{"id":49670,"date":"2026-10-09T12:53:30","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T19:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/?p=49670"},"modified":"2026-10-09T12:53:32","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T19:53:32","slug":"its-a-beautiful-river-in-the-middle-of-a-hellscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/its-a-beautiful-river-in-the-middle-of-a-hellscape\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s a Beautiful River in the Middle of a Hellscape\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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As climate change dries New Mexico, the Pecos faces a growing threat as it runs through the Permian Basin oilfield.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

by Jerry Redfern, Capital and Main<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story<\/a> was originally published at Capital and Main<\/a>, a NMPBS partner.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A hiker crosses a bridge over the Pecos River, downstream from its source in the Sangre de Christo Mountains in northern New Mexico. Photos by Jerry Redfern.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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It\u2019s an early May<\/strong> afternoon, and Charlie Barrett has parked his pickup in a pullout along a county road a few hundred feet from the Black River in southern New Mexico, just a mile from where it empties into the Pecos River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has stopped to set up a video camera that detects heat and gasses invisible to the eye to check for emissions at a nearby oil and gas operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stepping out of the truck, Barrett finds the pullout muddy and dotted with puddles \u2014 an anomaly during an ongoing drought. A gray chunk of salt the size of a medicine ball sits near a mud puddle flecked with shimmering, white crystals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUnfortunately this is pretty common,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s also quite dangerous.\u201d It appeared that someone had dumped oilfield wastewater \u2014 also known as produced water \u2014 at the pullout. The extremely saline and toxic byproduct of oil and gas production carries a mix of petroleum compounds and oilfield chemicals. Produced water can be radioactive, too. Barrett said he worries that people would unwittingly drive through the muck or pull off the road and walk through it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All day, every day, hundreds of semi trucks haul the toxic produced water from well sites to disposal stations along the highways and backroads of this far corner of New Mexico. That water is an unwanted byproduct of oil and gas development. More than three barrels of wastewater come out of the ground for every barrel of extracted oil, on average in New Mexico. As fossil fuel production has skyrocketed in the Permian Basin, the amount of produced water has followed. In addition, the water-to-oil ratio increases as wells and oilfields age \u2014 a process known as \u201cwatering out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Charlie Barrett, a thermographer with Oilfield Witness, points out a chunk of salt that likely fell off of a truck carrying oilfield wastewater near Malaga, New Mexico.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

New Mexico state rules ban produced water use for anything outside the oilfield. This has led to a parallel industry devoted to gathering, transporting and reinjecting produced water deep underground. That, in turn, has led to a rise in seismic activity in the region, as well as dramatic blowouts<\/a> that spew toxic water when injection wells fail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett works for industry watchdog Oilfield Witness as a thermographer, using a thermal camera to measure gaseous emissions from oilfield equipment. As he set up to record, produced water trucks rumbled by under a cloudless sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett began filming. \u201cOh, man, that\u2019s fucking terrible,\u201d he said. On its small screen, in wavy, candy-colored hues, the camera revealed the heat signatures of three active flares near a house. \u201cGot a person\u2019s home here and then this mess \u2026 all producing CO2 and methane and other volatile organic compounds, blowing right into their home,\u201d he said, looking through the viewfinder. \u201cJesus, man. It\u2019s ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he looked at the footage later on a bigger screen, he found another lit flare in the video, in addition to the first three. One shot \u2014 four flares. This despite the fact that New Mexico has banned nearly all flaring since 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Companies burn off \u2014 or \u201cflare<\/a>\u201d \u2014 natural gas for a few reasons, including: it doesn\u2019t meet specifications; it is over pressurized in a pipeline; or it\u2019s required for equipment maintenance. Though better for the climate than venting unburned gas into the atmosphere, flaring still produces carbon dioxide and other toxic pollutants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, Barrett sat on a small boulder along a quiet bend in the Pecos River, talking about his work. The river gurgled; dragonflies hovered, and the grasses rustled as more oilfield trucks rumbled over a nearby bridge, a reminder that Barrett was sitting in one of the most prolific fossil fuel basins on the planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt sucks,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful river in the middle of a hellscape.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Barrett documents emissions coming from nearby oil and wastewater storage tanks on an oil well site near Loving.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Several months earlier, the last time Barrett visited this spot, he found salt deposits covering the ground between the bridge and the riverbank. \u201cI mean, the whole road was flooded over,\u201d he said. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t confirm one way or another if that was an actual produced water spill,\u201d he added, but there are few other possibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such a spill would represent another environmental shock for this troubled river. The irony: The river needs more water. U.S. Geological Survey data going back nearly 40 years shows the annual snowpack slowly but steadily declining in the mountains around the Pecos River\u2019s headwaters. River flow measurements in the upriver town of Pecos show the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As climate change heats and dries New Mexico, and the Pecos River runs ever lower, one of the biggest drivers of that change sits atop the river\u2019s banks, just feet from where Barrett sits \u2014 75,000<\/a> square miles of oil and gas wells across 55 counties in New Mexico and Texas: the vast Permian Basin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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