act to no lower than zero, adding a critical guardrail so that the fuel standard does not result in a perverse financial incentive for the expansion of polluting factory farms. Under the currently proposed rule these factory farms are set to receive a windfall from the sale of carbon credits to dirty industries for producing "biogas," a false climate solution that results in increased pollution, water contamination, environmental justice harms and cruelty. Read the one pager.

ALSO TOMORROW IN HOUSE ENERGY, HB 212, THE PER AND POLYFUOROALKYL PROTECTION ACT, WILL PROHIBIT PFAS FOR NON-ESSENTIAL USES IN CONSUMER PRODUCTS

HB 212, Sponsored by Rep. Joanne Ferrary, Rep. Sariñana and Rep. Kathleen Cates is another critical bill to protect New Mexicans from the harms of PFAS exposure. In a shocking act of corporate abuse proving that so-called "trade secrets" are deadly secrets, public health regulators were hookwinked by 3M, the original manufacturers of PFAS chemicals, for decades after they knew these deadly chemicals were harmful and spreading throughout the environment. They continued to mass produce and sell PFAS, now a chemical class covering more than 15,000 compounds, to industries around the world.

Eventually their secret would unspool, revealing contamination and harm to living organisms all over the world. After relentless pressure, the EPA finally acted in 2024 to declare PFOS and PFOA hazardous substances and set standards for six PFAS in drinking water (a regulation now rolled back by the new administration!), but 3M continues to produce other PFAS, and the company and its scientists have not admitted wrongdoing or faced criminal liability for concealing their harms.

Now the public is faced with countless sources of PFAS poisoning, with these ubiquitous chemicals added to everything from ski wax, to pots and pans, to food containers, to waterproof jackets. 

HOW CAN HB 212 PREVENT FURTHER PFAS CONTAMINATION?

Though we know that PFAS contamination is ubiquitous, we do not have to keep digging ourselves into a deeper hole and increasing our exposure to these dangerous chemicals indefinitely. This bill:

1. Prohibits a manufacturer from selling, offering for sale or distributing for sale, directly or indirectly, the following products if they contain an intentionally added per or poly-fluoroalkyl substance by January 2027: cookware, food packaging, dental floss and juvenile products, and the following products by January 2028: carpets or rugs, cleaning products, cosmetics, fabric treatments, feminine hygiene products, textiles, textile furnishings, ski wax and upholstered furniture.

2. Directs the Environmental Improvement Board to adopt rules to identify currently unavoidable uses of a per- or poly-fluoroalkyl substance that are essential for health, safety or the functioning of society and for which alternatives are not reasonably available for the purpose of providing exemptions to the prohibition, and to test products for enforcement purposes.

   
   

Action at the state level to limit our exposure to PFAS is critical! The new federal administration has replaced EPA scientists who led the fight to set PFAS standards with industry actors from the American Chemistry Council and have now ended the effort to set PFAS standards for drinking water. 

Though this bill is not perfect, particularly the "intentionally added" loophole, which provides an excuse for companies to avoid liability for contamination that they could have or should have suspected, it is a bold and necessary step to reduce our exposure to this dangerous class of chemicals that have been allowed to proliferate for much too long.

AND HB 140 - HAZARDOUS WASTE CONSTITUENT DEFINITION ACT IS NECESSARY TO REGULATE PFAS. ALSO IN HOUSE ENERGY TOMORROW

This bill amends the law to grant New Mexico the authority to designate discarded substances, like PFAS and other man-made chemicals released into our environment, as hazardous waste. The Environment Department will then enforce the cleanup of hazardous waste constituents that are not federally listed as hazardous wastes. Any new hazardous waste constituent identified by the NMED still requires the review and adoption by the Environmental Improvement Board through a public process. With these amendments, New Mexico will join 21 other states legislatures that sought greater protections for their residents from hazardous wastes, such as PFAS and PCBs. When signed into law, New Mexico will have clear authority to regulate the management and cleanup of hazardous wastes by the polluter — shifting the financial burden from taxpayers to the responsible party.

FINALLY, COMING SOON, HB 222, THE FRACTURING FLUID DISCLOSURE AND USE ACT TO PROHIBIT PFAS IN OIL AND GAS OPERATIONS AND REQUIRE DISCLOSURE

Our readers probably recall that New Energy Economy intervened at the Oil Conservation Commission in support of WildEarth Guardians' application for a rule to prohibit the use of PFAS (per and poly-fluoroalkyl "forever" chemicals) in oil and gas downhole operations, and to require operators to disclose all chemicals used in downhole operations to ensure oversight and enforcement. We are still waiting for a decision on the rule from the Oil Conservation Commission, but in the meantime Sen. Steinborn and Rep's Andrea Romero and G. Andres Romero have brought a bill to enshrine those requirements into law. 

1. PFAS have been proven to severely impact human health even at minute levels. One tablespoon of two of these chemicals - PFOS and PFOA - is enough to contaminate the entire Elephant Butte Reservoir beyond federal drinking water standards. And the risks of health impacts are severe, causing cancer, birth defects, endocrine disorders, immune suppression and obesity, among many other risks. 

2. Unlike other industries in New Mexico, oil & gas companies do not disclose all chemical additives making it impossible to track all contaminants they are injecting into our land and water. Between 2013-2022, industry injected over 240 million pounds of trade secret chemicals in NM. Though the New Mexico Oil & Gas Association (NMOGA) asserts companies have moved away from PFAS use in hydraulic fracturing operations, the November hearings before the Oil Conservation Commission revealed that no company can verify this assertion, let alone all companies. There is no law to prevent oil and gas companies from using PFAS in the future.

   
   

Read the one pager here.

In January the New Mexico Department of Health issued an advisory warning to any hunters who ate or captured wildlife from Holloman Lake to visit their doctor. Even a gram of duck meat — less than a bite size — from Holloman Lake included more PFAS than is recommended for a lifetime exposure to the chemical group for humans.

Oil and gas operators protest that PFAS are present throughout the environment and they should not become the scapegoat for fears about PFAS when the Department of Defense is the most egregious actor. That may be the case, but what public health officials across the nation have found is that when it comes to PFAS, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

A 2023 report by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency found that PFAS can be bought for $50 - $1,000 per pound, but cost between $2.7 million and $18 million per pound to remove from municipal wastewater, depending on facility size. And that newer “short-chain” types of PFAS are more difficult and up to 70% more expensive to clean up compared to old “long-chain” PFAS. 

New Mexico cannot afford to simply take the oil and gas industry at their word. As our neighbors in Clovis, La Cieneguilla and hunters across the state have tragically found, the outcomes of PFAS contamination are long lasting, devastating to health and property values, and not easily remedied.