Former Secretary Keyes and Apaluma Added to a Second NMED Contract Valued at $977,354, and Promoted by Kenney
As reported by The Candle last week, internal state emails revealed that in early 2025, New Mexico Environment Department Secretary, James Kenney, directed agency employees to amend an existing contract to accommodate the inclusion of a new company named Apaluma.
Apaluma is a company founded by former Economic Development Department Secretary Alicia Keyes. Keyes is also the CEO of Apaluma.
When Keyes was a cabinet official between 2019 and 2023, she and Kenney worked closely on hydrogen hub development and other projects involving energy related matters on behalf of Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham.
More recently, Keyes has been working with Kenney on the NMED project referred to as “Project Velocity.” The project purports to be digitizing all agency records and developing an interface for AI driven interaction with department personnel and the public.
The amendment to the contract referred to above could be viewed as an end run around what would normally be a fair bid process providing for the best outcome of the digitization and AI interfacing efforts needed for this important project – an outcome the state procurement process is supposed to ensure.
In one of the emails, with the subject line reading: “Subject: IMPORTANT_New Directives from Cabinet Secretary re. Document Digitization,” a department employee wrote, “The Secretary wants the Apaluma solution as a ‘front-end’ to the digitized unstructured content. To that end, he would prefer for convenience’s sake that Speridian act as host SWPA vendor to this vendor.”
Kenney’s instructions required that the existing contract between the company (known as Speridian) and NMED, be amended to include an additional $499,990.00 for the work related to Apaluma, and which covered the months of April through June of 2025.
New Contract – $977,354 Including Apaluma, Keyes and Others
There was an additional contract created shortly after the signing of the amendment to Speridian’s contract, which was also approved by Kenney, and which involved significant funds directed to be paid to Keyes’ company Apaluma, as well as to Keyes and other associates personally.
The new contract provided funding to begin in July 2025, just as the previous one was expiring.
Since the reporting of last week, The Candle has been reviewing additional documents which show Keyes and other players in the efforts to develop produce water as part of the solution to the state’s water problems, were included as key staff and personnel to a related contract currently priced at $977,354.17, with the NMED on what the agency refers to as “Project Velocity.”
The Candle will have updated reporting in the next few days on the second contract that NMED appears to require Speridian to include Apaluma, and Keyes and others to be paid.
Kenney and Other Senior NMED Employees Appear in Commercial-like Endorsement Video for Apaluma and Its Bot, “Luma.”
NMED’s “Project Velocity” has become a key promotional item for Keyes’ company.
On its website, Apaluma presents a “case study” regarding its work, stating:
“New Mexico Environment Department’s Project Velocity“
“Transforming decades of legacy environmental records into an intelligent, searchable platform — across air, water, waste, and energy.”
Immediately below that description, follows a video (also found on YouTube) which provides appearances of senior NMED staff who, along with Apaluma CEO Keyes and Secretary Kenney, narrate a ringing endorsement of sorts, of the Apaluma’s “bot” named Luma.
NMED Environmental Protection Division Director, Michelle Miano, Deputy Secretary of Administration, John Roderick, and Chief Data and Technology Steward, Meta Hirschl, all join Kenney and Keyes in what a reasonable person could consider an infomercial.
They all appear to be endorsing and cheer-leading Apaluma’s work underwritten by public funds from the state agency that employs them.
“I’m already having, like, an affection towards Luma … She’s somebody who is learning from us, and then helping us synthesize.” – Secretary Kenney
(The text below was transcribed from Apaluma Video, published on or about November 3, 2025, on YouTube. The full video can be linked to at the Apaluma main webpage, by scrolling down a bit.)
The video is about four minutes long. Here is a transcription of a portion of it starting at about 2:35, of the video:
James Kenney, “You know I’m already having, like, an affection towards Luma, which is an interesting concept, right? She’s somebody who is learning from us, and then helping us synthesize.
“But she’s way more informed than just locating things. She’s integrating and connecting. And she’s a kind of a neural network in a way of, of relating things that maybe we didn’t even think about relating.”
Alicia Keyes, “ Luma is who you look to in order to help the human in the loop make the decision they need to make, or craft the policy that they need to craft and be able to help the constituents that we serve.
“It’s an incredibly exciting time to know that now we have the tools to expedite that permitting process, to better capture data to serve not only the people but also the department, the regulatory department that is trying to make good decisions.”
Kenney, “If you democratize data you empower people to better understand you. They may not agree with your decisions as a regulatory agency, but they will certainly understand them better. And I think the fact that we’ve had such a positive interaction with Apaluma feels like lightning in a bottle. Like we want more of it.”
The video wraps with, APPLAUSE from NMED staff in room where video is taped and Kenney exclaims, “I love it,” as he High Fives his former colleague and NMED’s new contractor, Alicia Keyes.
Earlier this week, The Candle reached out via email to Rhoderick, Miano and Hirschl asking several questions as to whether or not it was appropriate for them to appear in what appears to be an official capacity endorsing or promoting a private company’s product.
None have responded as of the date of this article being published.