An engineer would build a desalination plant

I want to talk about water — specifically about why New Mexico keeps solving the same problem the wrong way.

The Rio Grande Compact has governed water sharing between Mexico, New Mexico, and Texas since 1938. For decades New Mexico has taken more than its share, accumulated debt to Texas and Mexico, hired lawyers, paid penalties, and let farmland turn to sand to make up the difference.

Last year, the state settled a decade-long lawsuit with Texas and committed to spending hundreds of millions of dollars in compliance costs, farmland payments, and legal fees over the next decade. The settlement requires New Mexico to retire 18,200 acre-feet of active groundwater rights from farmers in the Elephant Butte Irrigation District. Farmers in Doña Ana County are being forced to give up their water rights so the state can meet its obligations downstream.

That is not a good solution. That's ignorantly throwing money at a problem.

Here is what an engineer sees.

New Mexico's delivery obligation to Texas and Mexico runs about 44,000 acre-feet per year short. The Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant in El Paso produces about 30,800 acre-feet per year drawing from the brackish Hueco Bolson aquifer — water too salty to drink but far less salty than ocean water, making it cheap to treat.

The Mesilla Bolson aquifer beneath Las Cruces is geologically identical. It is full of brackish water that nobody is using.

A desalination facility on the Mesilla Bolson, producing 40,000 to 50,000 acre-feet per year, would permanently eliminate New Mexico's downstream delivery deficit. The water goes into the Rio Grande below Elephant Butte, meets the Texas delivery obligation, and satisfies the 1906 treaty with Mexico.

New Mexico farmers keep their water rights. New Mexico's government keeps its word. Nobody has to sell. Nobody has to let their land turn to sand. And we get a few dozen high-paying jobs out of it.

The economics work if you power it correctly. Desalination is one of the few industrial processes where intermittent power is not a problem.

You pump when the sun shines and the wind blows. You store water instead of electricity. No batteries needed. New Mexico and West Texas already let enormous amounts of solar and wind generation go to waste because the grid cannot absorb peak output. A desalination facility powered by renewable overgeneration has a marginal energy cost approaching zero.

Your next senator can make Uncle Sam pay for all of this. The capital cost is roughly $250 million — about $13 million per year over 30 years, all-in.

New Mexico currently pays $17.5 million per year just to fallow farmland, before legal fees and the $50 million the legislature was asked for in 2026 just to begin compliance. The permanent solution costs less than the temporary one — and once the plant is built, the payments stop.

Here is how Uncle Sam pays. The 1906 US-Mexico Water Treaty requires the United States to deliver 60,000 acre-feet annually to Mexico from Elephant Butte. The State Department and Bureau of Reclamation are already parties to this litigation.

The International Boundary and Water Commission has budget authority and a 50-year track record of building exactly this kind of facility. A desalination plant that meets the Mexico treaty obligation is foreign aid infrastructure the State Department can fund. Washington pays. New Mexico farmers keep their water rights. New Mexico's government keeps its word. Mexico gets its water. Everyone wins.

Doña Ana County farmers have been forced to give up their water rights so that Santa Fe can make their lawyer friends rich. They deserve a senator who shows up with a win-win plan rather than a buyout or a seizure.

New Mexico is a purple state with a long track record of weak Republican candidates. The votes are there. They are waiting for someone worth voting for. This November, let's vote the bums out.

Matt Channon is a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in New Mexico and a Materials Engineering graduate of New Mexico Tech. Learn more at mattchannon.com.