Stimulus money flows — WIPP, Los Alamos among the winners

New Mexico will be buoyed by at least $3 billion — if not more — in federal stimulus funds by year’s end.

But signs show the money is already flowing in.

As of Friday, contracts totaling more than $150 million in U.S. Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds had been signed in New Mexico, according to a database on the Federal Procurement Data System Web site.

Among the winners are the Mescalero Apache Tribe and an Alaska firm, both of whom landed service contracts.

But by far the biggest winner in New Mexico’s stimulus jackpot is Washington Tru Solutions LLC, the operator of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad, New Mexico. The firm won a $121 million U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) contract in mid-April to help clean-up of the site.

The contract, listed as a change order, has a Sept. 30, 2010 completion date. According to the Washington Post, the clean up at WIPP is part of the Department of Energy’s release of more than $6 billion under stimulus package to clean up 18 nuclear sites from New York to California. That more than doubles the typical yearly funding for the program.

WIPP, as the federal instalation is known, is the world’s first licensed repository for the permanent disposal of defense-generated transuranic radioactive waste left from research and production of nuclear weapons and a cornerstone to DOE’s national clean-up effort.

Waste temporarily stored at sites around the country is shipped to WIPP and permanently disposed in rooms mined out of an ancient salt formation 2,150 feet below the surface. WIPP, which began waste disposal operations in 1999, is located 26 miles outside of Carlsbad.

The WIPP contract is part of $3 billion in non-competitive federal dollars that will flow into New Mexico to boost the economy. And that total could easily be eclipsed if New Mexicans are successful in qualifying for hundreds of millions of dollars in additional competitive grants, which are part of the stimulus package as well. State officials just completed a statewide barnstorming tour to urge New Mexico residents, businesses and organizations to apply for the competitive grants.

It is difficult to get a real-time number of exactly how much in federal stimulus funding has entered New Mexico. The Federal Procurement Data System database appears to cover only contracts signed by federal agencies, meaning that more federal stimulus money is likely to have flowed into the state than is reflected on the database. The New Mexico Department of Transportation, for example, announced signing off on a $37 million road construction project to be paid for by stimulus funds earlier this month at the I-40-Paseo de Volcan interchange due west of Albuquerque. That is not on the federal database.

But the database gives a glimpse into how much money is flowing into the state three months after the federal stimulus act was signed into law in February.

Eventually money from the federal stimulus package will flow to hundreds of different organizations and firms across the state.

But so far the early stimulus money has gone mostly to a handful of firms, according to the federal procurement database.

In terms of the number of awarded contracts, the Native American Alaska-based Chucagh Management Services would be the clear winner in New Mexico so far.

The firm signed 32 contracts with the Air Force in May valued at more $12.3 million to perform repairs at Kirtland Air Force Base in southeast Albuquerque, the database shows.

The firm will do everything from re-paving several parking lots to building an addition to a vehicle barn. Chucagh’s single biggest contract at Kirtland — $1,720,740 — is for the replacing overlay to the roof on the maintenance dock hangar, the federal database shows. The contract was signed May 18.

All told, officials at several federal agencies have signed 41 contracts in New Mexico, the document shows. The database, as of Friday, had nearly 1,200 projects spread among all but a handful of states valued at more than $4 billion.

The second-largest contract in New Mexico behind the WIPP cleanup was $10 million, which Los Alamos National Security LLC received for environmental clean up, the document shows.

Several hundred miles to the south, the Mescalero Apache Tribe won more than $1.1 million in National Forest Service money to thin trees in the Lincoln National Forest, primarily around Ruidoso and Mescalero, according to the database.

In Cuba, in the state’s northwest, the Nacimiento Copper Mine, meanwhile, will receive a $1.24 million cleanup, thanks to a National Forest Service contract with a Concord, California, firm — Engineering/Remediation Resources Group Inc. — hired to perform remediation.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the work will clean up and restore 25 million gallons of groundwater at the mine. The goal is to treat the surface and ground water for human consumption as well as for use by small farmers and ranchers.

Meanwhile, in Clovis, Southwest Heritage Inc. of Melrose, N.M. will bury overhead electric lines on DL Ingram Boulevard on Cannon Air Force Base, thanks to a $1,546,371 Air Force contract, the document shows.