SANTA FE, N.M.— The Center for Biological Diversity and a frontline community member filed a motion today urging New Mexico’s Water Quality Control Commission to disqualify seven of its 14 members from voting on a proposal to overturn environmental protections that prohibit reusing and dumping toxic oil and gas waste.

Today’s motion to the commission comes after emails showed Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s office directed a majority of the panel’s members to vote for an oil industry petition that would allow treated oil and gas waste to be discharged into New Mexico’s rivers and onto its soil. The motion asks for the July 8 vote to be reversed and for the seven commissioners to be disqualified from voting on the issue.

In the emails, the governor’s office instructed the commissioners to get the oil industry proposal “over the finish line” — apparently without regard for scientific evidence or their own concerns.

“The governor is doing the dirty work of the fossil fuel industry and trying to overturn toxic waste rules that protected people and the environment,” said Colin Cox, a New Mexico-based attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The commission is supposed to be fair and impartial, and it’s supposed to act in New Mexicans’ best interests. But instead its members seem to have worked with the governor behind closed doors to sway this vote in favor of the oil industry. This injustice can’t be allowed to stand.”

The July vote reversed the commission’s May decision to ban the reuse and dumping of oil and gas waste in rivers and on land and create a pilot program to study the issue. The May vote had followed an exhaustive 18-month rulemaking process, which found there was no evidence that oil and gas waste could be treated and safely reused outside oilfields.

After the commission voted to ban wastewater reuse and dumping, the oil industry formed a new trade group — the Water Access Treatment and Reuse Alliance — and filed a new petition to undo those protections. According to news reports, the industry had the governor’s backing and directed the commission from behind closed doors.

“The governor and the commission have violated the public trust, putting the interests of the oil industry above the people of New Mexico,” said Mario Atencio, participant in the rulemaking from the Eastern Navajo Agency. “I wish I could say I was surprised, but this isn’t the first time our elected officials have sold us out for oil profits.”