A spending plan advanced by the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee Tuesday would provide $50 million for the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to clean up recently discovered contamination along a nearby public road.
The money for investigation and remediation of an area along DP Road in Los Alamos County would be provided if Congress concludes it is being used for “an emergency requirement” under the 1985 Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act, according to language in the bill.
Panel members offered no amendments before passing the $49.6 billion appropriations package to the full committee for a markup expected next week. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), the ranking Republican on the subcommittee, did complain that GOP members were not consulted on the bill’s emergency funds, although he did not mention Los Alamos or other specific examples.
DP Road is part of a 28-acre parcel of land, which includes the site of a planned housing development, transferred from LANL to Los Alamos County in 2016 after the Energy Department determined it had been fully remediated. But in February, material contaminated by uranium and plutonium was unearthed by a contractor for the county removing an old sewer line in preparation for a planned low-income housing development.
At the request of the county government, DOE crews removed a couple drums of contaminated debris from the site, fenced off the area, and set up air monitoring around the location of the digging.
In June, the New Mexico Environment Department told DOE the contamination was more extensive than initially thought, and called on the federal agency to expedite its analysis and cleanup of the site. The state urged the federal agency to submit a plan later this month that would include soil sampling at the site.
