New Mexico
Former Mines and Mills
Former Mines and Mills is the New Mexico Environment Department's (NMED) section of its site on uranium mining and reclamation. NMED says uranium was mined heavily in New Mexico from the middle of the twentieth century through the 1980s, and that as the industry shrank in the 1990s many sites were left neglected. Its newer initiative aims at no fewer than 50 neglected uranium sites that no existing cleanup program, federal, state or tribal, covers, and for which no responsible party has been identified.
In a Phase I ESA
ASTM E1527-21 does not name state records of former uranium mines and mills among its standard record sources. In a uranium district they answer a question the standard lists do not: whether the property or its neighbors were mine or mill sites, and which agency has acted there.
- Two tracks run side by side. NMED says its Mining Environmental Compliance Section keeps working on reclamation at permitted sites, while the separate initiative takes up the neglected ones. The Ground Water Quality Bureau's Permitting page links a list of the facilities that section regulates.
- A shared dashboard. NMED says that in January 2024 it released, with the Mining and Minerals Division of the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, the first version of a web map of formerly operating uranium mine and mill sites. It summarizes basic information on each site and any regulatory action under the two agencies' permitting tracks, and shows other sites and federal agencies where it has the information. NMED's Maps and Data page says the dashboard will be updated regularly as NMED receives new information on each site.
- Site reviews. The Uranium Site Reviews page links reviews of fifteen individual uranium sites.
- A strategic plan, in draft when the page was written. The Cleanup page says NMED issued a draft Uranium Reclamation Strategic Plan at the end of 2023, which the page relates to Chapter 9-7A-16, and was finishing it with the other agencies named in House Bill 164 and the Office of the State Engineer. When that page was written it expected the plan to be posted by the end of 2024; the pages read do not link a final plan. NMED also ran a gap analysis in 2023 on starting a state program for old uranium mines with no responsible party.
Where to look a site up
- NMED's Formerly Operating Uranium Mines and Mills Sites in NM dashboard, linked from the Maps and Data page.
- The Uranium Site Reviews page, for the fifteen sites with a review.
- The List of facilities regulated by the Mining Environmental Compliance Section, linked from the Ground Water Quality Bureau's Permitting page, which this handbook did not open.
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. This handbook does not read the Mining and Minerals Division's pages.
Sources
New Mexico Environment Department pages, read October 13, 2026, no modified date shown: