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Environmental Groups Seek to Join Fight Over Water Standards

Posted on: Thursday, 18 August 2005, 15:00 CDT

Aug. 18--A coalition of environmental and religious groups wants to wade into a fight over New Mexico's water quality.

Amigos Bravos, a Taos-based environmental group, together with other groups Wednesday asked the New Mexico Court of Appeals to allow them to intervene in a lawsuit that industrial organizations filed this June.

In their lawsuit, the industrial groups challenged the right of the state's Water Quality Control Commission to set waterquality standards more stringent than those set by the federal government.

In June, Dalva L. Moellenberg, a lawyer for the industrial groups, said his clients are concerned that the new rules appear to give state regulators unlimited discretion to determine which bodies of water come under their authority. He said it's conceivable that the state could hand out citations to the owner of a parking lot if the water that pools up after a rainstorm doesn't meet state standards.

Moellenberg's clients in the appeal include the New Mexico Mining Association, New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, New Mexico Home Builders Association, New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association, New Mexico Wool Growers Inc., Chino Mines and Phelps Dodge Tyrone Inc.

By changing its regulations, state Environment Secretary Ron Curry said, New Mexico is trying to keep in place the same standards it has had for decades.

The state rule change is necessary, he said this summer, because the federal government has changed its definition of waters covered under the federal Clean Water Act to exclude so-called ephemeral waters, or those streams and lakes that don't ultimately drain into an ocean. Under that definition, many waters in the state would be left unprotected, he said.

Rachel Conn, the spokeswoman for Amigos Bravos, said her group relies on effective water-quality standards to protect New Mexico's water resources.

"Leaving our waters unprotected will create an enormous social and economic cost to the state in the form of health care and environmental cleanup," she said.

Joining with Amigos Bravos in seeking to intervene in the lawsuit are the following groups: the Ecology Ministry of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, the Creation Stewardship Office of the Diocese of Gallup, NM Trout, the Gila Resources Information Project, the Sierra Club, 1,000 Friends of New Mexico and the New Mexico Acequia Association.

"Intervening in this case is one step in protecting God's creation that we are all called to engage in as responsible caretakers," said Sister Joan Brown, ecology minister with the Social Justice Office of the Santa Fe Archdiocese.

"We in New Mexico know the preciousness, scarcity and the grave responsibility to care for water in an arid region," Brown said. "The state has acted in the best interest of the common good and future generations by adopting its own definition of surface waters of the state."

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Source: The Santa Fe New Mexican

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