The New Mexico Environment Department on Thursday joined the Energy Department and one of its contractors as a defendant in a lawsuit filed in May by the advocacy group Nuclear Watch New Mexico.
The group’s lawsuit alleges the federal agency owes the state millions of dollars after it blew a 2015 deadline to clean up a large cache of Cold War-era nuclear waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. U.S. District Judge Judith Herrera immediately granted the state’s unopposed motion Thursday.
“The Department’s interests are not adequately protected by Defendants because the Department has regulatory and enforcement authority over the facility operated by Defendants that is the subject of this lawsuit,” the state wrote in its Thursday motion to intervene.
The New Mexico Environment Department is “intervening against us and we know that it’s going to defend DOE and Los Alamos by waiving around a new consent order that is entirely toothless and not enforceable,” Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said in a telephone interview Friday. “The New Mexico Environment Department is making a mockery of environmental protection and is instead protecting the polluter.”
The new consent order to which Coghlan referred is still in draft form. The revised document would replace the 2005 order, which is still legally in effect and at the crux of NukeWatch’s suit. The changes proposed by New Mexico in March would eschew the site-wide cleanup deadline in the old order in favor of a so-called campaign approach that focuses cleanup on one area of the Los Alamos National Laboratory at a time.
A spokesperson for the New Mexico Environment Department did not immediately reply to a request for comment Friday. On Wednesday, prior to the state’s motion to intervention, the spokesperson said there is no timetable for finalizing the draft revised consent order.
New Mexico Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn has said July 4 would be a “good target” for releasing the final version of the document. Flynn has also blasted NukeWatch for its lawsuit, accusing the not-for-profit group of arm-waving and inflammatory rhetoric designed to bolster a fund-raising campaign.
Meanwhile, the Energy Department, lab manager Los Alamos National Security, and now New Mexico have until July 19 to respond to the lawsuit.
After filing a response, the state, DOE, and its contractor — which operates the lab and is in charge of all cleanup there through September 2017 — have until July 28 to meet with Albuquerque-based NukeWatch and at least discuss a settlement, Steven Yarbrough, magistrate judge in the U.S. District Court for New Mexico, wrote in a June 14 order.
Coghlan said Friday there are “initial indications that there could be talks” between the parties.
Nuclear Watch New Mexico filed suit May 12, alleging 12 violations of the 2005 consent order governing cleanup at Los Alamos. The suit alleges failures to meet cleanup milestones across the lab’s entire footprint, including the tiny, 1.25-acre Material Disposal Area A, and the massive, 63-acre Area G site, cleanup of which was a fixture of the consent agreement NukeWatch wants enforced.
NukeWatch asked the court to force DOE and its contractor to comply with the consent order, and levy financial penalties of $37,500 a day for each day that passed after each of the 12 missed milestones. According to a NukeWatch press release, that runs to more than 20 years worth of violations, amounting to about $300 million in penalties.
A DOE spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit, because it is still pending before the court.
