EPA Threatens To Take Over
New Mexico Water Regulation

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —(AP)— New Mexico is drawing up rules to keep the state's water clean, but the federal government might rewrite those rules.

If it does, irrigation farmers would likely come under federal water-pollution restrictions for the first time ever.

"We don't want to interfere with the state's (water quality) program. But it's our statutory duty to see they meet the (federal Clean Water) Act," said Environmental Protection Agency scientist Russell Nelson, who is with the regional office in Dallas.

The EPA is looking closely at Clean Water Act exemptions given by the state to irrigation and flood control facilities.

For the past 30 years, irrigators and dam operators have not been subject to water pollution controls. Nelson says the lack of controls is having an negative impact on the state's fisheries.

"Although a lot of people around here thought it was real problematic and had a real impact on fisheries around the state," Nelson said, "nobody has been willing to tackle it."

State lawmakers wrote the exemption into the state's Water Quality Act. Both the New Mexico Environment Department and the state Water Quality Control Commission say they are powerless to go against the very state law that grants them authority to regulate water quality.

Federal scientists say irrigation farming can pose significant harm to the environment.

Removal of water from rivers for irrigation tends to make rivers warmer and decrease the oxygen needed by fish and other aquatic life. The result is that aquatic habitat is shrinking, EPA claims.

"That loss of habitat is probably the single greatest threat to New Mexico's water bodies," Nelson contended.

The task of satisfying EPA probably will fall to the Legislature. If lawmakers fail to remove or rewrite the exemption, "it will be highly likely we will recommend disapproval" of the state water-quality rules, Nelson said.

The final decision would fall to EPA administrator Carol Browner.

If she chose to reject the rules and New Mexico continued to refuse to change them, the EPA could draft its own water quality rules for the state.

New Mexico officials wonder at the EPA's reason for suddenly objecting to an exemption it has approved since 1967.

"That's pretty arbitrary for them to come back and say this," said Paul Gutierrez, a water quality commission representative from the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau.