Recycling the dump

There's some serious recycling under way in Albuquerque's far Northeast Heights — eight acres of former landfill are being excavated, sifted, sorted out and cleaned up for eventual use as a business park.

The concept is known as a brownfield development, which makes once-contaminated land available for commercial or residential development. The New Mexico Environment Department announced last week it was helping Americus, LLC, with the cleanup costs of the old Coronado landfill near San Mateo Boulevard and Alameda Road N.E. The department's Ground Water Quality Bureau has a revolving loan fund available to brownfield developers, which is lending Americus $500,000 at 1 percent interest.

It's the first time the loan fund has been used for remediation, said fund coordinator Rick Shean, but it probably won't be the last. The city has sold several former dump sites to private developers, Shean told The New Mexico Independent in an e-mail. Once the sites are excavated, the owners are eligible for a federal tax deduction for the remediation costs.

The Coronado landfill cleanup involves digging up some 85,000 tons of garbage and running it through a huge sieve, according to a story in The Albuquerque Journal. About 20 percent of the refuse will be trucked across town to the city's Cerro Colorado Landfill, project manager Jeremy Mechenbier told the Journal. The entire cleanup is expected to cost $950,000, he said.

Eventually the site will be home to more than 120,000 square feet of office and warehouse space on about eight acres of the landfill.

“It is gratifying when the Environment Department can collaborate with businesses to spur development in the state,” Environment Department Secretary Ron Curry said in a news release. “The money will help the developer transform a former landfill into an environmentally sound commercial property.”

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