The U.S. District Court for New Mexico has approved the proposed settlement filed earlier this month between the Department of Energy and Nuclear Watch New Mexico, or NukeWatch, over a 2016 federal-state consent decree covering legacy cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory complex.
In a Wednesday press release, NukeWatch said the deal approved by the court last week speeds up certain nuclear remediation at the site.
Among other things, the settlement signed March 17 by U.S. District Judge Judith Herrera, calls upon DOE to work toward constructions of a new water monitoring station near where the Los Alamos Canyon meets the Rio Grande. It also requires DOE to do a feasibility study by October 2025 for cleanup of waste in Pit 8 and 9 of Material Disposal Area G at Los Alamos, including planning for sending transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad.
“The surface flow monitoring station will be completed in 2022,” under an agreement between the DOE Office and Environmental Management and local officials in January, a DOE spokesperson said in a Thursday statement.
“DOE must get out of the cap-and-cover mindset for radioactive and hazardous waste that is threatening Northern New Mexico’s regional aquifer,” Scott Kovac, NukeWatch’s operations director, said in the Tuesday press release. He said the settlement, which culminates six years of litigation, makes progress on that front.
“Any additional or faster cleanup of legacy waste at LANL is a good thing for New Mexicans and for the environment,” said Matthew Maez, a spokesman for the New Mexico Environment Department, in a Friday email. “The settlement agreement resolving this litigation accomplishes that through a series of environmental cleanup projects.”
“DOE is committed to the cleanup of legacy waste at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and DOE is pleased that it was able to reach an agreement to resolve this litigation in a manner that is productive and in the interest of the local communities,” the DOE spokesperson said.
The case, which also involves the New Mexico Environment Department, is administratively closed pending performance of the settlement agreement obligations, the judge said in a March 17 order. But DOE is required to file status reports to the federal court every six months.
