Susan Morée talks to Gretel Follingstad, senior manager of Climate Resilient Water Systems Program for the Environmental Defense Fund about a recently published groundwater report. Here is the transcript of the second part of their two-part conversation.
Susan Morée:
One thing I noticed was that the report also focuses on water quality. Can you talk a little bit about that and concerns or issues of things like so-called forever chemicals and other environmental impacts on the water supply in New Mexico?
Gretel Follingstad:
So New Mexico has very interesting, beautiful, and complicated geologies, and that means that our hydrogeologies are also equally complex. So, we have naturally occurring contaminants in some of our aquifers that need to be treated in order to create safe drinking water. And so, we talk about some of those occurrences across our aquifers of the state. And in addition to that, we have other areas where we have large industrial uses and runoff from some of those industrial uses that can leak into or infiltrate in when you have precipitation events into our aquifers, especially the shallow aquifers. And some of the chemicals involved in some of those industries end up in the water supply and need to be treated. And those water supplies need to be treated in order to create safe groundwater supplies for communities in particular. And we cite this because there are also many, many, many domestic wells across the state. And domestic wells are a small water use, but there are a large proliferation of them, hundreds of thousands of them in across the state. And not every domestic well is being monitored for the water quality because that's on the domestic well owner to do so. And so knowing that there are both, you know, chemicals that can be naturally occurring in your groundwater resources, but also chemicals that can occur or infiltrate into your aquifer and into the water that should be treated out or filtered out, depending on what they are. We wanted to raise awareness of this water quality component of New Mexico's groundwater. So, it's not just about how much water is actually in the aquifer. It's about what is the quality of the water.
Susan Morée:
You know, climate change is very scary and the potential of aridification also feels very frightening. Is there any hope?
Gretel Follingstad:
Yeah, climate change is a very big problem, right? It's a global problem. The sources of climate change and climate data are complicated and hard to understand sometimes. I think one of the most important things to understand about aridification for New Mexico and that impact of increasing temperatures globally is that it requires a very pointed and acute and localized strategy on what it means for our land and water resources. And so climate change can have impacts on land resources, such as wildfires or long term droughts, or when precipitation comes, it comes in patterns that are much stronger or less. And sometimes that precipitation then is less available because you have a flooding event versus a gentle rain or snowpack that can slow the flow, if you will, so that it ends up in our aquifers and in our reservoirs. And what we can do about that is adapt our systems, adapt our infrastructure, adapt our land uses so that we are mitigating these impacts and safeguarding our communities, and in particular for New Mexico, our water resources. And one of the best ways that we can do that is by active groundwater resource management that is at the local scale. When you have localized groundwater management, then you're really looking at that basin and the hydrology and the hydrogeology of each basin to understand the dynamics of what's happening with that water. So, New Mexico has many shallow aquifers and alluvial aquifers that are connected closer to the surface and connected to our stream systems. And those aquifers are going to behave a lot differently than deep aquifers, which are usually called confined aquifers, where infiltration into confined aquifers is very, very slow. And so, using the water resources from these really deep, deep aquifers generally is considered more mining of that water versus a sustainable use of groundwater because there really isn't any surplus or deposits, if you will, into those aquifers. So, when you take it out, you're, for all intents and purposes, taking most of it out forever. And so, figuring out what is the character of the aquifer? What is the quality of the water? What is the longevity of that supply? And what is the best way to plan for that level of supply so that we're not depleting these aquifers for our future generations, but that we are conserving and responsibly using that water so that our economies and our communities for future generations still have that resource.
