Bernalillo County wins $1.5 million EPA grant for cleanup coalition

Bernalillo County will lead a coalition after winning a $1.5 million U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Brownfields Assessment Coalition Grant, money the county said will help assess underused properties and prepare them for cleanup and redevelopment. The county announced the award on July 13, 2026, and framed it as both an environmental effort and an economic one.

The grant matters because brownfields work starts long before a backhoe arrives. EPA brownfields money is designed to help communities identify contaminated or underused properties, sort out what it would take to clean them up and decide what should replace them. That planning can determine whether a site becomes housing, a small-business corridor, a park or a public facility, and it can support paid work for environmental scientists, contractors, construction crews, inspectors and planners.

The county did not name the coalition members or the first properties to be assessed, leaving those decisions to the next round of planning. Bernalillo County has asked residents for brownfield site nominations before, including in a March 1, 2022 post seeking site assessments, a sign that community input has already played a role in identifying problem parcels. For neighborhoods in Albuquerque, the South Valley and the East Mountains, the next question is which sites rise to the top and who gets a say before those choices are locked in.

Cleanup planning can also reduce long-term costs for local governments by cutting the drag that blighted or uncertain properties place on property values, public safety and neighborhood confidence. Bernalillo County’s social-media post described the grant as a way to support healthier neighborhoods and future economic growth, and that is the promise of brownfields work when it moves from paperwork to shovels in the ground: cleaner land, safer parcels and a better chance that vacant lots can be put back into use.

The award fits into a broader run of outside funding for county planning. On Dec. 19, 2024, Bernalillo County said it received a separate $1.94 million U.S. Department of Transportation SMART grant for the I-40 TradePort Corridor Intelligent Data Platform. Together, the awards show a county increasingly using federal dollars to shape how land, infrastructure and redevelopment are planned across Bernalillo County.