New Mexico
Enforcement Watch
Enforcement Watch is the New Mexico Environment Department's (NMED) public record of its enforcement work. NMED says it publishes it to make its enforcement more open to the public. The page offers two files to download, one of active matters and one of resolved matters.
In a Phase I ESA
ASTM E1527-21 does not name state enforcement records among its standard record sources. An enforcement matter can still point to an alleged violation at a facility on or near the property that no cleanup list shows. Three details shape how to read one.
- What a listing means. NMED says a business or organization on it has been told by NMED that it is alleged to have violated a rule, regulation, license, permit or the like. An entry is an allegation, not a finding.
- When a matter leaves the active file. It stays active until fully resolved, which NMED defines as adjudicated in court or resolved administratively, with any civil penalty paid in full.
- Some water notices are not enforcement. A note on the page says notices of violation issued by the Ground Water Quality Bureau or the Surface Water Quality Bureau under the New Mexico Water Quality Act and the Water Quality Control Commission's regulations are not enforcement actions. NMED calls them final actions meant to win voluntary cooperation before an Administrative Compliance Order is issued. Where a water quality notice of violation turns up, ask whether an Administrative Compliance Order followed it.
The page says NMED will begin updating the data monthly and will begin adding historic data as resources allow. The pages read do not say how far back the files reach, so do not read a clean file as a clean history.
Where to look a site up
- The Enforcement Watch page links the files of active matters and resolved matters, which this handbook did not open.
- To report an error in the data, NMED gives (800) 219-6157 and (505) 827-2855.
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: