New Mexico and the Navajo Nation will receive $4 million of almost $725 million in recently announced federal abandoned mine land reclamation funds, an Albuquerque-area news outlet reported earlier this week.
The $2.4 million that New Mexico will receive and the $1.6 million that the Navajo Nation can expect are badly needed to remediate pollution communities are sustaining from neighboring coal mines, KRQE News 13 reported Feb. 7 news story.
The problem "is bad," U.S. Department of the Interior Senior Advisor and Infrastructure Coordinator Winnie Stachelberg said in the news story.
"There are 20-thousand, under some counts, of abandoned coal mines that have been left over decades," Stachelberg said. "They're in communities, they are on neighborhood streets. They are around this county and this money will go to cleaning them up."
The funds for New Mexico and the Navajo Nation will be part of the first round of money from Interior and the department is expected to provide more money over the next 15 years. States and tribes are required to demonstrate a need and submit project plans to receive any of the funding.
The money will be coming for Interior's recent announcement of the hundreds of millions of dollars to reclaim abandoned mine lands, an effort that will revitalize effected communities, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said.
The money spent on reclamation nationwide will create good-paying union jobs and serve as a catalyst to revitalization those state and tribal communities formerly dependent on coal, Haaland said in Interior's Feb. 7 announcement.
"The Biden-Harris administration is committed to helping working families, often in rural and Tribal communities, who face hazardous pollution, toxic water levels, and land subsidence both during mining and long after coal companies have moved on," Haaland said. "The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law's historic investments will help revitalize these local economies and support reclamation jobs that help put people to work in their communities, all while addressing environmental impacts from these legacy developments."
Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and a 35th generation New Mexican, is the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary, as well as the first to be appointed DOI secretary.
