The legacy cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory officially closed out its remediation of a stretch of public road, previously thought to be clean, where contamination was discovered in 2020, the contractor said this week.
In February, the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) said the investigation and cleanup of contaminated soil from legacy operations at Middle DP Road is complete, Huntington Ingalls-led Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) wrote in a Monday press release.
The state agency issued its approval of the cleanup in a Feb. 14 letter, N3B said. NMED found the two parcels cleaned up by N3B along Middle DP Road “do not pose an unacceptable risk from hazardous constituents to human health and the environment.”
The field work at DP Road ended in summer 2023 after N3B dug up and packaged more than 5,917 cubic yards of soil and debris for disposal. N3B collected 867 samples from 289 points along the road and studied the samples for potential health and environmental risk, according to the company release.
The Middle Delta Prime Road was once owned by the DOE lab, located in Technical Area 21 “and in the vicinity of the previously remediated Material Disposal Area,” according to the state letter.
After the site was declared remediated and transferred entirely to Los Alamos County by 2018, workers in February 2020 discovered contamination while digging up old infrastructure in preparation for a new housing complex in Los Alamos.
In September 2022, N3B expected the total cost of the Middle DP Road cleanup to run around $19 million, according to a July 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office.
