SJM004

SENATE JOINT MEMORIAL 4

57th legislature - STATE OF NEW MEXICO - first session, 2025

INTRODUCED BY

Pat Woods

A JOINT MEMORIAL

REQUESTING THAT THE GOVERNOR INSTRUCT STATE AGENCIES AND AUTHORITIES TO ADVANCE AND COORDINATE THE CONVERSION, PURIFICATION AND TRANSMISSION OF REMOTE AGRICULTURAL WATER RESOURCES ON AN EMERGENCY BASIS TO THE CITY OF PORTALES AND ROOSEVELT COUNTY FOR MUNICIPAL DRINKING WATER.

WHEREAS, for decades, the city of Portales has successfully managed its own municipal water system, servicing the needs of residents, commercial and industrial users, eastern New Mexico university and the Roosevelt county water cooperative, and currently serves approximately twenty thousand New Mexico residents; and

WHEREAS, according to recent studies conducted by the city of Portales, its sole source of water supply is the Ogallala/High Plains aquifer, which has been pumped for agricultural and municipal use at a rate that exceeds natural recharge for the last seventy years; and

WHEREAS, since 2000, the ground water supply beneath Portales' existing Blackwater, Sandhill and Baker Farm wellfields has been depleted by sixty-five percent, with saturated thickness of the primary wellfield once measuring eighty feet and decreasing to just twenty-eight feet in 2021, and that wellfield is being depleted at a relatively rapid rate of two and three-tenths feet per year, so the saturated thickness is becoming critically low, with many wells taken out of production due to insufficient aquifer thickness; and

WHEREAS, beginning in 2000, the Portales water system initiated a forty-year water conservation plan that reached its initial long-term objective within ten years, cutting residential water usage by nearly fifty percent. However, by 2013, it became evident that additional and more aggressive conservation measures were needed to offset the observed rate of depletion of the city's ground water supply, and additional wells were also desperately needed; and

WHEREAS, in 2013, the governor's drought task force assessed that the city of Portales, which was being affected by drought, was at that time in need of new wells to keep up with normal demand; and

WHEREAS, in 2014, the city of Portales updated its water conservation plan and then adopted an emergency drought management ordinance to impose further conservation and reuse policies on the water system's customers; and

WHEREAS, in 2010, the legislature enacted the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority Act, creating the eastern New Mexico water utility authority; and

WHEREAS, the eastern New Mexico water utility authority is charged by the legislature to "plan, design, develop, purchase, acquire, own, operate, establish, construct and maintain the eastern New Mexico rural water system pipeline and waterworks to supply water for domestic, commercial, non-irrigated agricultural and industrial purposes by any available means to persons within and without the boundaries of the authority" for the benefit of the cities of Clovis, Portales and Texico and the town of Elida; and

WHEREAS, the boundaries of the eastern New Mexico water utility authority are essentially the boundaries of Curry and Roosevelt counties, and the city of Portales is a member of the authority; and

WHEREAS, it should be emphasized that the legislature's direction to the eastern New Mexico water utility authority is to supply water by "any available means"; and

WHEREAS, the statutory purposes of the eastern New Mexico water utility authority are "to create a water utility authority to develop and construct a water delivery system" and "to create an authority that will deliver water to the local governments within the boundaries of the authority but that will not compete with local governments for rights to deliver water to ultimate end-users"; and

WHEREAS, the Ute pipeline project, which the eastern New Mexico water utility authority has been working with the United States bureau of reclamation to develop, is anticipated to form the backbone water supply infrastructure within the boundaries of the authority; and

WHEREAS, the project has completed two small phases of "finished water" pipelines, including one twenty-inch line that connects the city of Portales' water storage tanks to a location adjacent to Cannon air force base, approximately fifteen miles distant from Portales; and

WHEREAS, the city of Portales' water storage tanks' connection to a location adjacent to Cannon air force base will remain unused and idle until the anticipated completion date of the Ute pipeline project in 2031; and

WHEREAS, the city of Portales has committed millions of dollars to the eastern New Mexico water utility authority, but the benefits are years away from realization; and

WHEREAS, the eastern New Mexico water utility authority's completed finished water 3 pipeline extends Portales' water harvesting and transmission potential to include the entire fifteen-mile path of the pipeline, including a region in Curry county atop the Ogallala aquifer paleochannel, which has an observed saturated thickness of approximately fifty feet and could prove exceptionally important to the welfare of Portales and Roosevelt county; and

WHEREAS, in 2017, the governor exercised her authority to declare a state of emergency due to drought conditions statewide and ordered the governor's drought task force to conduct a review and update of the New Mexico drought plan in accordance with the All Hazard Emergency Management Act and consider recommendations to allocate emergency funding for drought relief pursuant to the Disaster Location Act; and

WHEREAS, the city of Portales has been under stage 2 and stage 3 water restrictions that severely limit the use of potable water by its residents since 2023; and

WHEREAS, utility rates have increased dramatically for both residents in the city of Portales and Roosevelt county, resulting in litigation in 2023 between the city and the county over the allocation of scarce water resources; and

WHEREAS, the city of Portales' "2022 Water Conservation and Use Report" concluded that:

"shortages of water from Portales' wellfields are likely to become increasingly problematic unless... additional wells are added to the system... [and] delays in water deliveries from Ute Reservoir could occur beyond the currently projected completion date of.... In addition, shortages in the Ute project water supply are expected during times of drought, and these shortages may be increasingly severe due to climate change. The potential impacts of climate change provide an additional reason for Portales to... seek additional location groundwater supplies so that a water supply reserve would be available in times of drought"; and

WHEREAS, large-scale dairies such as those adjacent to Cannon air force base consume more than eighty percent of the fresh water supply in New Mexico compared to just ten percent used by municipal and private wells for drinking water; and

WHEREAS, the city of Portales has advised the legislative members from Roosevelt county and Curry county that it has entered into a July 2024 option and exploration agreement for drinking water with an owner of one of the large-scale dairies in Curry county, which is located atop the Ogallala aquifer paleochannel and immediately adjacent to the finished water 3 pipeline, in order to investigate supplementing a substantial portion of the drinking water needs of Portales and Roosevelt county in the near term, and the legislative members encourage such voluntary conversions from agricultural to municipal uses of water to solve the water shortages of residents of eastern New Mexico; and

WHEREAS, the department of environment and the eastern New Mexico water utility authority have in recent years detected the presence of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as PFAS, in many water resources, including the Ute reservoir, ground water wells on Cannon air force base and adjacent to Cannon air force base and Portales' Sandhill ground water wellfield. These water resources have the capacity to be successfully filtered using off-the-shelf technologies, and the department of environment has received funding from the United States environmental protection agency and other resources for the express purpose of purifying drinking water resources of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and should be involved in identifying opportunities to fund and enable the purification of any such water resource for the benefit of the city of Portales; and

WHEREAS, strong leadership from the state of New Mexico is required to coordinate and optimize the city of Portales' and Roosevelt county's interests in securing needed additional, purified ground water in order to protect the residents of the city of Portales and Roosevelt county;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that the city of Portales has over the past twenty-five years maximized its water conservation potential in an exemplary manner and that while its reuse and conservation practices should continue, its residents should likewise be afforded the full benefit of the resources of the state of New Mexico to secure their current and future drinking water needs, and particularly during the coming years before the Ute pipeline project comes to fruition; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the governor be requested to develop a comprehensive and coordinated plan for the delivery of purified drinking water resources for the city of Portales and Roosevelt county, including from remote ground water sources, including those currently identified as agricultural water resources, and using to the greatest extent possible the state's finished water 3 pipeline in Curry and Roosevelt counties and take the following actions on an emergency basis:

A. instruct the governor's drought task force to investigate all potential resources that may be made available to the city of Portales, the eastern New Mexico water utility authority, the department of environment and other state agencies to deliver plentiful, purified drinking water to the city of Portales and Roosevelt county, whether under the All Hazard Emergency Management Act, the Disaster Location Act or other law;

B. declare an emergency, as appropriate, related to the drinking water insecurity of the city of Portales and Roosevelt county;

C. instruct the state engineer to coordinate with the city of Portales, the eastern New Mexico water utility authority, the department of environment, the New Mexico department of agriculture and Curry and Roosevelt counties to develop and execute a holistic regional water plan to adjust the use of ground water resources, including those which are currently allocated toward agricultural irrigation and farming, for use by the city of Portales and Roosevelt county for municipal drinking water; and

D. instruct the board of directors of the eastern New Mexico water utility authority to exercise its authority "by any available means", to enable the city of Portales to use the finished water 3 pipeline to deliver drinking water to the city's water system from ground water resources upon the city's request and without delay and to reform and amend any relevant funding instruments that have been put in place or that shall be negotiated with the federal government, including the federal bureau of reclamation, to accommodate this purpose; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be transmitted to the governor, the office of the state engineer, the governor's drought task force, the department of environment, the eastern New Mexico water utility authority, the department of finance and administration and the New Mexico department of agriculture.

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