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Northwest New Mexico Council of Governments Receives EPA Grant

Release Date: 11/3/2005
Contact Information: For more information contact the Office of External Affairs at (214) 665-2200.

     The Northwest New Mexico Council of Governments (NWNMCOG) has been selected to receive an $81,168 Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), EPA Regional Administrator Richard E. Greene announced today.

     "It is with great pleasure that I announce the awarding of our Region's first grant of EPA's new grant program.  CARE is a new EPA initiative designed to help communities investigate, address and reduce toxic risks in their local environments," Greene said.

     The CARE program is a community-based, community-driven program that builds partnerships to help communities understand and reduce toxic risks from numerous sources.  Award recipients will tackle a wide variety of environmental health issues in both rural and urban areas.

     The NWNMCOG serves a largely rural area with 220,000 people residing in three counties.  This grant will allow the NWNMCOG to focus on a wide range of environmental issues that will be addressed in collaboration with Native American tribes, municipalities, small towns, and widely distributed rural settlements in the region.  The NWNMCOG will use CARE funding to address the contamination of soil, air, and water primarily caused by industrial processes such as uranium mining, oil and gas development, and power plant emissions.  It will focus on environmental health concerns that have been identified and additional concerns that will be identified in the CARE process.

     There are two types of CARE grants.  The smaller Level I grants are approximately for $85,000 and will help communities organize and create collaborative partnerships dedicated to reducing toxics in their local environments.  Level II awards are larger, approximately for $300,000, and are for communities that have already established broad-based partnerships and have identified the priority toxic risks in their communities.  These communities are further along in the CARE process and are prepared to measure results, implement risk reduction activities, and become self-sustaining.

     More information about CARE is available at: https://www.epa.gov/CARE.