New Mexico
Brownfields Program
The Brownfields Program is run by the Ground Water Quality Bureau of the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED). NMED uses the word brownfield for a property whose reuse is made harder by contamination, whether real or only suspected, and gives former gas stations, empty motels, old industrial sites and abandoned dumps as examples. The program offers assessments, loans and technical help.
In a Phase I ESA
The program's site list is the New Mexico form of the state brownfields records that ASTM E1527-21 lists as a standard source. The general reading of a brownfields listing is on the Brownfields page. Read the file, not the listing, for what was found at a site and whether anything was cleaned up.
What the program does
- Targeted Brownfields Assessment. NMED carries out environmental evaluations of brownfield properties at no charge. The services it lists are Phase I and Phase II environmental site assessments, investigations with sampling and analysis, surveys for asbestos and lead paint, cleanup planning, and cost estimates for remediation. The page names local government units, tribal governments, quasi-public bodies such as community development organizations, and nonprofit entities as eligible to ask for one.
- Brownfield Clean-up Revolving Loan Fund. NMED makes low-interest loans that can pay for remediating contamination at an eligible brownfield site, and for removing or abating asbestos. The page asks prospective borrowers to contact the program about eligibility and the application.
- Technical assistance. NMED offers to help a project find the planning, expertise, partners and funding sources that brownfield reuse needs.
The Petroleum Storage Tank Bureau's fund page also points to the Brownfields Program as one possible source of financing for cleaning up a tank release.
Because NMED may itself have assessed a listed property, ask whether the program's file holds a Phase I or Phase II report, an asbestos or lead paint survey, or a cleanup plan for the property or its neighbors.
Where to look a site up
- The Ground Water Quality Bureau's Clean-ups page links a List of Brownfield sites as an Excel file and a PDF, which this handbook did not open.
- The Brownfields Program page links a program brochure and a story map of its success stories. The Bureau's line is 505-827-2900 and its general mailbox is gwqb.general@env.nm.gov.
Getting the file
NMED takes records requests under the Inspection of Public Records Act through its Public Records Requests page: by its online portal, which needs no account, by mail to P.O. Box 5469, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87502, or by telephone at (505) 827-2855. The Public records requests page here gives what a request must hold and the fees.
Sources
New Mexico Environment Department pages, read October 13, 2026, no modified date shown: