The New Mexico Environment Department yesterday announced a plan to create a new Compliance and Enforcement Division.
NMED officials gave an overview while making its annual budget request to the Legislative Finance Committee.
The budget for the division would initially be $14.1 million dollars with a staff, ultimately, of 140 full-time and contract employees.
NMED secretary James Kenney said during the presentation that most of the new division’s employees would be existing staff already working as part of compliance and enforcement teams in the department’s other divisions.
NMED’s core divisions including Water Protection, Environmental Protection, Environmental Health, and Resource Protection.
In response to questions from legislators asking why a new division was needed, Kenney explained that it was always the intention to organize the department with a separate compliance division and that the change would mean the NMED is matching the design of other environment departments on the federal and state level.
“So we're kind of returning back to how those programs were intended to be run," Kenney said.
"This is exactly how the Texas Environmental Agency runs. This is how all of EPA has reorganized itself into alignment this way. So we're, we're coming back to what normal is among environmental agencies.”
During the 2024 fiscal year, NMED conducted nearly 10,000 compliance inspections and initiated nearly 2,200 enforcement actions.
Determining the NMED’s budget will be one of the many decisions lawmakers will have to make during next year’s general legislative session.
