After months of deliberation, the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission on May 14 voted to prohibit any discharge of treated “produced water” from oil and gas extraction to ground and surface waters.

Produced water flows back to the surface during fracking and conventional oil and gas drilling and contains chemicals used in the extraction process as well as numerous other hazardous compounds, including arsenic and benzene, both human carcinogens.

New Mexico creates around two billion barrels—84 billion gallons—of this toxic wastewater each year. Cleaning through multi-stage filtration, desalination and other processes could allow for the reuse of produced water for irrigation and other commercial applications, saving precious water resources. But environmental advocates, scientists

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