Advocacy in the 2025 NM Legislature: Lifting Up Our Sacred Waters

By Rev. Clara Sims
Assistant Executive Director
IPL New Mexico & El Paso

As the legislative session begins this week, we are highlighting several opportunities to advocate for a more responsible and just relationship to water — water who is among our most precious sibling and a sacred caretaker of all Creation.

The political landscape of water in New Mexico is multifaceted and complex. We extend great gratitude to organizations such as Amigos Bravos and NM Water Advocates for providing guidance and leadership for the 2025 session.

Here’s what we are paying attention to –

Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham is proposing $75 million for the Strategic Water Supply which would fund unproven and risky processes of produced water reuse from oil and gas operations, brackish water extraction, and desalinization.

Along with the undersigned 53 organizations, New Mexico & El Paso IPL shares deep concern for the implications of the Strategic Water Supply. We understand it to be a risk to public health and our already scarce freshwater resources, as well as a publicly funded subsidy for the oil and gas industry’s waste disposal problem.

Instead, we join others in asking our leaders to focus on a responsible and just path in water management through the following key areas.

Focus on funding good legislation that has already passed, like the 2023 Water Security Planning Act! In this spirit, New Mexico Water Advocates and the state appointed Water Task Force reccomend $62 million in one time appropriations in HB2 (the overarching funding bill) for the following:

Water Security Planning Act Implementation

Allocate $30 million over three years to fund the 2023 Water Security Planning Act which passed unanimously. This would fund regional water planning that is robust and based on reliable data. It would include funding grants to regions to coordinate and conduct community-driven planning to address water scarcity and prepare for reduced aquifer recharge and streamflow by identifying, vetting, and prioritizing programs, policies, and projects to improve water supply security for current and future generations of New Mexicans. This would include establishing regional water planning entities, providing grants to stand up entities, preparing work plans, and doing the work by finding dedicated staff and expert(s) help for each region.

Water Agency Modernization

Allocate $30 million over three years for the Office of the State Engineer (OSE) and the Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) to modernize their equipment, software and processes so these two offices can do their jobs more effectively, fulfilling the data-related mandate of the 2019 Water Data Act and the 2023 Water Security Planning Act outlined above.

Active Water Resource Management (AWRM)

Allocate $2 million over two years to prepare for Active Water Resource Management (AWRM) to the Middle and Lower Rio Grande for water rights enforcement — promulgate rules to implement priority administration with water banks in the Lower and Middle Rio Grande

That’s a lot of information! How can you advocate for all these moving pieces?

Start with New Mexico Water Advocates guide, which includes a pre-written letter that you can edit and send to your legislator(s) via email. If you do so, remember how powerful it is to uplift that you are writing as a person of faith and conscience!

To learn more, you can also check out NM Water Advocates speaker series focusing on these three areas of legislative action.

And wait, there’s more…

Responding to the loss in federal protections for New Mexico waterways

There are two very important bills that would create much needed state regulatory protection of our waters given our recent loss in federal protections. After the Sackett supreme court decision in 2023, over 96% of New Mexico waterways lack protection under the EPA’s Water Quality Act. Because of this decision, the group American Rivers named ALL of New Mexico’s rivers as the most endangered rivers of 2024.

Given this, we need strong state-level protections of our rivers, tributaries, wetlands, including and especially those that flow only seasonally.

The following two pieces of legislation are intended to be passed in tandem.

Water Quality Act Changes (SB 22)

Sponsored by Senator Wirth and Rep. Ortez, this first bill proposes amendments to the Water Quality Act that will enable the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) to build a state surface water permitting program for waters no longer federally protected.

NMPDES Primacy Bill (SB 21)

Sponsored by Senator Wirth and Rep. Duhigg, this second bill will enable NMED to take primacy from EPA of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System surface water discharge permits. In other words, it will give the state authority to take over permitting from the EPA — thereby creating a more streamlined process and ensuring NM’s waters are managed by local experts.

To learn more, you can also check out Amigos Bravos educational fact sheet focusing on these two related bills, as well as their press release.

If you want to be kept up to date more regularly on committee hearings and additional opportunities to raise your voice for our sacred waters and more, we can add you to our advocacy list. To be added, please contact our advocacy chair Ruth Striegel (ruthstriegel@gmail.com) and our assistant director Clara Sims (clara@nm-ipl.org).