As for disposing of the toxic materials, Bralley said it’s going to be expensive and that they would look at several options.

“We have to figure out how concentrated they are,” he said. “If there are large amounts, then it’s going to require disposal, either a land flow or special land flow. It may require transportation out of state.”

Jensen is also concerned with what happens after 100 years. “The deepwater isn’t renewable, so when it’s gone, it’s gone,” he said. “So, if it’s being used to promote more growth and more development and more housing, when that water runs out, there’s going to be a huge question of where the water comes from to supply the new population. That is a serious issue.”

Sandoval County Manager Juan Vigil said the water could last longer than 100 years.

“If we do some reinjections and other types of processes to keep the water flowing that will reduce the cost and extend the life,” he said. “You just can’t say it’s going to be a forever-type thing, but 100 years is a threshold because it gives us a defined area.”

Dr. Bruce Thompson, a civil engineering professor at the University of New Mexico and the director of the UNM Water Resources Program, commends Sandoval County for pursuing the desalinization project.

“I encourage them to go forward with it,” he said. “They’ve got the resources to investigate the treatment technology and they’ve spent so much already, they might as well finish the project and the information generated by that project will be extremely valuable in New Mexico and the Southwest.”

While Thompson likes the desalination plant, he warned that the Middle Rio Grande area needs to practice conservation.

“I think this deep desal is not sustainable water,” he said. “It’s not recharged at any rate that approaches the rate that it is withdrawn. I think it would be a mistake for the community to rely on that water for their principal source of water supply.”

Meanwhile, Wood is bullish on water prospects in the state. He estimated that three-quarters of New Mexico’s groundwater is brackish.

“In the past, we haven’t been able to use that, but with new technologies, we can,” Wood said. “A lot of groundwater is available to us that hasn’t been available in the past.”

The Rio Puerco isn’t the only place with brackish water and Sandoval County isn’t the only place looking at desalinization.

Wood explained that the Tularosa Basin in the Alamogordo area has 1 billion acre-feet of water.

“That’s enough to meet all of New Mexico’s municipal needs for at least a thousand years,” he said. “But it’s a long way away. The water’s there, we just need to get the technology to get it.”

Wood said the City of Alamogordo is preparing to desalinate it, but it’s 50 to 100 years away.

“In New Mexico there’s a lot of water, it’s just in the wrong place and the wrong quality, but we’re working on solving that problem,” he said. “I’m very optimistic about New Mexico’s water future.”

The desalinization plant, 12 miles west of Rio Rancho, is an integral part of the county’s master plan for Rio Rancho Estates. Other planned components include the Northwest Loop, which will connect US 550 with I-40, residential development, a golf course, hotel, airport and commercial businesses.

Universal Asset Manage-ment, which is conducting a pilot test to determine the feasibility of turning the raw water into drinkable water, will have a final report to the Sandoval County Commission next month.

In October of 2008, county officials claimed initial test results of a deepwater aquifer in the Rio Puerco basin showed enough brackish water to meet the region’s water needs for at least 100 years.

The results showed that, when purified at a desalination plant, the aquifer could produce 43,200 acre feet of potable water a year for the next century. The county anticipates being able to convert every 5.3 to 5.6 million gallons of raw water into 5 million gallons of potable water.

Water from the aquifer will be produced from three joint water claims that Sandoval County has on land in the Rio Puerco Valley that is owned by the King Ranch, the state Land Office and Aperion, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based developer.

Those claims are for 80,000 acre feet a year in an area extending northward for about 15 miles from Sandoval County’s southern boundary with Bernalillo County.Sandoval County officials envision a water supply that will sustain industry and development for at least 100 years. Through a pilot program, they are making progress with plans to convert brackish water from the Rio Puerco basin to potable water.

All is not rosy though, as the conversion process creates several byproducts, some of which could be toxic.

Chemicals and minerals include iron, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, arsenic, silica, radionuclides, calcium, magnesium, salt and lime.

Michael Jensen, a communication and grants specialist with Amigos Bravos, a statewide, water conservation nonprofit, is concerned about what happens to those products.

“There’s a huge amount of by-products and it has to be stored somewhere,” he said. “There are chemicals in the aquifer that are potentially hazardous materials, like arsenic. When those start concentrating at high levels it can turn into hazardous waste.”

Dr. Karl Wood, the director of the Water Resources Research Institute at New Mexico State University, also expressed concerns about the byproducts.

He explained that desalination plants along the coastlines can inject the water back into the ocean. Wood said Sandoval County could inject the water back into the aquifer, but it would be expensive.

“It just goes back into a safe environment,” Wood said. “The danger of it is gone. You put it back into the earth in a similar place where it came from.”

Guy Bralley, the water resources administrator for Sandoval County, acknowledged that direct injection would be ideal, but it’s not practical.

He said they drilled a second well to the granite and ran into a Madera limestone formation.

“We drilled a well all the way to the granite hoping to find fractures in Madera and it’s very hard,” Bralley said. “If we had the option of doing injection, we’d look really serious at doing it. It’s what most folks do when they don’t have the option of putting it in water, so it doesn’t look like direct injection is an option.”