This bill amends the Water Project Finance Act to establish criteria for prioritizing water projects and allows the New Mexico Finance Authority to fund these projects without legislative approval until December 31, 2028. The new criteria for project prioritization include urgency of need, availability of matching contributions, project readiness, regional impacts, and efforts to mitigate human health and safety concerns, among others. The board is required to develop a weighted scoring system to evaluate and rank applications for loans and grants based on these criteria, with an emergency situation granting a ten-point score increase.

Additionally, the bill modifies existing provisions regarding the duties of the board and the authority. It removes previous requirements for legislative approval of projects and instead mandates that loans and grants will require such approval only after December 31, 2028, unless extended by a two-thirds majority of both legislative houses. The bill also clarifies that the water project fund will consist of various sources of revenue and outlines the allocation of funds for water rights adjudications, ensuring that a portion of the funds is dedicated to the state engineer and the administrative office of the courts for associated costs.

Statutes affected:
introduced version: 72-4A-5, 72-14-45, 72-4A-9