Every New Mexican deserves clean air to breathe, and the New Mexico Environment Department has a responsibility to protect our citizens from threats to the quality of our air, including harmful ground-level ozone. Breathing ozone feels like a sunburn in your lungs — it’s unhealthy and can cause chest pain, coughing, throat irritation and airway inflammation. It can exacerbate existing respiratory conditions, including asthma and bronchitis. It also reduces visibility, preventing us from enjoying the enchanting views we treasure.

This week, we proposed regulations that aim to reduce air pollution in the oil and gas industry that contributes to ozone formation in New Mexico. Our proposed rule will help protect our most impacted communities and spur the oil and gas industry to curb emissions through the use of cutting-edge technology that performs increased checks for leaks and requiring timely repair requirements.

Solving our ozone problem will not happen overnight, but this is a critical step. It’s also a meaningful step toward one of the climate goals set by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham during her first days in office: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions statewide by 45 percent or more by 2030. By tackling ground-level ozone pollution, we’re also significantly reducing methane emissions. We estimate our rule will eliminate emissions of over 851 million pounds of methane annually.

If adopted by the Environmental Improvement Board, New Mexico will lead the nation in creative and innovative rules that hold industry accountable while ensuring compliance is the path of least resistance. Here are the principal ways this rule works to reduce emissions that create ozone:

Impacted communities first

The proposed rule will reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds and oxides of nitrogen — which combine to create ozone — by a combined 110,717 tons a year. Those emissions reductions are equivalent to taking 8 million passenger vehicles off the road annually. The reductions will occur in communities that suffer the most from ozone pollution — including Chaves, Doña Ana, Eddy, Lea, Rio Arriba, San Juan, Sandoval and Valencia counties — to protect the health impacts of our most vulnerable. Thirty-eight percent of New Mexicans live in these counties, where poverty levels are well above the national average and most residents are Hispanic or Latino.

No exemptions

One hundred percent of all oil and gas operations in the counties with the highest levels of ozone pollution are covered. The requirements are scaled, with the largest emitters subject to the strictest emission control requirements. At a minimum, all oil and gas operators must routinely look for leaks and fix them within 15 days or less.

Game-changing technologies

Flares are the traditional means of destroying emissions from oil and natural gas operations. While simple in design, flares can be unreliable, resulting in incomplete combustion or uncontrolled emissions. the Environment Department’s rule allows the use of fuel cells in lieu of flares as control devices. Fuel cells chemically convert hydrocarbons (volatile organic compounds and methane) to electricity, which can then be used to replace diesel fuel to power equipment on the well pad or can even be sold to utilities.

The rule also requires and incentivizes companies to use real-time and remote monitoring technologies via satellite, airships, planes and more to increase the accuracy and speed of reporting. In addition, when flares are used, the rule requires all new flares to be equipped with auto-igniters and continuously lit pilots so emissions are destroyed, instead of vented or emitted into the atmosphere.

Compliance assurance

Today, the Environment Department has seven air inspectors. It would take more than four years for one inspector conducting five inspections per day to inspect their share of New Mexico’s 50,000-plus oil and gas wells and associated equipment. Instead, our rule requires companies to use a new system database that syncs and consolidates monitoring systems. Reports can be easily sent to the Environment Department for increased oversight and transparency, allowing us to maximize the use of our limited resources.

To build on our existing compliance toolbox, the department is investing in innovative activities like aerial surveillance of oil and gas operations through the use of planes and drones, road-based vehicles outfitted with mobile air monitoring equipment, and other techniques that will level the playing field between the industry and the regulator.

This proposed new rule was developed in tandem with the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department to create a comprehensive and complementary framework to reduce waste and air pollution. We undertook a two-year planning process, speaking to thousands of New Mexicans, scientists and researchers inside and outside of our agencies, oil and gas operators, and environmental organizations.

And there will be more opportunities for public engagement as the proposed rule moves through the public hearing process, so stay tuned to our website and social media for more information. This is what good government looks like — and how New Mexico solves problems under Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

James C. Kenney is Cabinet secretary for the New Mexico Environment Department.