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Judge rules feds failed to consider pollution risk of Alaska gold mine

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Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Judge Sharon Gleason said the Army Corps of Engineers did not sufficiently analyze the environmental impacts of a mine wastewater spill.

Judge Sharon Gleason said the Army Corps of Engineers did not sufficiently analyze the environmental impacts of a mine wastewater spill.

Judge Sharon Gleason said the Army Corps of Engineers did not sufficiently analyze the environmental impacts of a mine wastewater spill.
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More consumption, more demand for resources, more waste: why urban mining’s time has come

Urban mining recovers valuable resources from the vast amounts of waste cities produce.

Lynda Disher/ShutterstockPollution and waste, climate change and biodiversity loss are creating a triple planetary crisis. In response, UN Environment Programme executive director Inger Andersen has called for waste to be redefined as a valuable resource instead of a problem. That’s what urban mining does. We commonly think of mining as drilling or digging into the earth to extract precious resources. Urban mining recovers these materials from waste. It can come from buildings, infrastructure and obsolete products. An urban mine, then, is the stock of precious metals or materials in the waste cities produce. In particular, electronic waste, or e‑waste, has higher concentrations of precious metals than many mined ores. Yet the UN Global E‑waste Monitor estimates US$62 billion worth of recoverable resources was discarded as e‑waste in 2022. Urban mining can recover these “hidden” resources in cities around the world. It offers sustainable solutions to the problems of resource scarcity and waste management. And it happens in the very cities that are centres of overconsumption and hotspots for the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. What sort of waste can be mined? Materials such as concrete, pipes, bricks, roofing materials, reinforcements and e‑waste can be recovered for reuse. Urban waste can be “mined” for metals such as gold, steel, copper, zinc, aluminium, cobalt and lithium, as well as glass and plastic. Mechanical or chemical treatments are used to retrieve these metals and materials. Simply disposing of this waste has high financial and environmental costs. In Australia, about 10% of waste is hazardous. Landfill costs are soaring as cities run out of space to discard their waste. The extent of this fast-growing problem is driving the growth of urban mining around the world. We are then salvaging materials whose supply is finite, while reducing the impacts of waste disposal. Many plastics can be recycled and turned into new products. MAD.vertise/Shutterstock What’s happening globally? In Europe, the focus is largely on construction and demolition waste. Europe produces 450 million to 500 million tonnes of this waste each year – more than a third of all the region’s waste. Through its urban mining strategy, the European Commission aims to increase the recovery of non-hazardous construction and demolition waste to at least 70% across member countries by 2030. In Asia, urban mining has focused on e‑waste. However, the region recovers only about 12% of its e‑waste stock. Rates of e‑waste recycling vary greatly: 20% for East Asia, 1% for South Asia, and virtually zero for South-East Asia. China, Japan and South Korea are leading the way in Asia. Australia is on the right track. Our recovery rate for construction and demolition materials climbed to 80% by 2022 — the highest among all types of waste streams. However, we recover only about a third of the value of materials in our e-waste. Africa has also recognised the growing value of urban mining resources. Regional initiatives include the Nairobi Declaration on e‑waste, the Durban Declaration on e‑Waste Management in Africa and the Abuja Platform on e‑Waste. Urban mining solves many problems The OECD forecasts that global materials demand will almost double from 89 billion tonnes in 2019 to 167 billion tonnes in 2060. The United Nations’ Global Waste Management Outlook 2024 shows the amount of waste and costs of managing it are soaring too. It’s estimated the world will have 82 million tonnes of e‑waste to deal with by 2030. These trends mean urban mining is becoming ever more relevant and important. Urban mining also helps cut greenhouse gas emissions. Unlocking resources near where they are needed reduces transport costs and emissions. Urban mining also provides resource independence and creates employment. In addition, increasing recovery and recycling rates reduce the pressure on finite natural resources. Urban mining underpins circular economy alternatives such as the “deposit and return” schemes that give people financial incentives to return e‑waste and containers for recycling in cities such as Singapore, Sydney, Darwin and San Francisco. By 2030, San Francisco aims to halve disposal to landfill or incineration and cut solid waste generation by 15%. What more needs to be done? Governments have a role to play by adopting and enforcing policies, laws and regulations that encourage recycling through urban mining instead of sending waste to landfill. European Union laws, for example, mandate increased recycling targets for municipal waste overall and for packaging waste, including 80% for ferrous metals and 60% for aluminium. In Australia, 2019 legislation prohibits landfills from accepting anything with a plug, battery or cord. Anything with a plug is designated as e-waste. Product design is an important consideration. A designer must balance a product’s efficiency with making it easy to recycle. Products with greater efficiency and easy-to-recycle parts are more likely to use less energy, lead to less waste and hence less natural resource extraction. Our urban mining research documents a more sustainable approach to product design. Increasing product stewardship initiatives are expected to encourage better product design and standards that promote reuse and recycling, producer responsibility and changes in consumer behaviour. Good information about the available resources is essential too. The Urban Mine Platform, ProSUM and Waste and Resource Recovery Data Hub collect data on e‑waste, end-of-life vehicles, batteries and building and mining waste. These centralised databases allow easy access to data on the sources, stocks, flows and treatment of waste. Traditional mining is not the only method for extracting raw materials for the green transition. Waste is set to be increasingly recycled, reducing demand for virgin materials. A truly circular economy can become a reality if governments develop and apply an urban mining agenda. Michael Odei Erdiaw-Kwasie receives funding from the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal (FRRR). Matthew Abunyewah receives funding from the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal (FRRR) and Northern Western Australia and Northern Territory Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub (Northern Hubb)Patrick Brandful Cobbinah receives funding from Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. He is a member of Planning Institute of Australia.

TCEQ to host public hearing for W.A. Parish power plant on installing wastewater treatment equipment

Representatives for NRG said the water concentrator will help the power plant comply with the EPA’s new wastewater standards, roughly four years ahead of the deadline set by the federal agency.

Florian MartinThe W.A. Parish Generating Station, located in Fort Bend County, is owned and operated by NRG Energy.The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is holding a public hearing for the W.A. Parish power plant in Richmond on Monday night. NRG Energy, which owns the plant, is seeking an amendment to its air quality permit, which would give the company permission to install new equipment to treat wastewater. The amended air quality permit would allow the company to install a process water concentrator system. Water concentrators evaporate wastewater, leaving behind solids that NRG would then take to an on-site landfill. Representatives for NRG said the water concentrator will help the power plant comply with the EPA's new wastewater standards, roughly four years ahead of the deadline set by the federal agency. The power plant includes four natural gas units and four coal plant units. If approved, NRG would install two water concentrators on Unit 8, a coal unit. The company plans to install two concentrators in order to have backup equipment. The concentrators would not run 24/7, NRG representatives said. The concentrators would treat wastewater from the unit's scrubber, a part of the unit that removes sulfur from the gas emitted by the plant. "It's proven technology, and it's technically the best available option we have at this point in time," said Oscar Rodriguez, a senior project manager for NRG. Each concentrator treats 35 gallons of wastewater per minute – roughly the same amount of water released by two garden hoses a minute. According to a notice from TCEQ, the permit would allow the power plant to emit more carbon monoxide, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, organic compounds and "hazardous air pollutants." Rodriguez said the company did a model of the emissions produced by the two wastewater treatment units and did not find a significant change in pollution. "It did not have significant impact levels of particles coming out based on the national ambient quality air standards," Rodriguez said. Still, some community members have concerns. Advocates have been pushing to close the power plant's four coal units, citing pollution and health concerns. Alondra Torres is a climate justice coordinator with Air Alliance Houston. She noted that the concentrators are fueled by natural gas, and expressed concerns about increased air pollution as a result. "The water quality should not come at the cost of our air quality," she said. The hearing will be held at 7 p.m. at the Reading Junior High School Cafeteria in Richmond.

Clothes piling up in your closet? A landmark California bill would mandate brands recycle them

California could become the first state to tackle the fast fashion waste overwhelming consumers and landfillsLet’s say you bought a new pair of jeans and wore them for a few years before deciding it was time to part ways. You could throw them away, or, if you wanted a more environmentally friendly option, you might try to sell or swap them or donate them to a local thrift store.Either way, the onus is on you to pass those jeans on, and hope for the best. But a new California bill that tackles the growing problem of fashion and textile waste could change the way we get rid of our clothes, putting the burden on clothing producers to implement a system for recycling the wares that they sell. Continue reading...

Let’s say you bought a new pair of jeans and wore them for a few years before deciding it was time to part ways. You could throw them away, or, if you wanted a more environmentally friendly option, you might try to sell or swap them or donate them to a local thrift store.Either way, the onus is on you to pass those jeans on, and hope for the best. But a new California bill that tackles the growing problem of fashion and textile waste could change the way we get rid of our clothes, putting the burden on clothing producers to implement a system for recycling the wares that they sell.If passed, Californians will be able to bring unwanted and even damaged apparel and household textiles to thrift stores, charities and other accessible collection sites throughout the state for sorting and recycling. This first-in-the-nation bill, known as the Responsible Textile Recovery Act, requires producers of apparel, towels, bedding and upholstery to implement and fund a statewide reuse, repair and recycling program for their products.Since 1960, the amount of textile waste generated in the US has increased nearly tenfold, exceeding more than 17m tonnes in 2018. A shocking 85% of all textiles end up in landfills where they emit methane gas and leach chemicals and dyes into our soil and groundwater. And only about 15% of clothing and other textiles gets reused, even though an estimated 95% of the materials – including fabrics, yarns, fibers, zippers and buttons – are recyclable.These shocking numbers drove Josh Newman, the Democratic state senator who sponsored the bill, into action. “We worked really hard to consult with and eventually to align all of the stakeholders in the life cycle of textiles so that at the end there was no opposition,” he said of the bill, which was passed with broad support from state legislators last month, and is now on the desk of the California governor, Gavin Newsom. “That’s an immensely hard thing to do when you consider the magnitude of the problem and all of the very different interests.”Newman’s bill had more than 150 endorsements from environmental organizations, municipal waste managers and retailers such as Ikea, Everlane and Goodwill. Supporters of the landmark legislation say it will help the industry transition to a sustainable and circular economy, which could unlock new environmentally beneficial production and consumption opportunities and create more than 1,000 green jobs.Under the authority of the state’s recycling department, the bill would incentivize manufacturers to adopt less wasteful practices and create greener designs, making manufacturers responsible for their products along the entire lifecycle.Some details about how the whole system will work remain unknown, as the companies that produce apparel and other textiles sold in California would have until 2026 to create a non-profit organization that will design the collection sites, mail-back programs or other solutions.The program won’t be operational until 2028 at the earliest.“As a global fashion retailer, we have an important role to play and that is why we are transforming our business towards circularity and reducing emissions,” said Randi Marshall, regional head of sustainability and public affairs for H&M Americas. She added that because France and the Netherlands have similar laws, the company is already familiar with how this can work. In France, that means people can take clothing and shoes to one of 47,000 collection points for recycling and they subsidize repairs to encourage people to keep goods longer.The fashion industry is a leading industrial polluter, responsible for about 10% of global carbon emissions, more than international flights and maritime shipping combined. The rise of “fast fashion”, or low-cost, low-quality garments that are only worn a few times, is a major contributor to the escalating environmental crisis.Some have expressed concern that the legislation could raise costs for consumers and affect smaller and mid-sized brands. But sustainable fashion designer Yotam Solomon, creator of the Los Angeles-based indie genderless fashion brand Virtue, said he supported the bill. “I think [California’s new law] is something that should have been done a long time ago,” he said. “It’s unfortunately this industry that allowed this to happen.”Newman said consumers shouldn’t feel any price increases, and estimated that the cost to producers would be less than 10 cents per garment or textile.Dr Joanne Brasch, director of advocacy and outreach for the California Product Stewardship Council, who co-sponsored the new legislation, said we’re going to pay for fashion and textile waste one way or another. “Our garbage bills will go up if the cities have to figure it out, our taxes are going to go up if we have to remediate environmental damage,” she said.Waste fabric and clothes in the Atacama desert in Alto Hospicio, Chile, on 15 June 2023. The region is threatened with environmental pollution due to thousands of tons of plastic waste, garbage textiles and rubble piles. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesIn 2021 alone, about 1.2m tons of textiles were discarded in California, costing taxpayers more than $70m.Brasch noted that brands such as Gap, Reformation, Patagonia and the North Face had spent millions of dollars trying to become circular, but had struggled to connect the waste industry with the manufacturing industry.Historically, thrift stores, charities and clothing collectors have been a successful secondhand market for reusable textiles. But when donations are damaged or unusable, they often end up in landfills or in overseas markets in the global south, with countries like Ghana receiving as many as 15m discarded garments, known locally as “dead white man’s clothes”, each week. Disturbing photos of mountains of old clothing have been seen everywhere from the Dandora dumpsite in Kenya to the deserts of Chile.Organizations like the Or Foundation, which advocates for better fashion waste management, are calling for the ending of this phenomenon, known as waste colonialism, and support extended producer responsibility programs like the one California is implementing.European countries were the first to tackle the textile waste problem with legislation. France, which was previously only able to divert 18% of its textile waste back to reuse, passed a textile recycling law in 2007. Today, the country’s diversion rate is over 39%. In 2023, the Netherlands created its own program and the European Union has mandated expanded textile collection for all member states by 2025, which is expected to move the needle when it comes to fashion waste.“We learned from a lot of the advocates involved in France’s program and they’ve been very active to make sure that what California does can be replicated positively,” said Brasch, a scientist and former UC Davis professor. “Being the first [in the US] doesn’t always mean being the best. We hope other states reach out to us and I can explain how to raise the bar.”

A Plan to Extract Gold From Mining Waste Splits a Colorado Town With a Legacy of Pollution

Piles of mine waste that loom above the historic Colorado mountain town of Leadville are a reminder of the city’s boom days

LEADVILLE, Colo. (AP) — Rust-colored piles of mine waste and sun-bleached wooden derricks loom above the historic Colorado mountain town of Leadville — a legacy of gold and silver mines polluting the Arkansas River basin more than a century after the city's boom days.Enter a fledgling company called CJK Milling that wants to “remine” some of the waste piles to squeeze more gold from ore discarded decades ago when it was less valuable. The waste would be trucked to a nearby mill, crushed to powder and bathed in cyanide to extract trace amounts of precious metals.The proposal comes amid surging global interest in re-processing waste containing discarded minerals that have grown more valuable over time and can now be more readily removed. These include precious metals and minerals used for renewable energy that many countries including the U.S. are scrambling to secure.Backers say the Leadville proposal would speed cleanup work that’s languished for decades under federal oversight with no foreseeable end. They speak in aspirational tones of a “circular economy” for mining where leftovers get repurposed.Yet for some residents and officials, reviving the city's depressed mining industry and stirring up waste piles harkens to a polluted past, when the Arkansas was harmful to fish and at times ran red with waste from Leadville’s mines.“We're sitting in a river that 20 years ago fish couldn't survive," Brice Karsh, who owns a fishing ranch downstream of the proposed mill, said as he threw fish pellets into a pool teeming with rainbow trout. “Why go backward? Why risk it?” Leadville – home to about 2,600 people and the National Mining Museum -- bills itself as America's highest city at 10,119 feet (3,0084 meters) above sea level. That distinction helped the city forge a new identity as a mecca for extreme athletes. Endurance race courses loop through nearby hillsides where millions of tons of discarded mine waste leached lead, arsenic, zinc and other toxic metals into waterways.The driving force behind CJK Milling is Nick Michael, a 38-year mining veteran who characterizes the project as a way to give back to society. Standing atop a heap of mining waste with Colorado’s highest summit, Mount Elbert, in the distance, Michael says the rubble has a higher concentration of gold than many large mines now operating across the U.S.“In the old days, that wasn’t the case,” he said, “but the tables have turned and that’s what makes this economic … We’re just cleaning up these small piles and moving on to the next one.”City Council member Christian Luna-Leal grew up in Leadville — in a trailer park with poor water quality — after his parents immigrated from Mexico.Disadvantaged communities have always borne the brunt of the industry’s problems, he said, dating to Leadville’s early days when mine owners poorly treated Irish immigrants who did much of the work. Almost 1,300 immigrants, most Irish, are buried in paupers graves in a local cemetery.Stirring up old mine waste could reverse decades of cleanup, Luna-Leal said, again fouling water and threatening the welfare of residents including Latinos, many living in mobile homes on the town's outskirts. “There is a genuine fear ... by a lot of our community that this is not properly being addressed and our concerns are not being taken as seriously as they should be,” Luna-Leal said.The company’s process doesn’t get rid of the mine waste. For every ton of ore milled, a ton of waste would remain – minus a few ounces of gold. At 400 tons a day, waste will stack up quickly.CJK originally planned to use a giant open pit to store the material in a wet slurry. After that was rejected, the company will instead dry waste to putty-like consistency and pile it on a hill behind the mill, Michael said. The open pit downslope would act as an emergency catchment if the pile collapsed. The magnitude of mining waste globally is staggering, with tens of thousands of tailings piles containing 245 billon tons (223 billion metric tons), researchers say. And waste generation is increasing as companies build larger mines with lower grades of ore, resulting in a greater ratio of waste to product, according to the nonprofit World Mine Tailings Failures.This month, gold prices reached record highs, and demand has grown sharply for critical minerals such as lithium used in batteries.Economically favorable conditions mean remining “has caught on like wildfire,” said geochemist Ann Maest, who consults for environmental organizations including EarthWorks. The advocacy group is a mining industry critic but has cautiously embraced remining as a potential means of hastening cleanups through private investment.CJK Milling could help do that in Leadville, Maest said, but only if done right. “The rub is they want to use cyanide, and whenever a community hears there’s cyanide or mercury they understandably get very concerned,” she said.Overseeing Leadville’s water supply is Parkville Water District Manager Greg Teter, who views CJK Milling as potential solution to water quality problems.Many waste piles sit over the district’s water supply, and Teter recalls a blowout of the Resurrection Mine compelled residents to boil their water because the district's treatment plant couldn't handle the dirt and debris.More constant is the polluted runoff during spring and summer, when snowmelt from the Mosquito mountains washes through mine dumps and drains from abandoned mines.Every minute, 694 gallons (2,627 liters) on average of contaminated mine water flows from Leadville’s Superfund site, according to federal records. Most is stored or funneled to treatment facilities, including one run by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.Up to 10% of the water is not treated — tens of millions of gallons annually carrying an estimated six tons of toxic metals, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency records show. By comparison, during Colorado’s 2015 Gold King Mine disaster that fouled rivers in three states, an EPA cleanup crew inadvertently triggered release of 3 million gallons (11.4 million liters) of mustard-colored mine waste.As long as Leadville's piles remain, their potential to pollute continues.“There are literally thousands of mine claims that overlay each other," Teter said. “We don’t want that going into our water supply. As it stands now, all the mine dumps are ... in my watershed, upstream of my watershed, and if they remove them, and take them to the mill, that’s going to be below my watershed.”EPA lacks authority over CJKs proposed work, but a spokesperson said it had “potential to improve site conditions” by supplementing cleanup work already being done. Moving the mine waste would eliminate sources of runoff and could reduce the amount of polluted water to treat, said EPA spokesperson Richard Mylott.Other examples of remining in the Rockies are in East Helena and Anaconda, Montana and in Midvale, Utah, Mylott said. Projects are proposed in Gilt Edge, South Dakota and Creede, Colorado, he said.Despite the mess from Leadville's historic mining, Teter spoke proudly of his industry ties, including working in two now-closed mines. His son in law works in a nearby mine.“If it were not for mining, Leadville would not be here. I would not be here,” the water manager said.“There are no active mines in our watershed, but I’m confident in what CJK has planned,” he said. “And I’ll be able to keep an eye on whatever they do.”Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - July 2024

In Arid New Mexico, Rural Towns Eye Treated Oil Wastewater as a Solution to Drought

By Valerie VolcoviciJAL, New Mexico (Reuters) - Flying over the desert landscape of southeastern New Mexico in a four-seat helicopter, Stephen...

JAL, New Mexico (Reuters) - Flying over the desert landscape of southeastern New Mexico in a four-seat helicopter, Stephen Aldridge could count around a dozen man-made lagoons brimming with toxic wastewater glistening between drill rigs and pumpjacks.While it is a growing hazardous waste problem from the region’s booming drilling industry, the mayor of the tiny town of Jal - nestled near the border with Texas in the heart of U.S. oil country - viewed the sweeping scene as an opportunity: a source of water in the second-biggest oil producing state suffering from worsening drought."Our future is going to depend on the future of that produced water," he said.Aldridge is among a growing group of New Mexico politicians who want the state to develop regulations allowing for the millions of gallons of so-called produced water gushing up daily alongside the Permian basin's prolific oil and gas to be treated and used, instead of discarded, and who are encouraging companies to figure out how to make it happen cheaply, safely and at scale.In 2022, the oil and gas industry in New Mexico produced enough toxic fracking wastewater to cover 266,000 acres (107,650 hectares) of land a foot (31 cm) deep. While the state’s drillers reuse over 85% of their produced water in new oil and gas operations, the rest is pumped underground.With injection wells filling up, however, New Mexico has begun restricting deep-underground disposal, which has triggered earthquakes. The state is now expected to export over 3 million barrels of that water per day by the end of 2024 - a strange dynamic in a water-scarce state.Around 10 wastewater treatment firms in New Mexico are taking up the challenge under a state-supported pilot program that has so far spurred projects to grow crops like hemp and cotton and irrigate rangeland forage grasses.While completed pilots have shown the technology works, it is currently too expensive for widespread adoption.The companies and their backers also face a tough political battle. The debate over how this water should be used is one of the most divisive political questions facing New Mexico, with opponents mainly worried about the unintended human health consequences and subsidizing the oil industry's waste issue.New Mexico’s Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham introduced legislation late last year that would have created a strategic water reserve out of treated produced water. The bill was defeated by state lawmakers but will be brought up again in the next legislative session in January.Neighboring Texas is also dealing with growing problems around wastewater disposal, including an epidemic of exploding orphan wells as subsurface pressure rises, raising worries about a potential crackdown there too. The Permian basin, which straddles Texas and New Mexico, is the top U.S. oilfield."It’s getting close to this point of criticality," said Rob Bruant with energy consultancy B3.Other states such as Colorado and California already use treated produced water in small amounts for agriculture. But New Mexico's situation is unique because the volumes are overwhelming and the water itself needs much more intensive treatment because it is unusually briny - three times saltier than the Pacific.Aldridge stands out in dusty New Mexico, with shoulder-length white hair and a bushy beard, often wearing bright West African tunics.His chopper tour in late-July was part of a site visit to one of the state’s wastewater treatment pilot project run by a company called Aris Water Solutions.At the mobile trailer field office of the Aris project, Aldridge admired fish tanks on display filled with crystal clear water run through Aris’s treatment technology, and home to around two dozen minnows.Before it is treated, though, the water is dangerous. Employees on site are required to wear flame retardant clothing and carry portable monitors to detect deadly gases.The untreated water is trucked in by local drillers and held in two large storage tanks before getting piped through a membrane filter to remove solids, and then distilled.The process yields clear water, and leaves behind a highly toxic rust-colored mud that is reinjected underground at a registered saltwater disposal site.The water, Aris says, is free of pollutants or radionuclides, and fit for industrial and agricultural uses. Starting next year, Aris will begin growing non-food crops like cotton as part of a $10 million grant it won this year from the U.S. Department of Energy."We look at the concept of desalinating produced water and creating a new water resource for the Permian region in a similar way to how the water industry was able to demonstrate that municipal wastewater could be safely treated and used for many purposes that society could become comfortable with," said Lisa Henthorne, chief scientist at Aris.The main problem for Aris and others is cost. A barrel of Aris’ treated water costs over $2 a barrel, many times higher than what industrial or agricultural water users typically pay. Aris says its goal is to bring costs down to $1 - still representing a big bill for users.Massachusetts-based Zwitter, which recently finalized a separate water treatment pilot project in New Mexico, said treated water may never be cheap, but could become viable if it becomes cheaper than disposal."It is unlikely that agriculture or other water users will be able to pay more than cents per barrel. Therefore, the value of desalination will be driven by saving disposal costs and could be from $2 to $3/BW (per barrel of water) in the future," it said in the final report on its project.Disposal currently costs cents per barrel, but that could rise as injection sites fill up and waste needs to be trucked or piped ever further.Aris has strategic agreements with Permian oil majors including Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil to develop and pilot technologies for treating produced water for potential reuse.Exxon subsidiary XTO has also partnered with Infinity Water Solutions, another water treatment firm running a pilot project in the Permian."I can tell you, the H2O molecule has no value until you run out of it," Infinity CEO Michael Dyson added.TERRIFIED OF GETTING IT WRONGAvner Vengosh, a professor of environmental quality at Duke University, said unknown safety risks are also a key concern.Under federal law, U.S. producers are not required to disclose all the chemicals they introduce to oil wells while drilling, raising worries that water treatments and testing are missing some dangerous components."There are a lot of technologies that can treat the water but the question is how can we evaluate all possible contaminants in produced water? I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I am saying it needs to be done correctly," he said. Infinity's Dyson agreed the industry needs to tread carefully."We know we're only going to get one real chance of getting this right, and if anything, I think most of us are terrified of getting it wrong," he said.The state’s environment department is updating its 2019 Produced Water Act with the aim of firming up water reuse rules and expanding research and development for use outside the oil and gas sector.During a week of hearings on the effort in early August, divisions were huge, with environmental groups and some scientists questioning how safe the end-product could be.Daniel Tso, a former Navajo Nation Council member, told Reuters the Navajo had been stung before in New Mexico when decades of uranium mining on their land in the last century led to widespread radioactive pollution.“Now the industry is trying to make this a public problem and the public has to really scrutinize the effects,” he said of produced water.James Kenney, New Mexico’s environment secretary, told Reuters that the advances in technology over the last five years give him confidence that treated produced water can be safe, but acknowledged New Mexico’s poor record."We have to acknowledge our history of things like uranium mining, the promise of wealth and the failure to protect health. So communities are right to be skeptical," he said.For Aldridge, though, the more he learns about wastewater treatment technology, the more willing he is to fight for the state to open up more uses for the water."Am I 100% convinced? No, but they're taking a step to convince me and I need to take those steps with them," he said.His own rural town of Jal, he said, could become home to "industries of the future" like data centers or green hydrogen projects, businesses that need ample supplies of water.Or it could dry up, like the drilling industry will when the Permian empties of oil and gas.“I just can't abide by the idea that small rural communities like Jal can just vanish."(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Marguerita Choy)Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters.

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