In New Mexico, a river runs through ‘the middle of a hellscape’

Along the Black River near its junction with the Pecos in southern New Mexico, watchdog thermographer Charlie Barrett found muddy salt deposits, a chunk of crystallized waste, and four flares burning in a state that has banned nearly all flaring since 2022.

The source is produced water, the toxic, often radioactive byproduct that comes out of New Mexico wells at more than three barrels for every barrel of oil, a ratio that only worsens as fields age. State rules confine that wastewater to the oilfield, which has spawned a trucking and reinjection industry that has, in turn, triggered earthquakes and well blowouts.

Meanwhile the Pecos itself, headwaters in New Mexico's high country, has been losing snowpack and flow for nearly 40 years, and American Rivers has twice ranked it among the nation's most endangered waterways. The river that cuts through the Permian Basin is managed now less like a wild river than a carefully tallied conveyance belt.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.