Supreme Court’s Clean Water Act Rollbacks Land the Rivers of New Mexico on America’s Most Endangered Rivers List
Animas River, New Mexico, Photo Credit Jim O’Donnell
The Rivers of New Mexico are now listed as #1 on the annual list of America’s Most Endangered Rivers®. Our #MightyPartner American Rivers, announced the ranking this week, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that left all but 4% of the state’s streams and wetlands vulnerable to pollution and harmful development.
In 2023, the Supreme Court’s ruling in the landmark case Sackett v. EPA decimated the role of federal agencies in protecting our nations wetlands and streams under the Clean Water Act (CWA). Over 50 percent of the nation’s wetlands in the Lower 48 states have been lost since colonization, and while huge swaths of our freshwater systems are more vulnerable now as a consequence of the Sackett decision, the precedent of the ruling may signal that future rulings are likely to affect our most bedrock environmental laws. New Mexico is one state where the drastic rollback of protections has opened the door to devastating loss of habitat and pollution, which threaten the Rio Grande, Gila, San Juan and Pecos rivers with harmful downstream impacts. We must pay attention to what happens farther downstream, in Texas, and the US and Mexico borderlands. As the saying goes, “we are all downstream.”
“Our state is experiencing some of the worst consequences of climate change, including prolonged drought and aridification,” said New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich. “What we didn't need was the Supreme Court’s radical majority making it harder to protect our waterways. But they won’t get the last word when it comes to our water. I’m committed to ensuring all New Mexicans have access to clean water and a stable foundation for the future.”
The Sackett court decision scaled back national Clean Water Act safeguards to include protections only for “relatively permanent” streams, and wetlands with a “continuous surface connection” to those streams. This means that streams that only run during the rainy season or for periods of the year after snowmelt—which is very typical in New Mexico and throughout the Southwest—fall outside the Clean Water Act authority. In New Mexico, 93% of wetlands have an intermittent surface connection to streams or a groundwater connection, and therefore New Mexico wetlands—which provide important ecological services—are at grave risk. In addition, because New Mexico doesn’t have a state surface water permitting program in place yet to ensure its rivers are appropriately protected, clean water advocates in New Mexico have called on the State of New Mexico to develop, fund and implement a state surface water permitting program to protect at-risk rivers, streams and wetlands that lost federal protections due to the Supreme Court ruling.
Brazos Wetland, New Mexico, Photo Credit: Jim O’Donnell
New Mexico is one of only three states that, until Sackett, still relied on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to issue water quality permits. Now that the federal government no longer has jurisdiction over the vast majority of New Mexico’s waters, development and discharges of pollution or fill into most of the State’s rivers, streams, lakes and wetlands are unregulated. In order to remedy this, the New Mexico Environment Department must set up a state-led surface water quality permitting program. Without a state program, New Mexico exists in a reactive rather than proactive space - waiting to act until water quality standards are violated.
“Reductions in federal Clean Water Act protections across New Mexico have left our state’s rivers, streams and wetlands at risk” said Rachel Conn, Deputy Director of Amigos Bravos, a stated water protection organization. “It is time for New Mexico to adopt a comprehensive state surface water permitting program that protects our streams and wetlands from pollution.”
New Mexico’s rivers and streams are the lifeblood of the state’s economy, environment, cultural history and quality of life. In addition to sustaining life for plants and animals, rivers and streams provide a source of clean drinking water for a majority of New Mexico’s population. Wetlands are held sacred by many Tribal Nations, and are places where families play, fish, hunt, and enjoy the wonders of the outdoors.
“Streams, wetlands, and rivers are essential to New Mexico's hunting and fishing community, and it's imperative that the state have adequate resources to safeguard the state's aquatic resources,” said Elle Benson, Rio Grande Program Manager at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.
We should not ignore that many of those in power have been working to roll back the CWA for decades. With last year’s Supreme Court ruling, our nations suffered a massive blow, but it’s only a fatal one if we allow it to be. Together, we must stop additional erosion to our bedrock environmental laws, and part of that is about seizing the narrative. America's Most Endangered River listing helps do just that. We also need to bolster citizen science, and empower ALL communities to watch and document polluters—to be vigilant in protecting critical freshwater resources for ourselves and for our children. Together, we can and must galvanize a movement in New Mexico and throughout our country to bring back our vital CWA protections.
State-level leadership is crucial, but so is community-led advocacy. Clean, safe water is a right for all Americans—regardless of where they live. With the threats facing our rivers and streams, it’s imperative that everyone get to know their backyard rivers, understand where their drinking water comes from, and where the food that we enjoy at our dinner table is grown. None of this happens by chance. It happens because people for generations have fought and won to protect our lands, water and the air we breathe. We are those people and we have work to do.
Learn more about those working in New Mexico to protect and restore clean water:
And if you missed our interview with Earthjustice last year about the Supreme Court’s Sackett v EPA ruling, read more here.
Rio Costilla, Comanche Point in the Valle Vidal, Photo Credit Geriant Smith
