Bernalillo County leads $1.5 million EPA brownfields grant effort
Bernalillo County won $1.5 million for 34 Phase I and 21 Phase II assessments, targeting Bridge Blvd., Central Avenue and 4th Street NW.
Bernalillo County won $1.5 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to probe brownfield sites in the 30-square-mile South Valley census-designated place, the 8-mile Central Avenue corridor and the 4th Street NW corridor in Los Ranchos, putting specific addresses on the cleanup list. The money will pay for brownfield inventories, planning, environmental assessments, community outreach and cleanup work at a brownfield site owned by the recipient.
The county is the lead applicant in a coalition that includes the City of Albuquerque and the Village of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, and Marcos A. Gonzales, Bernalillo County’s executive development officer, is the project director. The application includes 34 Phase I and 21 Phase II environmental site assessments, and it names priority addresses such as 707 Bridge Blvd. and 1500-1508 Bridge Blvd. in the Bridge Blvd. corridor, 9111 Broadway Blvd. SE in Mountain View, several Central Avenue parcels near San Mateo and in southeast Albuquerque, and 6313 4th St. and 405 Mullen Rd. in Los Ranchos. Bernalillo County’s 2023 population was estimated at 674,357.
The coalition works with owners and other stakeholders to identify and prioritize candidates, and earlier brownfields work ran with Stantec and a county website to gather public input. In 2022, the goal was to turn blighted areas into thriving neighborhoods, create shovel-ready sites and protect public health and the environment. The county’s revitalization process runs through Phase I desktop research and site visits, Phase II sampling, cleanup planning and, only after that, redevelopment or sale.
EPA’s New Mexico cleanup page lists the Sandoval County Judicial Complex as a brownfields success story. EPA’s Brownfields Program began in 1995 and has leveraged more than $45 billion in cleanup and redevelopment while supporting more than 228,900 jobs. Cleanup and reinvestment reduce blight, protect the environment and take development pressure off open land.
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